MY TAKE ON RESERVATIONS...



As I set out to write this, I must make it amply known...since disclaimers are in vogue these days...that it is not intended, in any way, to be an undisputed critique of the reservation politics that seems to have bitten the nation or its disastrous ramifications so vehemently advocated by some...and I am sure that it will eventually not end up as one either.

Reservations, often construed, and erroneously at that, as the sole manifestation of Affirmative Action these days is not a novel concept to India for 1918 saw the first moorings of the policy in the Madras Presidency. But it no longer is 1918 and things are not as they used to be. Travel a couple of years and you enter 1980! One harmless looking year that was to change how India thought and acted. The Mandal Commission had arrived...for better or for worse is a question that has very deftly evaded the entire nation.

That Economic criteria should be the key deciding factor instead of the sole consideration of caste and that Primary Education should be strenghthened and effectively provided are issues that have been suggested, reiterated and harped upon ad nauseum.
So?! Is'nt that an echo of what we've always heard?! Each one of us appreciates the prudence of these propositions..but..and this is a very crucial but, for in this one word lies the irony and misfortune of Indian Politics and India's egalitarian future.

Policies have been made, social upliftment programmes formulated...but there is a fine line between Policies and Politics, which unforunately, has often been smeared to shameful extents.

Are our priorities right or are they grossly misplaced? That is a question the human conscience can answer best. Millions are denied the basic right to food, dying of hunger, starvation and infirmity. India enjoys the despicable honour of harbouring a fifth of the total world population of those who die before they achieve the age of five....I'm sure that is a distinction we can live without!
It is difficult to convince oneself how reservations will benefit this penurious lot...many of them will probably never reach the age where they might become eligible for the benefit they are entitled to.
Why is our perception of Affirmative Action confined to the miniscule domain of reservation?! Our very familiar Mr.Politics seems to be looming large again..but this time...its bordering on criminal.

One very often can't resist the temptation of referring to the success of Affirmative Action in the US. So, the obvious question is that if they can implement it there, and successfully as alleged, why can't we, who even otherwise have done an excellent job of imitating certain other things, things far less significant, do the same? What difference would one more adaptation make? Big deal!!

But Affirmative Action there, in sharp contradistinction to our system here, is optional. Universities have a free hand..it is not something which is forced down their throats. Affirmative Action there implies an exercise where a few representatives of ethnic groups like the Blacks, Latinos, American Indian and Hispanics are preferentially admitted to the universities...and the percentage there is certainly not 50%!! Advocates of reservation will definitely not like to refer to the diminutive percentage of such people that walk the corridors of the bastions of America's education.
Moreover, Affirmative Action there does not operate negatively against the majority(the whites)as it threatens to do in india.

A further perusal of the the efficacy of this much recommended policy and the revelations are startling! I'm sure we have not yet been able to erase from our minds the cataclysmic Katrina Hurricane which ravaged households and ruined lives..the social base of the victims showed an uncanny preponderance of those very ethnic groups which have been referred to as being the fortuitous beneficiaries of Affirmative Action. A large number of Blacks still live in ghettos, far from the comfortable and often ostentatious habitations of the Whites and other priveleged non Blacks.
Yes, Affirmative Action there has no doubt produced exemplary examples like Condoleezza Rice and Collin Powell, but we must not ignore the fact that they came from affluent families, definitely not the ones who would not have survived had it not been for state action.

So, the question that has followed us, with great persistence and diligence one must admit, still remains largely elusive...Are the people who really need a tool like reservation to provide an impetus to their life the ones who are actually benefitted?

We would like to believe that they are, but the writing is on the wall.





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