The Hindu Business Line : Reservation for creamy layer?

It is fashionable to talk pro quota, these days. This is perceived as a chance to show one's sense of broadmindedness and also bash the upper castes. However, the biggest enemies of the SC/ST/Other Backward caste people are not those from the forward castes, but the creamy layer of their own section, who are reaping the rewards of reservation. During my days at the Indian Institute of Management- Kozhikode, we did have SC/ST students with us. The typical family background of the reserved category students would be of an IAS/IPS, state government, Railways or other PSU top officials, who had already derived reservation benefit. They sported the most expensive foreign fashion brands and wore designer perfumes. Their educational and socio-economic upbringing was as good, if not better than the general category students. Their knowledge of the poor tribals and other backward people was as paltry as mine, or any of the other so-called upper-caste Indian. Some had even had schooling in London and New York, but were smart enough to apply through the reserved category.

Many of them had probably seized the seat of a poor, but deserving upper-caste student, giving rise to the question that if someone is poor why do we discriminate against him/her just because he/she is not from a backward caste?

For a moment let us assume that we have 50 per cent reservation for the oppressed sections of society. Do you think that children from underprivileged, backward sections, who struggle for one square meal a day and have no access to primary education, would get that seat in an IIT or an IIM? The benefactors would again be the creamy layer of the SC/ST/OBC society. So, at the end of the day who is fighting whom?

It's an unequal war between the rich SC/ST and now OBC sections armed with the reservation sword against the underprivileged upper-caste students. With a percentage of government jobs already reserved, the latter's chances in the private sector by the sheer force of merit are now threatened. The pseudo-intellectuals can call it reservations; common sense calls it discrimination. Reservations are required to bring in parity, but it should be on economic basis and not on the medieval concept of caste. If the nation is doling out benefits, why should it be only to rich or poor lower-castes and not poor upper-castes?

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