Reserve-Deserve

Too much bad-blood has been spilled in the country among friends about the whole controversy regarding the increased reservations. People now divide others as belonging to pro or anti-reservation and automatically determine the other person’s allegiances, thought-processes and ideas in their own heads even before another word is spoken by their counterparts. I belong to the minority of people who do not belong to either of the two sides- yes, there is a third side, shocking isn’t it!

We all are familiar about what the controversy is. So, let’s do some stock taking regarding the protests, the protestors and certain realities.

What are the protestors saying?

Merit should be the only criteria and no reservations should be provided.
Reservations should go because it is an archaic provision that does not foster healthy competition.
Nobody cares about caste today and merit should have precedence above everything.
Reservations have been a curse on India and that is the main reason why India has not done well economically or progressed like other countries because non-meritorious people have been running the country.
It’s time to change the whole system because we have suffered long enough and it’s time to do something and not just crib about it.
The movement is about equality and nothing else.
Do you want a less qualified doctor to treat you?
Do away with reservations, focus on primary education.
What has the govt been doing for the last 60 years?
Show us the figures of who have benefited from reservations.
Only the creamy layers benefit from reservations.
We are not against the backward classes but there are other measures.
The politicians are trying to divide the society along caste lines.
This is a revolutionary. We are the new rebels.

The gist of the whole diatribe- reservations of seats will kill merit and bring about mediocrity into professional practice.

Why are they saying it?
They stand to lose the number of seats as they pursue higher education.


What they are not saying:

Caste system is a social reality and needs to be dealt with. We want it abolished.
We have been guilty of being casteist ourselves and we would like to make amends.
The society is already divided on caste lines and we recognise that. We want all lines to be dissolved.
The industry and other professions haven’t contributed towards social upliftment of the needy classes as much they should have to help the govt.

Why are they not saying it?
(The reasons are highly subjective but let me make a few sure-shot guesses)

They are in denial about the caste-system actually existing in every nook and corner of India (barring a large part of North-eastern India-thank god for that!)
Their education has been so flawed that they have not been sociologically sensitised.
They haven’t travelled across the country beyond the major cities with theme parks and beautiful monuments and not with people other than their own caste/class peers.
They have neither read the constitution nor unbiased historical writings.
Their only goal in life is to secure themselves a way to earn a living.


~So what’s the problem? If you haven’t figured it already, lots!

Problem #1- The politicians:
The politicians are obviously playing the caste politics so that they can get votes and earn a good name for taking up humanitarian measures for the deprived and oppressed sections of Indian society. The govt knows that the bill cannot be stopped in parliament for not only is it in majority but also because the opposition cannot protest against it for ear of being labelled anti-dalit.
The reason could be that the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and other primary education programs are running slow and not gathering enough attention of the public or the oppressed classes. Also, it is in the CMP to do more for these sections of society. And providing quotas is really really very simple! This is more so, because the caste system is a social reality and a very integral part of traditional Indian society (particularly Hindu society).

Problem #2-The Society:
Traditional Hindu society invariably is based on caste system as much on religion. They are integral and inseparable parts of society that feed and live on each other. Caste determines one caste, one’s level of status in society, one’s accessibility to resources etc. And yes, it still happens and not just in the rural areas, but also in the urban areas and among educated people. Yes, don’t act so shocked and if you were shocked, I strongly recommend that you walk on the streets, talk to more people rather than just your friends in office/school/college and just look around. Go to other cities, towns, villages, temples, river ghats, Varanasi, the local market. If you still can’t see either you are blind or really lucky to be spared the ugliness of Indian life!!

