Reservations

The purpose (providing social justice or equal opportunities for all) with which the reservations were started was lost. With the reservations, people with vested interests have found that caste is a good bargaining tool approved by the govt and hence can be utilised for personal gains. With this, in India, the society "has been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls (Tagore's Geetanjali)" and these walls are cemented by the reservation system. New systems have brought with them new evils.

The other side of the coin is that where the real problem ie, caste based discrimination still exists, the reservations have become ineffective. (ex: 1. a school teacher who was a Dalit was not allowed to enter the school which functions in the premises of a temple. 2. In another village, school children, at the behest of their parents, refused to eat the mid day meal cooked by a Dalit woman). People must be educated that caste based discrimination is inhuman. Mere reseravtions have not helped us much in achieving this.

Moreover, reservations always remind us of the caste to which we belong: forward, backward, Scheduled, etc. We observe that everyday, more castes are demanding that they must be promoted in the caste hierarchy by being included in a more beneficial group. At least now, we must understand that a system which nurtures the caste consciousness in us, cannot remedy caste-based discrimination.

Supplying text books free of cost and giving scholarships to economically backward students is much better than reservations. No child must be denied admission into any school based on caste or social status. Admission into colleges and employment opportunities must be based solely on merit. Anything that develops caste consciousness must go. Reservations must go.

Initially, Reservations were thought to be only a temporary provision but now... nobody is thinking in that direction. God! save my country!!