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| The policy of reservations | | | | In an opinion poll on the ruling given by the Supreme Court approving 27% reservation for other backward classes in institutions of higher education, 79% have expressed themselves against it and only 19% have favoured the same, with the remaining 2% being neutral. This is in sharp contrast to almost all the political parties supporting reservations for OBCs and favouring the verdict given by the Apex Court of the country. However if you ask the leaders of political parties in private, the majority of them will definitely give their opinion against the policy of reservations. Obviously the support of the political parties to the caste based reservations is politically motivated. No party would like to annoy either the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes who are already entitled to 22.5% reservations in these institutions, besides reservations in Parliament, legislature and services etc nor the OBCs. This only betrays hypocrisy on the part of the political parties, who would like to be on the right side of a big chunk of vote bank. But whether continuation of reservations even 60 years after country's independence, when for the first time this provision was kept in the constitution of the country to bring the deprived classes to the level of privileged ones, is in the overall interest of the country as a whole and to the interest of those for whom it is meant and whether the same is not leading to the division in the society, is a matter which should be given serious consideration, dispassionately. The redeeming factor in the Supreme Court ruling has been that the creamy layer among the OBCs has been kept out of the ambit of reservations. The idea of granting reservations to other backward classes, besides the already existing reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, was first mooted and strongly advocated by V P Singh, as the Prime Minister of the Country. The same had sparked off a big deal of controversy, with strong agitations in various parts of the country, which even turned violent and several youth who felt to be getting injustice even resorting to self immolation. Since then this controversy has been continuing and when the present Minister for HRD Arjun Singh embarked upon a plan to give reservations to OBCs in higher education there were strong protests and agitations by the students in several government institutions of higher learning, who feared to be adversely affected by this policy as well as the standard of education in the institutions of higher learning getting deteriorated, with less meritorious candidates getting admissions and the standard of syllabus necessitated to be lowered to accommodate them. While to address to the concern of meritorious students from the upper caste, the government has decided to increase the intake number in these institutions. But whether the institutions have the required infrastructure to accommodate more students and provide them the education of required standard is still doubtful. Still another question which needs be considered is whether the deprived and poor sections of the people in castes other than SCs, STs and OBCs, do not deserve to be taken care of and provided the same concessions. There is a strong argument for granting reservations on the bases of economic standard of various sections of people, instead of caste considerations. The latter, it is alleged, divides the society on caste bases. All these aspects need be thoroughly considered and rational approach adopted. |
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