My Own Reservations
The proposal for increased reservations in higher education institutions including IITs is causing much furore in India. Thousands of medical students have gone on various forms of strike causing much hardship to patients. This begs a discussion on the topic of reservation.
What is the supposed intent of reservation? It is meant to help groups that have suffered historically and provide them with opportunities to make a living. My contention is this: if a person has had enough opportunities to be at the doorstep for higher education, he/she is equipped enough to further his/her own cause without further help from the government!
To help the most backward parts of society, one must try reservations at the lowest levels i.e. primary and secondary schools. The cost of one semester of college is somewhere around Rs. 20000 which may be used to educate another child for 3-4 yrs of primary schooling (possibly more). Therefore at the cost of 8 semesters, around 8 children may be provided primary schooling. This is not only good for the society as such, it will also be a more popular policy, garnering more votes!
Reservation at higher education institutions is flawed both as a benevolent and populist policy. Ofcourse, it may be my own biases talking here. Somebody who has suffered through his entire life may feel that this could be a blessing for his progenies. So how do we resolve this? With the advent of electronic polling, it may be feasible to seek "actual" public opinion on such contentious issues. It would be interesting to see what the actual voting population thinks. While voting for the state/central elections once in 4 years, the population could be asked to vote on such issues. This will ensure that a few individuals don't hijack the Indian public.
What is the supposed intent of reservation? It is meant to help groups that have suffered historically and provide them with opportunities to make a living. My contention is this: if a person has had enough opportunities to be at the doorstep for higher education, he/she is equipped enough to further his/her own cause without further help from the government!
To help the most backward parts of society, one must try reservations at the lowest levels i.e. primary and secondary schools. The cost of one semester of college is somewhere around Rs. 20000 which may be used to educate another child for 3-4 yrs of primary schooling (possibly more). Therefore at the cost of 8 semesters, around 8 children may be provided primary schooling. This is not only good for the society as such, it will also be a more popular policy, garnering more votes!
Reservation at higher education institutions is flawed both as a benevolent and populist policy. Ofcourse, it may be my own biases talking here. Somebody who has suffered through his entire life may feel that this could be a blessing for his progenies. So how do we resolve this? With the advent of electronic polling, it may be feasible to seek "actual" public opinion on such contentious issues. It would be interesting to see what the actual voting population thinks. While voting for the state/central elections once in 4 years, the population could be asked to vote on such issues. This will ensure that a few individuals don't hijack the Indian public.
posted by k2 at
10:05 AM
4 Comments:
The EVM idea is pretty good. Alternate suggestion would be to use the census mechanism to gain insight into public opinion.
However, the key point is how does one use the data obtained? Pour it onto media? Or, feed it to the political parties saying this is the truth, your conceptions on vote-bank dynamics are wrong (if they really are, then evm would help).
But going by the "DMK comes to power by promise of color tv's", I don't really feel the parties are wrong is sticking to the "heavy meaningless reservation that never reaches intended people" trend.
By
SternMystic, at 9:45 AM
Nice post. As long as politician plays vote bank politics EVM idea wont work. They will interpert the result the way they want.
By
Brijesh Nair, at 7:58 PM
Thank you for your comments folks.. appreciate it.
1. With respect to workability, the EVM idea is not an unheard of one. States in the US routinely ask people to vote on certain contentious issues like abortion and gay marriage. So it is a perfectly workable system.
2. Regarding.. "how does one use the data obtained?".. Obviously the results of such a poll will be shown in various forms of media. It will be something that the govt can't ignore.
3. Regarding .. "how do you decide is something is contentious?" If each side of an argument has a certain minimum number of petitioners, then it could be termed contentious or I'm sure some other reasonable definition of contentious can be arrived at!
By
k2, at 9:06 AM
Nice blog K2.
I am really interested in the topic being discussed and here are my views.
Any electronic voting scheme is a bad idea because minorities will never be well represented in such a poll. Non OBC people will bias such polls and it is a waste of time and moolah.
Personally, I am a proponent of the reservation system and view the goals of the system a little differently. Ask yourself the question: "What is preventing a student from a backward class from achieving his peak potential?". A natural answer is money. The parents of these students were inhibited in many ways and consequently they do not have the earning potential as everyone else. They cannot afford the top classes/private tuitions etc. that others can afford (and these make a huge difference!). The second issue that is often overlooked is the subtle issue of expectations. A student who is capable of becoming an engineer may not have been pushed by his parents to the extent that say I was. The parents may have been happy with him/her getting a BSc. or BCom, when he/she could potentially have gotten a BE or BTech. Why are their expectations lower? Expectations are lowered by continual suppression (e.g. the Dalits used to believe that they were supposed to perform some menial tasks and nothing else due to a history of supression). This cannot be fixed by providing financial incentives to the OBC families and a direct intervention at the undergraduate level is necessary. For those familiar with affirmative action in the US, it is exactly the same as providing reservations at the undergraduate level in India.
By
Unknown, at 12:43 PM
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