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HomeEducationReservation - a boon or bane?

Reservation – a boon or bane?

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Violence in Gujarat over the issue of discriminatory privileges in admissions to higher education calls for an alternative approach to help the young. The proponents of the reservations have overlooked the psychological impact of the discriminatory interventions on social, economic and educational backwardness. Reservation means a declaration that receiver of discriminatory privilege is inferior human being and needs props. The public declaration of his or her inferiority would certainly add a new complex of intellectual inferiority in addition to his other inferiorities.

The motivation of the innovators and introducers of reservations might have been a concern for the upliftment of those suffering from historic inadequacies for nearly three thousand years ago. They perhaps believed that by throwing crumbs of assistance through the discriminatory privileges may help them to come at par with others who do not suffer such infirmities. But can such intervention create a level playing field for them since the basic needs for the play on new grounds have never been taken care of.

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Students who are given benefits of reservations always have to struggle harder to keep up with others who come from different backgrounds and who received the assistance in their education from their social environment and their family. If foundations are not built strong enough from the primary level, the struggle in upper class becomes even harder.  If the mind is not given capacities for receiving the data poured in upper classes, student lags behind the rest. It happens to dud students even if they come from the upper strata. Their failure to pass through in later years is conclusive evidence that confirms the need for strong primary foundations.

No data is available on how several seats are vacant in the reserved quota in various disciplines of higher technical education institutes. Drop out portion is high. In some cases, students lagging behind are unable to bear the stigma in their mind of their belonging to lower strata and have ended their lives rather than move out and face the disappointed parents. Some suicides in one school of economics in recent times confirms the fact.

The impact of the policy of reservations in education may help a few aspirants to move to a better life. However, it has ended up crushing the dreams of thousands of others who did well in school examinations but could not get into technical education courses only because the seats reserved for their castes were not accessible. It became an even more sensitive issue when a student with 90 percent in unable to get in but a student with 45 percent got in. It naturally breeds contempt for their system, and it gets translated into hatred for the castes and communities that benefit from such interventions. The caste conflicts are thus encouraged instead of their abolition. Politicians keep delivering sermons to end the caste conflicts and contempt for lower strata of society, still the policy framework encourages the conflicts. Periodically these conflicts culminate into flames as Gujarat has seen in the last three decades.

Instead of breeding inferiority complex with the stamp of reservation on students from backward classes,  improving the quality of their primary and secondary education would put them on level playing field and ensure success in competition. It calls for greater attention to improving the quality of education in non-private schools. Non-government organizations and individuals can play a supplementary role as it happened in posh locality of Delhi.

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Some socialites in Mumbai have found a solution to problems of lack of social and family support in primary and secondary education for students from the lower strata. Educated young women and men otherwise not engaged in full-time work provide props to poor students that their families are unable to.

Surinder Sharma, 56-year-old could not get into the IAS despite success in finals due to vision infirmity. He is teaching girls and boys of vegetable sellers in Greater Kailash one of Delhi for more than a decade. For want of a shed, he has been using tree shades in the Central Block Park for his class of ten to fifteen students. Only rains interrupt his schedules. A man of vision deficiency delivers needful assistance. Other socialites can easily repeat it. This confidence building exercise would help students to stand on par with others with social, environmental support in abundance.

The private effort may not be sufficient in confidence building of students from low-income families to enable them to compete with others. But it would certainly remove the stigma of their inferiority with the stamp of reservations that condemns them to life as if they are still illiterates.  The present system condemns them, and discriminatory intervention does not help them to stand on their own. Instead, it breeds bitterness among classes.

Gujarat suffers more because 30 percent upper strata in the population of 62.7 million have more demand for seats. Each family has a dream of prosperity for their children through higher education but 49 percent limits availability of seats kept away from their reach. It turns the state into a fertile ground for periodic violence over the most volatile issue that is highly inflammable incendiary substance. Normally non-violent people resort to violence when they get denied their right. Gandhian non-violence was also a violent instrument of moral force. It did not bleed enemy. But everyone cannot be Gandhi.

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Vijay Sanghvi
Vijay Sanghvi
Political Commentator and Analyst Vijay Sanghvi, 81 has created a niche for himself as a seasoned media person with proven credentials and political, economic and social analyst since 1962. Sanghvi worked for five years in Mumbai for Gujarati papers before shifting to Delhi and continued to work for various dailies in Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi and English as well as for international media. He has many newsbreaks to his credit as well as inside view of many epoch making events. He covered parliamentary proceedings from 1967 till 2007.

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