Monday, January 7, 2019

Why I think reservation for poor upper castes is not an effective solution

In my view, the whole point of the reservation is to force decision makers to hire people from a specific grouping. Let's look at OBC or SC/ST reservation. It is widely believed, probably rightly so, that even if qualified candidates were available they will be discriminated again at every level starting from school, college and finally job interviews.
It is not impossible to believe that a brilliant candidate from SC/ST or OBC, when appears in an interview before an interview panel mostly consisting of upper caste individual, they will find some way to not hire him. In my mind, this is the basis of the reservation of these three grouping in jobs.
For upper caste individuals, it can not be believed that discrimination is likely. Also, the limits in income that are placed are high enough (Rs. 8,00,000 pa by some estimates) that most deserving candidates will not be able to compete against other individuals who are well off.
In my view, what is required is to eliminate the imbalance in the opportunity that exists for poor candidates. For example, there is a multitude of coaching institutes that are available for candidates but the fees are so high that the poor can not participate in them. This is what needs to be balanced. Either the examination patterns need to be changed so that coaching institutes become ineffective or government needs to subsidize those people who are in need of these facilities.
When I studied, way back in the eighties, the education was not expensive. My complete engineering education was completed with less than Rs. 1000. Today it costs lakhs of rupees. We need to see education as a means to build human resources and not make it a money-making scheme.

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