Reservation Blues

I had a dream recently – well probably more of a nightmare. I dreamt that 25 years from now, my son (let’s call him Junior for now) had given his high school exams and topped his school. (talk about great expectations even in dreams!)
Now he wanted to apply to a medical college to get an MBBS….and this was the conversation we had:

Me : Well done, my lad! So how many seats do we have for this course in your desired college?
Junior : Umm about 10 but I guess I’ll just about manage….

Me : Hmmm hold your horses for now! Let’s do some simple calculations first. It seems there are lots of other brilliant and deserving candidates vying for those coveted seats! Ah do you remember your schoolmates Bubloo and Dubloo? Yea those same fine prodigies of 3 generations of IAS officers, who even though they failed each year, your school principal had the privilege to forcefully promote to the next class for the greater benefit of mankind. (Son of an IAS destined to be an IAS you see!)
Ah, so what if they scored only 10% marks in the entrance exam, our law says that 2 of those 10 seats should definitely go to the Scheduled Castes, which their certificates rightly identify them as, and hence as deserving as anyone can be! (Not to mention once they complete their MBBS, they’d be fine deserving candidates for IAS too!)

Now how can you forget that bright child Abracadabra – whose dad is a surgeon and who has a certificate claiming his ancestors jhingalala’d in the jungles of Andamans. Surely we can oversee a minor issue like him not writing the exam….well at least he filled the form! Since as per our constitution 1 seat has to go to a member of a Scheduled Tribe.

And in May 2006, the then honorable government passed a bill that ensured a seat for Other Backward Castes(OBC) too. Of course, Tommy fits that bill, and it doesn’t matter that his school uniform was designed by Donatella Versace, according to his certificate he’s still backward!

The 5th seat of course has to be given to the highly athletic and competitive Milk-Kha Singh, who represented our country in the World kabaddi championship and got us a gold medal. Err so what if there was just 1 team participating, he surely deserves that 1 seat for Sports quota.

Another seat, my child, is undoubtedly deserved by your Italian Indian friend Rah-Hool Gandhi, whose surname is sufficient proof that his great grand daddy must’ve fought in our freedom struggle, enabling him to be eligible for the freedom fighter quota.

And how can we be so cruel as to deny the claim for the 7th seat by your schoolmate Free-thick Roshan – whose disformity of having 2 thumbs on a hand is indisputable proof of his crippling handicap – hence the rightful candidate for the Handicapped persons’ quota.

Darn, the 8th seat would have to be given to Arj – June singh, whose daddy is a professor in that college, putting him up for the management quota.

Of course no one dare deny admission to your friend Lux-Me Mittal, considering his dad is a rich NRI businessman and more than willing to shell out a lakh pounds for that NRI quota seat.

Whoa, there’s still 1 seat left! Go get it Tiger.

Junior : I just called up and they said that it’s been taken up under the “No Reservation” reservation.
Me : Uff, how did we forget to get this certificate made ! Don’t worry my child….better luck next time!



P.S. - I’m sorry if I’ve offended anyone but I’m really taken aback by this reservation issue right now. For those who are not in touch with the latest news here our government is going forward to pass a bill that would reserve 50% of seats in top educational institutes for people based solely on their castes.(irrespective of their scores in the entrance exams)
It’s common knowledge that India is one of the most competitive countries in the world when it comes to education, and the cut-off percentages for the premier institutes keep getting higher each year. Imagine the plight of students like those in the medical profession, where lakhs of people appear for exams each year for sometimes as few as 10-15 seats, and what would happen to their morale when they would see some people walk off with more than half those seats just because they belong to a certain “caste”, and irrespective of their scores.
Nobody denies that the caste system has been a bane of the Indian society, but surely this would be the worst possible way to try to “uplift” the downtrodden, since majority of these seats are enjoyed by children of SC/ST’s who’re already enjoying the spoils of reservation by being in the highest of public sector jobs, leaving the rest in a status quo.
Even when reservations were started by B.R Ambedkar after our independence, he had asked for them to continue only for 10 years. Still they have been continuing for more than 60 years after our independence, primarily due to the votebank politics being played by each major political party which is trying to appease the voting population belonging to these particular castes, and in the process only further deepening the caste divide in this country.
A sensible approach would’ve been giving scholarships, fee-waivers and study material to the deserving candidates in these classes, yet the government wants to take the easy way of total appeasement out.


As if this wasn’t enough, peacefully protesting medical students in Mumbai were brutally lathi-charged by the police as if they were gangsters, reminding one of a similar scene in the recent RDB, and this has further flared up the protests in the student community all across India.

Well if vote bank politics is what a democracy is all about, then perhaps an autocracy might suit us better.

(Thank God at least The DaVinci Code is finally getting released here next week .... with a disclaimer and an A certificate)