Parents are just as much to be blamed as much as educational institutions where the ‘privileged’ get to study. By privileged I mean those who can afford decent public/private schools where the demography of reserved category students is microscopic. Even those students whose parents might have the money to afford such education, sometimes don’t go to such institutions or leave them after sometime because of the way they can’t fit in or shall I put it, are not allowed to fit in. Don’t get it? Well, they are teased, reminded of their social background, made fun of etc. All this is for my next section. Here the older generation, especially parents, are to be blamed. Especially those immersed in tradition and conservative values supposedly ensconced in the Hindu religion. Apart from the fact that they don’t recognise what they are practising is a corruption of what was the original Hinduism (and fought by various learned personalities like Saraswati and Vidyasagar and something I am not getting into in this piece), they don’t realise what values they are supporting and encouraging. Faith makes people blind they say but this is absolutely unacceptable. Hinduism continues to be a religion where women cant do puja if they are menstruating, or which divides people according to their castes and classifying who and who cannot indulge, practice or even witness a religious ceremony/ritual etc. The caste consciousness is very high and professions like tanning, butchering etc are considered the most suitable professions for those termed ‘dalits’ (also being a evidence of the lack of dignity of labour in India) while tribes are seen as ungodly and primitive in their outlook, thinking and domicile. Parents won’t let their children play with kids of servants or those from “lower castes”. The reason given usually is to keep their children safe from picking up bad habits from these ‘other kids’…and why would they have bad habits? “Oh, because they are from a lower class/caste”..!!!! When families belonging to such depressed classes/castes that have to face such discriminations on almost a daily basis, how can anyone do well because one has to be psychologically at peace to be able to perform to his/her full potential.
Indian upper caste citizens are very good actors because they are very two-faced. They might talk, laugh, share a paan even, with their friends from the disadvantaged castes but behind their backs might talk highly insensitively about them. It all comes out if a marriage between both the castes is suggested- the way the older & younger generation, both, will, without any exception, initially raise their eyebrows. Some eyebrows might go down but that will only a minority again! The rejection and supposedly blasphemous idea of inter-caste marriage is like a big slap on their big blown up heads, which grows with wholesome helpings of a fake superiority complex.

Caste identities get mixed with regional identities as well. You have classifications like Haryanvi jats, Garhwalis, Kumaonis, etc where people look down upon each other and have derogatory descriptions ready for each other. In simple words, everyone considers their caste to be superior to the others and tends to promote such an idea of supremacy among their brethren. The whole caste system is based on confrontation and conflict. It started off as being a tool to differentiate between the foreign rulers and natives to becoming a occupational identity. It soon became associated with class and then kept degenerating to its present form. It should not be even there but it is. It exists in all its primitive forms and keeps getting modified to suit the needs of…the upper castes of course silly!

Why has this primitive depraved retarded system still continued to exist? Well, probably because the echelons of political power have always been with people from the upper castes and usually from North India. Everything has to favour the upper castes and the already rich. The famous Green revolution is just one of the many examples one can cite. But we are not discussing economy here, though it is linked to caste as well. South India is also very conservative but the problem, as in other parts of the country, is regionalism and quotas for “their own” really speak the whole story. And most secessionist movements stem out of a feeling of neglect from the north-upper caste centre that rules the union of India.

Didn’t make sense still? Well, let’s take industries and schools. Many of them have received land and other infrastructural facilities at subsidised rates because they promised to cooperate with the govt to do their bit for social development and upliftment of the oppressed classes. Most of them haven’t done anything and forget their promises and they will be the first ones to protest against any move by the govt to enforce this “promise”. So basically they just want to take and not give anything at all!

I could go on and on about our great society but I am sure we all know how regressive it is, and if you don’t, I really pity you. But now I want to focus attention on the people who think they are different and revolutionary- the students/doctors/professionals etc.

Problem #3-The Students:
Education in India is sub-standard; being brilliant in it doesn’t mean much really. It is sub-standard not just because it encourages rote learning but also because it does not make students better people and citizens of a country like India which has a rich diverse and composite culture. And it is a society where tolerance and open-mindedness is an essential requirement for sanity to prevail.
Students are not really educated because they have not been sensitised to the harsh realities of Indian society. The sensitivity towards different cultures has never been cultured in them by education and this is its biggest failure. In north India, people from the south and north-east are not felt welcome. And you can probably reverse this too. Face it, the students are the youngest faces of racism in the country. Through school, college and my post-graduate education I have seen it, witnessed it and experienced it firsthand. So, don’t even dare tell me that it does not exist.
Let me talk about the status quo-right now. The caste system exists. There are depressed sections of society. Discrimination happens even in the cities and even by the educated.
What the students really want is to maintain this status-quo, just because they want to safeguard their own seats. They talk about bringing equality but what they really want is the status-quo, which has no equality whatsoever, howsoever you look at it. This Youth For Equality has no sense of what equality is. Not one squeaky little voice from their ranks spoke about abolishing the caste system or even anything against the caste-system. I don’t even know if they are humans or just big chickens!

