Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Quota Quagmire

Good article written by Rajinder Puri on the folly of caste-based reservations. From his article, here is what the Supreme Court said recently,

"It has to be noted that nowhere else in the world do castes, classes or communities queue up for the sake of gaining backward status. Nowhere else in the world is there competition to assert backwardness and then to claim we are more backward than you."

1 comment:

witan said...

In an article “SC had hinted at possible caste war” in the Times of India dated 04 June, 2007, Dhananjay Mahapatra says:
“It is argued by quota pundits that reservation is a stick for the socially weak to help him learn walking — like the socially enabled ones. But, if the stick remains in his hand even after he has learnt to walk freely, he will use the stick not for walking but for whacking.
The Supreme Court foresaw this danger while staying implementation of 27% OBC quota in Central educational institutions as the government had not done a survey as to who were backward and the basis of their backwardness. Neither had it intended to take the stick away from the creamy layer to pass it on to their weaker brethren. The indications of a possible caste war can be clearly read from the apex court’s interim order of March 29 when it stayed the 27% OBC quota. It had expressed anguish at the manner in which communities were competing with each other for quota benefits.”


I wonder whether or why the Supreme Court bench that delivered the judgment on implementation of the Mandal Commission report in 1993 did not foresee it at that time.