The Story of Unlearning : The Caste based Merit system

When the leaders of India enacted the constitution of India, they dreamt of a nation which would be secular, and where untouchables and castes would not matter. Where each one of us would have equal opportunity and status.
Almost six decades hence, this is the state of the nation :

1. Ninety percent of resources are in the hands of ten percent of the population. That ten percent mainly consists of people from the upper caste.
2. Caste system is still practiced in numerous regions of the country.
3. Political parties field candidates based on castes rather that on merit. Many of them have criminal records.
4. An upper caste person would not marry into a lower caste family.
5. Religious groups have become the new moral police instead of allowing the citizens to decide themselves what is appropriate.

It is the responsibility of the government to uplift the people who have traditionally for centuries been downtrodden. Who did not get their rights to an equal existence. And it is imperative that the nation stands up and helps the government in this task. Effective steps, which provides equal opportunities for the oppressed.

But are blanket reservations, in the name of caste the way out?

If you take some cheetahs and combine them with tigers and train both of them in the tiger ways, there are some chances that the cheetahs would start displaying some tiger traits and move up the chain. (This is assuming that the tigers are higher or superior). What would happen if instead of cheetahs, you have sheep? The sheep can never become tigers. The problem does not end there. At the end of it, they lose their ability to be good sheep either.

Let us face it, not every college or university that provides engineering is at par. Nor are all the degrees at par, no matter what the AICTE says.

The present reservation policy ensures that people from the reserved categories get seats in elite higher educational institutions even if they have abysmally low marks in the entrance. And this only ensures that most of them are unable to cope with the pressures of studying in those elite institutions and drop out. Even if they do manage to pass, they are way below par their normal colleagues. What the reservation policy ensures that they never become engineers or doctors? Sadly, they could have been engineers and doctors, if they had been given a reserved seat in an institution which is commensurate to their intellectual capabilities.

There should be reservation, but it is imperative that there are well placed guidelines of how that policy is applied.

I think, a good reservation policy should be something like this :

1. A person who applies in the reserved category should not be considered for a general category seat, no matter what his marks are. At present, this does not seem to be the case.
2. There should be a cutoff in terms of marks, which should not exceed 10%, which could be applied as a subsidy for persons from the reserved category. So, if IIT admits a person from the general category into the Computer Science stream, if he had 600 marks out of 1000 in the entrance, then that cutoff could be 540 for the reserved candidate. This should also be applied to all educational institutions where reservations apply.
3. The reservation policy should ensure that people who have already got equal opportunities in their lower education, do not get benefits of the reservation policy. In other words, it should ensure that the creamy layer is excluded from the ambit of reservations.
4. If seats from the reserved category are vacant, they should be filled from the general category merit list.
5. There should be a committed timeframe after which reservations should not exist.
6. Reservations should be availed only by one generation in a family.

One of the saddest things in India is that, people who want to study are unable to do so. Look at the US, they are facing a shortage of people who want to study. Why can’t we ensure that there are enough seats in higher education, so that anyone who wants to study can do so? In the US, education is expensive, but they also ensure that people who are unable to pay, have the opportunities to study.

Why higher education should be financially subsidized to the levels they are today. A person who studies at the IIT lands up a good job, with atleast 3-4 lakhs per annum at the start. Why the fees of higher educational institutions can’t be raised, so that there are funds for the growth of higher education in India. Even today, if a person needs an educational loan, he has to get sureties. I do know people who haven’t been able to get the loans because their parents were unable to provide sureties. Why can’t banks provide loans on the basis of the offer letter, without sureties? Why can’t the government create a mechanism to ensure that people who take loans pay up so that banks can provide loans to the needy next time around?

Today, when Aamir Khan tries to voice his concerns on the state of rehabilitation for those displaced by the dam, what does he get? His film is banned by the state government of Gujarat. And what is the central government doing? Doesn’t it have the authority to ask the Gujarat government on what grounds this step has been taken? Is asking that people who are displaced be properly rehabilitated wrong? And what about the freedom of expression? Probably, we should rename Gujarat as “The Hindu Republic of Gujarat”.

When we started our education, we were always taught that caste system has been abolished. All men are born equal. Respect everyone and their religious belief. Do not discriminate on the basis of caste, creed and sex.

And sadly, its now time to unlearn that. To learn new things, to understand that people are somehow inferior if they are from certain castes. And they need to be sympathized upon.


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Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-- Rabindranath Tagore - Let My Country Awake

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a [SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC] and to secure to all its citizens :
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;
and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the [unity and integrity of the Nation]

IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

-- Preamble to “The Constitution of India”