From: ramesh@veda (Ramesh Doddamani)
Subject: Re: Reservation issue
Reply-To: ramesh@veda.cwru.edu
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, (USA)
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 92 04:42:59 GMT

In article <3307@creatures.cs.vt.edu> juvvadi@csgrad.cs.vt.edu (Ramana R.  
Juvvadi) writes:
> OK, here is my $0.02 on the 'hot' issue of reservation.
> 
> I am opposed to reservation because it is an unworkable and pseudo
> soln. It creates another elite among the BC/SC/STs, who grab
> all the benefits in the name of the socially oppressed people.
> This system has a very harmful effect of taking away the pride
> from the really deserving BC/SC/ST students who could have made it on 
> their own. Most of the BC/SC/ST politicians are fairly well off and they know
> that their children and their relatives will be the real beneficiaries
> of the system, rather than the socially downtrodden who cause they
> profess to espouse.

Well, every system has its advantages and disadvantages.  For thousands of  
years the so-called BC/SC/STs have been trampled by the so-called 'forward  
castes'. The result is that the backward caste people do not even have the idea  
of what it means to have some of the 'privileges' of the forward caste people.  
It is a new idea for them to be 'educated'.  The discrimination that society  
has inflicted on some sections of the society has to be rectified. There has to  
be a change. Every change has a transition period, during which somebody will  
be treated unjustly. 
	I am sure you know that India has always been, and is, an agricultural  
country. It is the people of the 'backward caste' that tilled the land and  
produced the food for you. It is the 'backward caste' people that carried all  
the human faeces. It is the people of the 'backward caste' that were doing all  
the cleaning jobs. It was the people of 'backward castes' that did all the  
dirty jobs. All the 'forward caste' people wanted were the 'clean' things.  
These 'backward caste' people were deprived of their rights to education. 

Look at the following excerpt that is from an beautiful article that was posted  
on SCI. 
--------------------------------
I think it was the Chinese, before World War II, who calculated that
it took the work of thirty peasants to keep one man or woman at a
university. If that person at the university took a five-year course,
by the time he had finished he would have consumed 150 peasant-work
years. How can this be justified? Who has the right to appropriate 150
years of peasant work to keep one person at university for five years,
and what do the peasants get back for it? These questions lead us to
the parting of the ways: is education to be a `passport to previlege'
or is it something which people take upon themselves almost like a
monastic vow, a sacred obligation to serve the people? The first road
takes the educated young person into a fashionable district of Bombay,
where a lot of other highly educated people have already gone and
where he can join a mutual admiration society, a `trade union of the
previleged', to see to it that his previleges are not eroded by the
great masses of his contemporaries who have not been educated.
--------------------------------------
	BTW, your statement that reservations were made to benefit politicians  
and their relatives is pretty short-sighted. Maybe you should first enlighten  
yourself by reading some of the books on the history of India. 



> This is not to deny the existence social inequities. But reservation is a
> pseudo and unworkable soln. The issue of quotas is one of the causes of 
> turmoil in our neighbouring country, Sri lanka. If continued it will
> land India in flames. Mandal issue is too fresh in every one's mind and
> too serious to ignore.
> 
> Ramana

Well, the issue of 'social inequities' deserves only a mention I guess. How can  
you eradicate 'social inequities' without knowing what it is? Turmoil? Yes,  
when the 'backward caste' people realise how they have been deprived of their  
natural rights for thousands of years, sure there is going to be turmoil. No  
doubt about it.

Ramesh
--