Have my Reservations!

Reservations!.. thats the new political mantra in India.. to attract votebanks. Want the muslim population to vote for you.. float a muslim quota in employment and education! Want the vast OBC votebank- make sure your policies are pro- OBC in reservations!

And now- women's reservations for political purposes! Do we really need this reservation to empower our women?

Being woman myself, i think not.

I'm a firm believer that reservation, if necessary, should begin at the bottom, and never percolate to the top. For instance, if we can ensure that every citizen in this country has an equal opportunity at a school education, we need not reserve seats for them at the level of higher education, leave alone employment benefits!. We need to ensure that every girl and boy (regardless of caste/religion/region) in this nation gets an education that is the same minimum standard in all teaching institutions- the syllabus, quality of teaching and the infrastructure provided to each student, whether from a village school or in a urban international school, should be equal. I know that is a huge ask, but unless we train them right, we can never expect them to fend for themselves. When these students are equally equipped, they can fight it out for higher education and employment opportunities on the same stage.

Present day reservations in the fields of education and employment are misused to a large extent. It only the "creamy layer" of the backward castes that really benefit from these policies. There should be a scheme to ensure that the quota benefit is used by only one or a maximum of two generations in a family- otherwise majority of the intended beneficiaries will be left out time and again!.

A way to phase out existing reservations is the need of the hour- for 60 years we have been providing quotas based on caste- that have no doubt not benefited the vast majority who needed it. Perhaps, it is time we had reservations based purely on economic grounds rather than caste based reservations. But then again. like all government policies prone to corruption, when the question of who should be accorded the "economically backward" comes to play.

Reservation is a menace that refuse to go away after its time is over. No political party has the will to revoke or reduce the reservations already in place, for fear of losing their clout. Women's reservation too, will no doubt suffer the same fate.