Reservations - II

This is a mail i got today morning. It's a ridiculous one.
This is just to divert our attention from actual issue of reservation to the divide-and-rule followed by the British. We are diverting from the main issue of helping talented people towards Caste and Creed fights!

This is enough.
Here's a recipe for Arjun Singh’s BC Bela Bath

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Note: These are not my thoughts.

With Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun
Singh declaring that there is a consideration to
provide 27 per cent reservation to the Other Backward
Classes (OBC) in all the Central Government
educational institutions, including in IIM and IIT, a
new attack started on the question of OBC
reservations. The print and electronic media have gone
to town about the issue of merit in the premier
institutions of the nation. Hence the raging debate on
the issue of reservation.

Surely these institutions have remained the property
of the Brahminic castes ever since they were
established. Although the SC/ST reservation has been
in vogue in these institutions, the Upper Castes that
manned these institutions have been using all kinds of
methods to see that the SC/ST seats do not get filled.
Whatever seats are filled with the SC/ST candidates,
they use the stick method without involving the carrot
to force them to drop out. They are now showing the
statistics of drop-out rates of SC/ST candidates and
the 100 per cent pass-out rate of the Upper Caste
candidates as a reason enough not to extend
reservations to OBCs.

Their entire argument is based on the premise that
passing out and dropping out are not political and
ideological questions. They want to tell us that all
those who pass out are nationalists and all those who
drop out are anti-nationals.

Almost all the national English dailies editorially
opposed the Arjun Singh proposal. All kinds of
progressive intellectuals opposed the proposal as a
retrograde step. Every so called progressive man/woman
coming from an Upper Class background in Delhi and
other cosmopolitan cities is worried about the future
of merit in central institutions that have brought
academic and intellectual name and fame to the nation;
and, of course, dollars and pounds to their families
by the meritorious graduates of these prime
institutions. We need to raise some simple questions
in this regard:
Why is it that while English as a language is not yet
recognised as an Indian national language, all these
central institutions teach, evaluate students and do
research only in English? Is it not a fact that
starting with central schools to IITs and IIMs, they
orient the student community to ape America and Europe
through the means of the English language? Why is it
that the same English-medium-educated and
English-speaking, and in most cases foreign-educated
intellectuals, who are now 'beating their chests'
about the death of merit in these premier
institutions, have never asked the governing forces to
teach rural children studying in government schools in
English?
When SC, ST and OBC students have been asking for
English education in the government schools, the same
media and intellectuals bring up the issue of
colonialism versus nationalism. They say a firm No,
arguing that English is a colonial language and we
must preserve the national languages through
government schools! They imply that nationalism should
be preserved by the SC, ST and OBCs, as they are the
ones who study in government schools in villages and
urban slums. But the urban Upper Castes train their
children in the colonial language without entering
into a debate about the language issue. They are like
the revolutionary pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm,
which revolt against the two-leg animals and then they
themselves slowly learn to walk on two legs.
Everyone knows that Hindi is now a national language
but no single IIM or IIT conducts teaching and
evaluation in Hindi or in any other Indian language.
Interestingly, education is divided between Central
and State government subjects and all the central
educational institutions are reserved for English
language based education by design, which, in other
words, is reserved for the Upper Castes.
Thus English is their first and foremost stepping
stone into the merit house of success and power and
that is denied to vast SC, ST and OBC students who can
study only in the state government schools in regional
languages. The second basement of this merit is
'money' and exposure to western cultures. Most public
schools run by Upper Caste Hindus and Upper Caste
Christians are based on money power and childhood
training in Euro-American cultures. One can clearly
see the consequences of this structural difference.
The OBC leaders whom the Upper Caste intelligentsia
portray as rich and powerful, who could easily rob the
quota benefits are Mulayam Singh Yadav, Laloo Prasad
Yadav, Sharad Yadav, Uma Bharti, Kalyan Singh, Nitish
Kumar and so on. None of these leaders can speak
fluent English and carry no westernised cultural
idiom. On the other hand, witness how anglicised
leaders like Arun Jaitley, Jairam Ramesh, Mani Shankar
Aiyar, Sitaram Yechuri, Prakash Karat and so on use
English and the western idiom. Cutting across party
ideologies, this is a class of leadership that
combines English education, imperial culture and money
as a back-up to their childhood upbringing and later
privileges. They all come from Upper Castes. Thereby,
caste, English and money nurture a particular mode of
merit. The OBCs, leave alone SC/STs, lack that
background.
The present education system cannot change the
relationships between the Upper Castes and the Lower
Castes because these communities send their children
into two different school systems. Added to this is
the OBC/SC/ST leadership's lack of vision about
English education. They also have not realised the
need for seeking English as a national language and
making it the medium of instruction in all state
government schools, especially wherever they rule.
Indeed, they remained primitivist and thus destroy the
future of children going to government schools.
The intellectuals who are opposing OBC reservation in
the central educational institutions never define what
constitutes merit. About 80-90 per cent of IIT and IIM
graduates settle down in America and Europe and that
has been the life ambition of that class/caste of
people. From childhood onwards, they are mostly Indian
Americans or Indian Europeans. When we ask why they
leave the country after getting hugely subsidised
education with the taxpayer's money - OBCs also
contribute a lot of money to the state exchequer - the
elite argument is that they are not being provided
suitable jobs by the State. If they are so meritorious
and brilliant, why are they looking for a job in the
State sector?

As per the neo-liberal logic, these meritorious guys
should have become self-employed and thereby created
millions of jobs for the not so meritorious
SC/ST/OBCs. Ideally, their innovations would have
eradicated mass poverty and would have created a
bubbling nation of equal opportunities. Instead these
premier institutions produce a skilled technical and
management labour force that basically serves the
American and European economy. With the dollar and
Euro currency that these meritorious forces earn,
their families benefit, not the nation. The media is
losing its marbles about the placement opportunities
that these fellows get in America and Europe. This
cannot be defined as merit. If technical skills are
not given with English as a speaking and writing
language, no country in the world will recognise their
skills and they will not get these jobs.
Hence, for the rural youth who get their education in
regional languages, an opportunity needs to be given
to learn in English in a friendly environment. That is
what the SC/ST and OBCs need urgently. They do not
have an equal opportunity to study in English medium
schools and their paying capacity is always much too
low. They cannot go to good schools or to costly
tutorial institutions. Once English is recognised as a
language of the nation and a neighbourhood school
system is established where a rich Brahmin child and a
poor Dalit child can study in the same school, nobody
will ask for reservation.
In the contemporary context, reservation is being
asked on caste-based criteria because caste also
decides the social, economic and educational status of
people. The Upper Caste intellectuals, instead of
getting worried about merit where it does not exist,
must talk about uniform English (and English alone)
medium schools all over the country. Then let us see
which castes will control the Indian institutions.
Till then, let there be caste-based reservations in
all institutions as that creates a level-playing field
in employment and education. If that is not allowed,
every city may become a Paris of 2005.

READ IT:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/specialcoverage/1482489.cms

FORWARD TO ALL..SPREAD THE WORD
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This was my reply:

We are diverting from the main problem. This is just another excuse for preserving the reservations.

We should have reservation for talent. SC/ST and OBC already have so many benefits. They get admissions at low percentages and other scholarships which are not given to other talented people. We lose out on good people for these reservations.

I have seen so many SC / ST who are richer than most upper castes. And upper castes do not indicate wealth!!