They talk about merit being the main criterion rather than reservations. They don’t understand what merit really is in real-world India. I suggest people read D.Parthasarthy’s article explaining how merit is misunderstood and how much a reality caste is (http://www.anticaste.blogspot.com/).
The students in the past few days have shown their true casteist/racist colours by talking about the students from the disadvantaged sections in the most derogatory and ridiculing manner. Most students are guilty of having the same caste consciousness that they have inherited along with the upper-caste status. The way they flaunt their “status” and the condescending manner with which they talk about such issues or the deprived sections is really sickening. The main ideas about a typical backward-caste student is that he/she cannot speak English, cope up with the “difficult” studies, is backward thinking and does not posses logical reasoning. In my experience, I have seen a larger percentage of general-category students being guilty of possessing such endearing qualities while those from reserved categories have kicked their ass ever so often in academics! Oooohh….are you surprised? If you are, then you have a problem. What I often think is that a lot of these students want to cover their own inadequacies by transferring the blame of their failures to reservations! I have this happen so often- students crib that they did not get into some institute because of reservations blah blah…irrespective of the fact that everybody has been witness to their mediocre academic performance. I don’t blame them- it is only human nature to place the blame somewhere else. It’s easy and a very convenient excuse. Kudos, you li’l geniuses!!

There’s another thing about such movements. It’s a way of satisfying oneself about having done something, about doing their part. They think they have to stand up for a cause irrespective of the outcome and be glad about it. A huge participation was observed on Saturday because it was a Saturday- it was a holiday for most people and some thought that they should do something “radical” or “cool” that day (probably the Rang De Basanti effect)-its become fashionable to do marches and protests, and if it’s a holiday, why not!?
They don’t want to spend time looking within themselves or around themselves, at their precious traditional values, at their own biased prejudiced minds. It’s the youth after all. We all are in a rush and want instant gratification apart from wanting things for ourselves. We don’t really care who gets hurt or if anybody else benefits. As long as WE get them, it’s okay. If we don’t, it is NOT OKAY. Shamefully, it’s that simple.

The students believe they are being revolutionary in demanding that reservations be removed or restricted. Maintaining the status quo is not being revolutionary, it’s just being very regressive. Maybe they need a new dictionary to see the meanings of the words “revolution” and “rebel”. If they want to be rebels, they have so much to rebel against, especially against themselves and everything that have believed in. If they want to start a revolution, their aims have to be revolutionary- for instance, abolish the caste system. Yes, that’s my mantra and I think it makes more sense as far as “revolutionary” is concerned! And spreading rumours of some doctor dying is not only shameful; it is stooping to really low standards. Maybe you want him to die so that your voices can be heard. What’s wrong with you people? You can’t do a George Bush by spreading paranoia and scaring the people…you cant win with fear because, what you fear is what really controls you. When you are not afraid anymore, then maybe you have a chance.

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I am not suggesting that reservations are the answer…yes, take a good look before anyone accuses me doing the same. Reservations, especially so high, are not the answer. Understood? And mediocracy wont go away jst by removing reservations either. If you fail to understand that, then maybe I should become religious and pray for you.
Okay, so you ask me what is the answer? If you really read through the whole piece, you already know. If you still don’t, maybe I wasn’t clear enough. There are no clear answers but all of us have the answers within us!
The caste system exists everywhere in Indian society. It is the matrix of the whole mess that has now engulfed the young generation of India. It has already divided Indian society. And you fools, you say that the reservations are going to divide society but you can’t see that your own words and actions show that actually, YOU are the ones who are dividing society- the reservations are really just a catalyst. So what needs to change? It’s easier for making the politicians place the right bills but what will we do about society and our wayward misinformed youth?
Everybody has a role to play and everybody has to do their part. But you can go nowhere unless you destroy the root of the problem. Come out of your self-imposed denial. Show that you really care for equality and upliftment of the oppressed- or don’t ever use noble words like “equality”,”upliftment”,”justice” to forward the selfish cause of just saving your own seats if that’s all you are aiming for.

One of our fundamental duties enshrined in the constitution is to “promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities”. Let us do our duty. We want a lot of things but it should never be at the cost of another’s interests.

You might not agree with me and you might even think that I have lost my mind and have no idea of what I am talking about. I don’t give a shit of what you think, because I know that you know that what I am saying is anyway what you already know but choose not to see. Don’t forget that we may see a lot of things but what is most important is we usually choose what we want to see. The choices have to be made wisely because that is really what differentiates between being ignorant and being sensitive. And if you still don’t see it, I pity you- but you are worth no one’s sympathies.
Everybody is right and everybody is wrong in this whole brouhaha. There are no sides but you decided to make them. I don’t belong to your divisions because I don’t agree with either side. Everybody seems to have blindfolds which I seriously urge the youth (at least!) to get ride off because we are the future. Don’t lose your sanity for that might be the first thing u may have already lost my dear friends.