My reservations against reservation

As reservations slowly eat up jobs for deserving candidates, they start leaving India to settle abroad. First they start leaving so that they can get jobs, then at college level and school level.

As educational standards drop, teachers and students alike switch over to regional languages. The IIMs and IITs declare their language of instruction as the language of the state they are located in. Other colleges follow suit. People from one part of India find it increasingly difficult to communicate with each other. Inter-state clashes over land and resources increase manifold.

As per reservations, many deserving candidates get passed over for promotions to higher posts. All of the corporate layer is overrun by reserved posts in both govt and private institutions. Inefficiency sets in, triggering a slow-down in the Indian economy.

As a recessionary period sets in, in the first to leave are the FIIs - they pull out their investments, and the Indian economy has to stand up on its own shaky feet. As investments go out, prices rise but companies pay less to their employees, but according to amended reservation rules, reservation candidates still get 20 - 25 % more than the few remaining general candidates.

As the money dries up, India is left with no choice but to withdraw forces from the frontiers. There is no moolah to protect the borders! J&K goes entirely to Pakistan and China. China cuts off the North East, many parts of which wanted independence anyway. Illegal Bangladeshi immigrants swarm into West Bengal and take up legitimate positions using forged papers proving their right to reservations. The Khalistan movement picks up once more. What remains of India becomes a ticking bomb waiting to explode into a civil war.

As time passes, Arjun Singh's plan of upliftment succeeds. India is dominated by SC/ST and OBCs. The Congress has gone out of power since long, and Mayawati is now the Prime Minister of India - she proposes 75% reservation and the Congress is unable to match the offer...

So much for a doomsday view of India's future under reservations. The truth is that we have been through this before. The truth is that that by bringing up these issues again and again, what India's politicians are trying to do is get caste calculations into the picture once more. They say that the idea of reservations has been around since the time of independence. Well, it has been there, and it has been successful. Today's youngsters rarely ask each other their castes while being introduced. But the proposed changes have the potential to change that. They could possibly undo all the good that has been done this far.

A case against this argument could be made. Yes, the scenarios I have mentioned are probably only applicable to urban and semi-urban areas of India. But I ask anyone to compare the statistics for the 25 years just after independence and the next 25 years - how many of the benefits have gone to the rural population? I would be pretty sure that though the reservation and quota system did work in the first quarter century, the next quarter century saw the next generations taking advantage of the quotas from the platforms built by the first beneficiaries. Families with Rs. 5-6 lakh incomes per annum and high savings got to get their kids to better colleges, while the lesser fortunate continued to languish in their squalor. The concept of 'equity' disappeared after the first generation.

In addition to this, the rural populace also consists of the so-called 'Forward Castes' and 'Upper Classes' who haven't had access to higher education and better facilities. Isn't a quota over here killing the idea of 'equity'?

So how do you solve the problem? You obviously can't leave the downtrodden classes without any hope of salvation. You obviously can't help them in a way that would significantly harm chances of other candidates. I cannot say what the wise men of India are thinking, but I see a way forward by categorising India's population by income levels, and reshuffling quotas to cater to the lowest income groups - just like the taxation structure. A side-effect of this may be a better profiling of India's economic demographics, and give the tax department a better way of collecting taxes.

All said and done, this is a tiny voice into the vast emptiness of the internet. I strongly believe that the idea of caste-based quotas was reasonable at one point of time. I also strongly believe that it is an idea whose time has passed.

My only hope and prayer is for sanity to prevail, so that future generations have a better deal - both in terms of the environment they live in and the politicians that represent them. I hope we don't need another young Rajiv Goswami burning up on the roads to get the attention of the so-called wise men. Amen.