Quota Raj Cometh
Excerpts from today's Economic Times front page report: Quota Raj: Half of IIT,IIM seats may be reserved -
Competition to secure admission to the IITs and IIMs is set to hot up, as reservation in these institutions is likely to increase from the current level of 22.5% to a maximum of 49.5%. These institutions already provide reservations for Scheduled Castes (15%) and Scheduled Tribes (7.5%), as mandated by the Constitution.I could never understand the logic these politicians give behind reservation. In my eyes its all simply vote bank politics. To start with, reservations based on castes & tribes don't make any sense! If the motive is to help the socially backward people to come up, reservations should be given to the economically backward population. After 59 years of independence & reservations, what relevance does the tag "socially backward" hold? I know, in the rural hinterlands, they still discriminate on the basis of caste & tribes. But almost all of such exploited victims would come under the economically backward cover. In addition, it would also cover the poor people who are born in the higher castes.
Its again a failure of implementation. There exists a notion of a "creamy layer" crowd in the SC/ST junta. If the family income exceeds a certain limit, they can no longer enjoy the benefits of reservations. But this is another one of highly misused rules. But if the reservations are made for the economically backwards, atleast some more deserving people can avail the benefits.
The entrance exams for IITs & IIMs are extremely tough and thus it can be taken that IITs/IIMs want only the best to come there. Now if almost half of the students are going to come from a backdoor entry, how's that going to help, both the students & the institutes. The demand for IIT/IIM education has raisen considerably since the economy opened up & brought along a whole new set of high-tech jobs. The pressure on the aspirants is already enormous. Now if the seats for general category will further be reduced, aren't we defeating the purpose of opening more IITs/IIMs?
Its not tough to see why government is increasing the quota in higher educational institutes like IITs & IIMs. Its the same reason why they were pushing for reservation in private sector. Now since the private sector is booming & demand for IIT/IIM seats has gone through the roof, reservation will attract that much more votes. If the government really had the good of poor & socially backward at their heart, it would've worked towards making quality primary education accessible to all. If we comb through the IIT/IIM crowd today, very rarly we would come across someone with a rural background. Simply because the primary & secondary education system in the rural India has totally collapsed and hence the rural students can't compete with their urban counterparts. Reservations & all in the tertiary education is not going to help if the primary & secondary levels are so wretched.
Sometimes I wonder why class divisions in India (rich-poor) is weaker than religion & caste based division. The political parties find it more rewarding to call religious minorities, socially backward people and all, but no one campaigns with pro-poor policies and all. IIRC, Indira Gandhi had "Garibi Hatao" on her agenda, but hardly anything happened. Education, and thus better-informed voters, can cure it all, but then this responsibility also lies with the neta-log.
6 comments:
May be then we will be writing "hope and honor" for unreserved junta!!
Do you have any idea of what % of indias population falls under the SC/ST category? I wonder if its @ 50%.
@DQ: In 1991, SC/ST population was about 139 million. Thats around 14 crores. I'm searching for 2001 census figure, but it can safely be assumed that it'll be far below 50% mark. Nice point though.
Back to US?
SC&ST population percent was close to 15% and 7.5% at the time this proportion was provided for in the constitution under reservations. The OBCs totalup about 50%, leaving about 25% to the 'uppercast' and other religious minority. Muslims constitute about 12%, Chritians - 2%, Sikhs - 1.5%, Budhists - 2.5% and Jains -1%. There could be plus or minus 50% error in the smaller groups. I am saying this off the cuff.
In a democracy, changes take place through legislation and the overwhelming proportions of SC ST and OBC is the reason why no political party dare speak against reservation. That is why VP Singh Govy fell on the issue but the issue got passed in parliament in 1990 (?).
But if this change is not allowed to happen peacefully, there could be a possibility of 'civil war' as one saw the tempers in the NDTV's Big Fight yesterday. [to be retelecast at 12:00 noon today 9 April 2006]
We must investigate the term "merit".Is "merit" just a score in entrance exams at age of 17?
Take the claim of "merit based" entrance to all IIMs and dozens of other institutes.
The CAT exam is based on the SAT exam in the USA . It has been proved beyond doubt that the SAT test is culturally biased . Blacks and hispanics do poorly at it year after year .
If a student who is eligible for admission to IIM on the basis of his CAT score, were to take the same CAT exam in which he/she cleared in a language that he/she did not understand then he/she would be at a disadvantage compared to someone who was schooled in that language . Not knowing that language does not mean you lack the capacity to clear that exam.
Approximately 25 % of CAT test is about English! Another 25 % is about English Comprehension!!!! There you are !!!! About 50 % so called aptitude test is a hoax for someone who is from a non-english speaking background .
This is how the CAT like the SAT is discriminatory .
See the full form of SAT …Scholastic Aptitude Test . The problem is aptitude testing is not so simple . There is no test on earth which can reliably tests aptitude .
Aptitude tests such as the SAT have a historical tie to the concept of innate mental abilities and the belief that such abilities can be defined and meaningfully measured. Neither notion has been supported by modern research. Few scientists who have considered these matters seriously would argue that aptitude tests such as the SAT provide a true measure of intellectual abilities.
It was found that people could be coached to better their scores at SAT . The name SAT …Scholastic Aptitude Test could not be correct . So under such valid criticism the name was changed to Scholastic Assessment Test, since a test that can be coached clearly did not measure inherent "scholastic aptitude", but was influenced largely by what the test subject had learned in school. Even the College Board which conducts the SAT has beaten a hasty retreat.This was a major theoretical retreat by the College Board conducting SAT, which had previously maintained that the test measured inherent aptitude and was free of bias.
About ten years back , however, even the redundancy of the term assessment test was recognized and the name was changed to the neutral, and non-descriptive, SAT. At the time, the College Board announced, "Please note that SAT is not an initialism. It does not stand for anything."
The framers of these SAT tests assumed that intelligence was a unitary inherited attribute, that it was not subject to change over a lifetime, and that it could be measured and individuals could be ranked and assigned their place in society accordingly. The SAT evolved from these questionable assumptions about human talent and potential.
More and more people are questioning the validity of SAT . In the past MENSA used to accept high SAT score individuals . For the past decade it has stopped accepting SAT scores .
The whole exercise of deciding merit based on CAT scores discriminates against those from lower socio-economic status.
Though many non-IIM institutes have started accepting CAT scores, the application fee of these institutes is still inexplicably high.
The CAT is primarily an exam of Math and English. Logical and Analytical Reasoning is nearly absent (except for some verbal reasoning which again depends on knowing English well!!!!).
CAT is a clever way to keep those from lower socio-economic strata away Institutes funded with tax payers money .
So claims of “Merit” based on CAT scores is hollow and discriminatory against those of lower socio-economic strata.
Dhirubhai Ambani had a poor command over English . He would not have made it through CAT. So what "merit" are we talking of?
In a recent online poll conducted by http://www.iimforums.com 100% of the poll respondents rejected reservations in IIMs.
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