Reservation/Quota! The two words which you will hear a lot in India, where ever you go these are the words you cannot escape. Right from school till you die you will have to live with this, why? Becuase with more and more catagories being created what is left for the so called ‘General’ category is marching towards nill. I would not be surprised if we soon reach a stage where there will be only 5% available to ‘General Category’ and the rest will be reserved for one of the various catagories, in process paving way to ‘Reservation’ based community like in olden times, just the names would be different, now it would be SC/ST/OBC etc.
Let me take the example here, for the BBMP (local) polls here in Bangalore there are 198 wards/seats out of which 127 have some sort of reservation linked to them!! It may be either SC/ST/BC/Women etc, which leaves only a mearge 71 for the ‘General’!! Then there is a news article in today’s paper which tells that the Madras High Court has asked the nationalised banks to promote to officer cadre the people who have joined under the reserved quota. The banks had put forward the point that the promotions should be based on merit cum seniority and not quota, but the HC didn’t fully agree with this. So this bring me to the point “Where are we heading?”
It is not that I am fully against the concept of reserved quota for certain section of the society. I feel it should be only available at max till the end of Graduation, after that there should be no Reservation concept at all. There is no point in giving jobs to people who do not have the required skills by overriding people who have slogged it out and are denied the opportunity just because of the quota system. When this happens the person with skills is discouraged and encouragement is given to people who can under quota get a job even though they are not apt to do the job. I do not say that everyone who get a job under quota do not work properly but a reasonable portion spoil it for all. So at the end everyone suffers, the people are denied proper service and every thing gets delayed.
I think the time had come for India to look forward to a new way to provide opportunities without using the Reservation quota system. But with politician who are here to promote their own selfish desires rather than people causes it looks like a dream that the system would change.
What do you all think about the reservation/quota system in India?
