Should there be reservation?

 Suppose you have just passed your class 12 board exams and have appeared for all your entrance exams. You are then waiting for your results, hoping to get the right seat at the right college. And if you get it, you are going to be the happiest person in the world ( In engineering only around 50 IITB CS students and the ones who took a stream of their choice are lucky enough to get this happiness;-)). And all the other students who couldn't get what they wanted, they are going to blame the reservation system. So is the reservation system justified? Or is it there only to secure cast votes? Read on and figure that out yourself.

Presently in India 15% seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes, 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes and 27% for Other Backward Classes. That's a total reservation of 49.5% ( almost half the seats! ). That is a really huge number, any general category student who could not make it, is going to feel bad about it surely ( That's just saying it politely, in reality you are probably swearing at the system in every language you can :-P). If you could not make the cut, you will be seriously wishing you too had a category certificate so that you could be at a prestigious institute. And if you made the cut, it feels bad to see students in your department who have scored less than half of what you have!

The second and probably the biggest disadvantage is reservation is not implemented correctly. You will find at any IIT, many students who have come in through reservation, but are probably from richer families than most general category students. There are students who have had good and privileged upbringing but get in through the reservation system even after scoring much less than you. Would you blame them? I personally wouldn't. The rules are made by the government, as long as their certificates are real, they are playing by the rules, and making the best use of them (Don't we all do that in some way or the other?)

Another major disadvantage, many seats remain vacant each year in the IIT's and NIT's. Come on, at-least in the last round of counselling, the remaining reserved seats should be offered to general students!! Why waste the extra seats? I think the people who run these colleges do have the common sense to do this. But either there is a lot of red taping involved, or these empty seats are being given later to the children of the Institutes faculty ( I don't know if this actually happens, but quite a few newspapers report that it used to happen). Either way, we are wasting precious seats in our colleges by doing this.

Hate the system already? Things are worse. Did you know that almost 50% seats are also reserved in private colleges of Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai or Mumbai? What chance do you, a general category student have?

Source : Wikipedia

But then what do the poor people of India have? The people who do not have access to proper education. Isn't the reservation system a blessing for them? A ray of hope for the poor villager that his child can one day study at a prestigious institution. The hope that education will someday alleviate his family's poverty. You can argue on this topic forever but the truth is, there are people in India who need reservation. We all want equality but we can't have equality among unequals.

There are so many coaching classses, which put in special effort to teach SC/ST students (Super 30). The coaching classes obviously do this for their benefit, but isn't this an advantage for the students? I can get the best faculty of a coaching institute if I am in the Reserved Category. Indirectly reservation gives them a chance to get good education.

Also consider this, one general student qualifying a major All India Exam = No Big Deal. One student qualifying exam first time from his village = Local Hero. There are such Local Heroes in our batch. And they have opened the gates to higher education not just for their own families but for the entire village. A role model for so many others like him.

So does this mean I support reservation? In its present form, probably not. There are a lot of changes that the present system needs. These could be a few of them :

1. Caste should not be the only criteria.Salary is a better criteria. ( If you have money and still can't get a general seat... You probably don't deserve to be here.)
2. Introduce preparatory classes for the students, especially in English. ( This one's really important. And it would be of great help to the students as well.)
3. There should not be a special section for them in the library. ( Come on, what purpose does this serve? Stop playing divide and rule IIT KGP).
4. Develop plans ( Similar to the 5 year plans) to progressively decrease and ultimately end reservation.
5. Girls from rural areas also need reservation ( They probably need it more than the boys).

The system is at fault and not the SC/ST students. We need to improve the system and provide reservation for deserving candidates. Agree with me? I would like to hear whatever you have to say. Scroll down and comment/