"Merit is not the only criterion for employment" these are the words of our great visionary prime minister Man Mohan Singh, who is supposed to be the visionary who brought India to present state we are daring to challenge the whole world then, how can he change so much within few months of attaining power, so much so that he has decided to pull back India to the same state what it was 15 years back. Now before discussing the impacts of Reservation on country’s growth first of all let us see the concept of this greater equality among equals. It says that few seats (few can be as many as 65% of total) in every job opportunity should be reserved for socially and economically deprived people. I don't have problem with the very concept but let us analyze what is a socially deprived. Does that mean that a person carrying a particular surname is socially deprived? Does that mean a well to do man whose ancestors were not allowed to enter a temple or wasn't allowed to take water from a village well 300 years ago should be given preference over a poor Brahmin who don't have enough to have two time meals in the present? Should he be punished throughout his life for what his ancestors did? Is it wise to reserve some seats in medical/engineering/civil services etc. on the basis of caste, when we know that the socially and economically person whom we are portraying in our mind to give reservation, can never reach to that stage, where he can enjoy the benefits of reservation? One more flaw i find with this system of "greater equality among equals" is that if this system was so successful that it needed to extend to private sector also than why couldn't it produce results in past 54 years of its existence?
Now some of my friends will definitely ask what it has to do with country's growth, so let’s think over the reasons which forced us to move towards disinvestment. The biggest reason was definitely the inefficiency present in the PSUs and suddenly all those PSUs which are privatized has started producing profits. So its clear that quality of management and work force definitely has a very strong impact on the performance of the organization, then how can we compromise with the quality of man power and even force those private players to do the same. Now some peoples keep raising question of social responsibility of the private players, but does that mean in the name of social responsibility they should compromise with their basic business values and pay those from a reserved class an equal amount what they would have paid a more deserving candidate.
The main essence of our constitution was to give a right to equality and eliminate all these caste-ism and differences in our society by giving them equal opportunity but it seems those things are already forgotten amidst all this bull's fight for power and in pursuit to please the minorities. A person can't contest from a particular constituency from where he belongs just because this constituency is reserved for a particular section of the community (or for a particular sex, as the case may be in the years to come) then what happened to the fundamental right of "right to elect" (which is already lost in present day's booth capturing etc.) and "get elected". So this means that we are doing discrimination in reverse direction in the name of social justice. The arrangement of reservation was meant for 10 years only but still it’s continuing because political parties don't want to loose their minority votes especially those so called secular forces, though they are the ones who force the constitution to differentiate between an upper caste and lower caste. So the obvious question is what should be the criterion for reservation. So as far as the essence of constitution is concerned it’s not wrong to be liberal for the downtrodden but the criterion has to such that it doesn't become a puppet in the hands of politicians. It’s quite obvious that we can't say that if a person carries a particular surname he is the needy. So the only solution that seems viable is to fix some seats on the basis of economical status and give free primary education etc. to every one so that their are no difference in the opportunity for anyone.
