Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Reservation is a crime against humanity

What is common between German Holocaust, Srilankan Genocide (that wiped off all the top-performing Tamils in 1950's and became a seed for today's crisis), Russia's communism and India's reservation? They are all wars against a performing minority by unperforming majority. Worse, the war is so subtle that the victims are deaf against the drums of war. It is a slow and painful torture...

I wrote my previous post on the draconian proposals to introduce the concept called 'Reservation' (which literally means, specific sections of society should be entitiled to a minimum number of positions in an institution regardless of how poor r they for the slated position) in India's elite institutions. The article was quoted in Times of India. Few people wrote me back. From their opinion and from what I found on other news sources, so many people favored reservation should be based on economic or dwelling place background (people from rural places should get a preference). The biggest problem in this approach is the concept of reservation itself. I'm not saying that reservation should not be based on caste, etc. I'm saying that there should nothing called reservation itself - be it based on caste, sex, economic level, etc.

I believe that institutions should be based on performance, just as how the sports are based on pure performance. If someone doesnt have a skill to score century, forget becoming a Tendulkar. U cant become a Tendulkar or Agassi or Schumi unless u perform like them. Simple!!! It nurtures competition, inspiration and motivation. It also helps the society know who is a TEndulkar differentiated from some poor batsman. Tendulkar is Tendulkar, Einstein is Einstein, a donkey is a donkey and A is A.

If suppose Indian cricket board decides that 20% of Indian team should be from rural places, or should go to poor or lower castes, or if olympic committe decides that 30% of olympic medals should go to underprivileged wont you consider the proposal bullshit? Or suppose, if the Nobel committee decides that some poor scientist X's work is better than Einstein's Relativity just because X is poor or from underprieveleged sex or community, wont you feel the committee is doing injustice to science?

Reservation is not just illogical and stupid, but it is a crime against humanity. By giving the undeserved a place, you r denying the life for a deserving candidate. Whenever you reserve specific portions in an institution you kill the hopes and aspirations of those young guys, whose life is destroyed by denying him/her a place. You are also belittling the good performers from those underprivileged sections, who would have won positions on merit. By providing reservation for seats for poor performers in their community, the entire society would see even that good performer as someone who is unworthy of merit. This cycle of guilt and inferiority complex would run ad-infinitum. Thus, there wont be any motivation for persons from those communities to perform and only this can bring down their community, and not the absence of their people in the big institutions.

Reservation based on any criteria - caste, creed, background, economy, sex... denies a good performer a chance, in the society. You are unjustly punishing him/her for the sole act of good performance. Once a society punishes a performer for good performance, the society loses its right to E X I S T.... (In case of Germany, millions were dead and Europe was transformed, for Russia it collapsed and disintegrated and Sri Lanka has plunged into an everlasting crisis. Which one of these paths, do you desire for INDIA?)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There have been numerous posts on numerous blogs about this topic. this blog somehow comes off as the best to me so far.

I too have a lot to say about this topic. But then again, I'm an NRI. My opinion, with regards to India, never counts.

author_number_2 said...

yeah..this view is a refeshing one a lil' different 4m others'

Anonymous said...

When Reservations could not succeed in improving the lot of the sections of the society for 59 long years how can these help to improve their lot now? I fully subcribe to the views of the author that the resrvations on encourage non-performing people to enter the system and destroy it fronm within. The State appears against merit and qualification.The time is not far when we will have nincompoops heading our institutions like Judiciary, army, Planning Commission, ICMR, ICAR, BARC and other public and private sector institutions and imagine what will be the end result!

Anonymous said...

Wonderful analysis and sensible opinion. As for as VAR is considered.. the slogan should be what you had mentioned in your post.

"Reservation is not just illogical and stupid, but it is a crime against humanity."