I have my Reservations !!!

OK, so I had to write this. The few kind regular readers that I have, expect, what they kindly refer to as, funny material from this blog. But I am a human being too and I too have emotions, opinions and in rare cases like this one, rather emotional opinions. Hmmmm! Yes, after much deliberation, I've decided to touch upon the issue that's making every Indian squirm these days - RESERVATIONS! And if you care to read through this entire post, I think I might just have the solution to the problem.

Many years ago I innocently walked up to my dad and asked him what my caste was. My dad explained it to me brilliantly. "You are an ALMOST SC my son," he said with what I believe was an almost drop of tear in his eyes. "You are effectively screwed!", he had then added, though maybe not in those exact words. This was followed by a very long and probably boring explanation, the summary of which was the following - my dad's side of the family just missed being SCs... all because they were not born in India. My grand parents along with my parents & their siblings came to India from Pakistan during the Great Divide of 1947 ( or was it 1948 ??). Thus, as dad explained, we were the true downtrodden of the Indian caste system. Actual SCs and STs laugh at us because we do not qualify for any reservations. So, as dad had suggested, we get screwed from every angle and by every one. How very entertaining.

And it is this lack of concern for the middle tier that worries me. People who are neither here nor there. The proud members of the middle zone of societal apathy. The ones that nobody care for. These people were born with an average bag of talents and somehow we assumed that they are happy being where they are. Everyday TV channels have a "brilliant kid" deriding the quota system and advocating a meritocracy. His interview is immediately followed by a heart wrenching tale of "Dinu from the village" who has never seen electricty but dreams to be an engineer. The camera then zooms into the anchors face who then says "Aap kis ke saath hai?" And then he adds that you can "call in and leave your opinion or SMS it at Re 2.5 and that the lucky vijeta ko milega humarey aur se ..." And who do you think is being fed all this media hyped baloney? Yes!!!! Our very own middle tier. Somehow our policy makers have assumed that the middle tier is happy being in the middle and hence all our policies are aimed at either keeping the rich rich or at making the poor rich.

So this is what I propose. A seemingly ludicrous idea, that I feel, if implemented, will make everyone happy. I say we continue with our entrance-exam-based-system for 50% of the students (as the current plan suggests) and for the remaining 50% seats - let's have a freakin LOTTERY!!! Seriously, that'll make EVERYBODY happy. Top tier, middle tier, bottom tier - every freakin one. Coz everybody will then have an equal chance of making it to these colleges. And let's not just make it any lottery - let's make it the flavour of the season - A freakin REALITY SHOW. Let India vote who it wants as an engineer. Let Indians SMS their opinions for "Agla Lawyer Kaun?" After all we are a democracy, right? What can be more democratic than choosing our very own doctors and engineers and lawyers and chartered accountants?

Seriously, you might think that I'm joking, but a lottery won't be much worse than the present system. Given that India has more poor people than rich ones, by simple probability more poor people will make it to the colleges using a lottery - so the govt will be happy as they'll serve their claimed purpose of improving things for the poor. And the remaining population will be happy too coz they'll know that they too stand an outside chance of making it. Thus, they can no longer raise a voice against anyone or accuse the system of being partial.

And these quotas should not just be applicable for academics. I think this way the quota system itself discriminates against several arenas of social life. We should have quotas for everything. Cricket, movies, affected Ms. India participants - everything. Seriously, I think it's high time we have an OBC quota for our beauty paegents. Why do we assume that the backward castes can have aspirations to study engineering but not one to be Ms. Indias. And look at the good that'll come out of this. If someone from Pachandapur village actually gets up on the stage and says that she'll do something for the poor and downtrodden when she wins - no one will even doubt her.

To sum it up - quotas aint bad. We need more quotas. We need quotas for everything. We need quotas for everyone. And we need Mandira Bedi conducting a lottery show based on quotas.

It's all peace then :-))