Reservations

Report after report talks about the SC order to stay reservations in this academic year. Oh, by the way the reservation is an increase of 27% to nearly 49%.

This report in the morning newspaper freaked me:

“It will come as a major relief to students of the backward and reserved categories, if Mumbai University’s plan to reduce the admission fees to the management and computer degree courses ranging between Rs. 50,000 and Rs. 1.5 lakhs to only Rs. 75 (Seventy five only, if you can’t believe it) is okayed. Once in place, it will allow ppor and backward class students to take admission in the best management institutes which have very high admission fees.”

Report from the Mumbai Mirror.

I’m all for educating the poor. But, what promise can you offer that these people will continue to work in this country once they’ve finished. Why does that matter? Well, it is the Government’s (which it gets through people paying taxes) money that will have to fill in the rest. Shouldn’t they be bound since they’re getting a benefit from us to stay in India for a period of 5 years? That’s the least you can do to ensure that student’s whose education the Government pays for pays back some money to the Government in taxes? Or, you can also offer students special funding as loans which they can repay later on. That makes sense.

But investing in something with the hope that the students will stay on and work in India is like a VC’s job that the Government is doing.

Hell, what would the Government do, if the richer people pay their way through to becoming OBCs and get their education done in Rs. 75? And what about ordinary people’s kids who won’t get a chance to enter these institutions?

Also, do you think students will value their education if they don’t have to work hard for getting that degree. And with standards of education allegedly falling, what will they gain?

Another interesting point is about how the opinion of the people and the politicians on the ground vary so much.

If you do not teach these communities to be self-reliant and be independent what you will face in the future is just unimaginable. That is the reason for my not backing these or any reservations. However, I don’t really mind, because after working for five or six years to ensure that I give back to India the debt that I owe her, I plan to leave this country. I will be greatful for being born in such a diverse land whose diversity was its strength in the past but just might become its weakness in the future.