Mr Harish Salve, Senior Advocate argued before the Supreme
Court “there is nothing in the law to show that it was a genuine measure for the
advancement of socially and educationally backward classes. There are now 253
communities in the OBC lists. You [government] go on adding the list as you
don’t want to lose political support even from any community. As the
constitutional court, the apex court has onerous duty to guard the society
drifting from social engineering to social reparation"
Mr. Salve quoted from the debates of the Constituent Assembly
to show that the provision of reservation was intended only as a temporary
measure and the backwardness contemplated was extreme backwardness and not the
one contemplated now.
He said “what is intended as a measure of social engineering
has now become a measure of reparation.”
Appearing for one of the petitioners, Mr. Salve had earlier
argued that, “Don’t divide students on caste lines. It will have a bad effect on
young minds. Further, perpetuation of caste system will create entrenched rights
which in turn will create pressure or opinion groups in society.”
He said creation of vested interests would be against the constitutional goal of
equality. He said reservation as a measure was intended only as a bridge to
shorten the gap and it could not be continued in perpetuity. He said, “They
[quotas] are not crutches to create permanent disabilities. Once a community
reaches progress that community should be excluded from reservation. What is
intended as a measure of social engineering has now become a problem of vested
interest
…that the U.S. was graduating 222,335 engineers, vs. 215,000 from
India. The closest comparable number reported by China is 644,106, but it
includes additional majors. Looking strictly at four-year degrees and
without considering accreditation or quality, the U.S. graduated 137,437
engineers, vs. 112,000 from India. China reported 351,537 under a broader
category. All of these numbers include information technology and related
majors.
More On the Job Reservation Policy Front
India has successfully used democracy to reinforce
feudalistic casteism. I think Andre Betelle has written about this
paradoxical phenomenon. Reservation, more than anything else, has become
a tool for caste-based vote bank politics. With liberalization and
privatization, I thought, the caste system was rapidly becoming
irrelevant. The politicians will have none of it and want to extend the
reservation system to the private sector. In my opinion, you never
underestimate the indian politician’s ability to screw India. So, within
a few years, expect reservations in the private sector. Politicians will
be outdoing one another by raising the quotas. A new bureacracy will be
created to ensure that private sector complies with the reservations.
That is, more government meddling, while the industry is demanding less
regulations.
Caste and Reservation
This problem needs to be confronted rationally. Those lower in castes,
today, are in that state, ie a state of lower intellectual ability, due to
them being prevented from competing with the high caste. We are
perpetuating this state, ie of still preventing any sort of competition,
by reserving for them what they would have got by competing, without
competition(remember, in Mahabharat, Karna joined the enemy force
forgetting his family to express his gratitude for permitting him, one
lower in caste, to take part in a competition).
To put briefly, no caste is cent percent forward or backward. Forward
caste can be considered as the one with more than 99 percent of population
possessing above average abilities and backward as the one with more than
99 percent having below average abilities. Reservation, by affording
greater competition, elevates those below average, among upper caste, to
above average level, while, relegating even those few who does not happen
to be below average to below average status by removing all competition.
…………This is not a new finding. Reservation was adopted by congress as the
method of uplifting those downtrodden leading to constitutional safeguards
which we keep extending ad infinitum. This decision,even though not ‘well
thought about’, was widely accepted among the then congress leaders, ie
progressives like Nehru, as a via media compared to Mahatma’s suggestions,
especially that leading to each caste Hindu adopting one Harijan,
reinforcing such adoption by having marital alliance between that Harijan
and the caste Hindu. Hence this was accepted without much thought,
especially about it’s disadvantages. This needs serious consideration.
Source:
http://indianeconomy.org/2005/12/19/more-on-the-job-reservation-policy-front/
