Anti-Reservations, but not Anti-reforms

26th May, 2006

I have been reading about the anti-reservation and pro-reservation protests. While I do not think that reservations are the answer to the upliftment of the lower castes and classes, there surely must also be an alternate measure to ensure that these castes and classes stand up against discrimination on their own feet. I have been writing emails and articles to people the past few days but most have gone unnoticed so far. So, here's a transcript of the email I had written to the "Youth for Equality" forum earlier today.

Note: Headers have been edited to protect the email addresses.

Message-ID: <6e19a8cd0605251228g2f34d3cal7c69a07cff064193@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 00:58:08 +0530
From: "Siddhesh Poyarekar"
To: yfemumbai at gmail
Subject: Anti-reservation, but not anti-reforms
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Hi,

I have been following this movement on and off for the past few days.
I email you to voice my opinions on the movement. Before I do so, I
need to clear one thing; I am an OBC. Also, I do hope that your blog
believes in complete freedom of speech and will post this email
despite the fact that it is slightly misaligned with your goals.

Firstly, I have to say that I am not in favour of reservations or
favours for the cause of social upliftment. With that statement I hope
I have the ears (eyes, actually) of the skeptics. I would like to try
and present an unbiased picture of OBC reservations and social
upliftment in general.

Firstly, OBCs are not a caste, they're an economic class. Also,
although a person like myself may qualify to be an OBC, I still need
to prove that my financial status is not in the "creamy layer". That
means that the annual income of my family should less than 2 lakhs per
annum. So politicians and rich OBCs do not get these previliges. One
may argue about forgery, fraud , etc in certificate making but that is
a separate issue altogether. Due to this narrowing down, only the
worthy get the reservations.

Secondly, Govt of Maharashtra has always had a 19% OBC quota. This is
not going to change. Also, statistically, competition in the OBC
section has been more or less as competitive as the general category
simply because of the sheer number of people that have access to
education. I have had first hand experience of this during my 10th and
12th admissions. There is no doubt however that deserving students of
the open category may suffer because of others who have scored less
marks, especially in the IITs where after the first few ranks everyone
is very very closely bunched together.

But in the end the resrevations are simply widening the gap between
the upper and lower castes. Today caste system is seen in a new light.
SC/ST/OBC students are seen as the "undeserving losers" who have come
into XYZ Institute on the basis of their caste and are treated as such
by their peers.

Many learned men in India agree today that quotas are not the best way
to try and uplift the backwards castes and classes. Articles and
letters posted by the NKC members are a good indication of that. But a
bulk of those views are being unheard or misinterpreted mainly because
of the student protests.

The students have come into light as irresponsible, selfish citizens
who do not have any concern about the social problems that prevail in
this country. They protest assuming that caste system is a thing of
the past and today these people are just "leeching" on the system.

Here's a question I asked all my colleagues and friends around; how
many of your parents will allow you to marry a lower caste partner.
The answer was predictable; not many. And this is the case in the most
modern city in India -- Mumbai. now consider a similar case in smaller
towns, villages.

Even today caste system is rampant. Tea shops have separate tea cups
for the upper and lower castes. Lower caste people are not allowed to
drink water from public wells; CNN IBN has been regularly reporting
few such cases to show exactly how bad the caste system scenario is in
India even today.

The student agitation has failed to acknowledge this social problem in
any form. All of its protests have been selfish, self-involved. This
is not the democracy our fathers fought for. They fought for all of
us, not just their own families.

If the student movement wants to be heard, it needs to speak sense, it
needs to be more sensitive to the entire country rather than just
themselves. Let us come together and try to formulate an alternate
means for social upliftment of the lower castes. Only if we have an
alternate working solution in hand can we confidently say that the
method of reservation is not working.

Regards,
Siddhesh Poyarekar
Mumbai, India