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: Reservation, My mom, a hostel and free seats
Let me start with full disclosure- I am a 'general' category candidate and so everything I have to say may be biased. Much has been written, re-written and re-re-written on the issue of caste based reservation in India, specifically in the context of education in central government sponsored institutes.
My mom is the honorary convener of a community hostel. She and her committee is responsible for directing the activities of the hostel and overseeing its smooth working. The hostel has about 6 paid employees including a cook, two wardens, part time gardner and cleaning helpers. It has about 70 boarders. The hostel actually belongs to the community association, which has sponsored 4 free seats. Now comes the problem - who should get these 4 free seats?
Since everyone belongs to the same community, there is no 'caste' by which one could differentiate.
The first factor that comes to mind is the annual family income. So what would be the difference between an annual family income of Rs.50,000/- and say Rs.60,000/-. Not much really!
So, the next factor that gets considered is the last examination score. But how do you normalize scores across disciplines? A 60% score in fine arts(painting) may be great but in physics this may be a very poor score, so a direct comparison wouldn't work.
Now, the invisible hand of region starts playing. The question is should all the districts from which the boarders come be represented? And the community association trust members try to influence my mom and her community for representation.
So what really happens? All the above factors, if not more, are considered. There are forms to fill up and copies of income certificate and marks sheet to be provided. But reality is that someone in the committee has to propose, champion and push for a candidate. This committee member has to convince the rest of the members that the candidate really deserves the benefit.
All I am trying to say is that the basis for providing any special treatment needs careful thinking, and clear understanding of why is the benefit being given and what should be the basis. If this the complexity for a community of less than 1 million people, think about the complexity if the community has a billion people... surely the complexity increases a thousand fold.
Watch out for my next post, where I will suggest a few approaches that I believe haven't been considered by both camps.
Tags: news, reservation
Let me start with full disclosure- I am a 'general' category candidate and so everything I have to say may be biased. Much has been written, re-written and re-re-written on the issue of caste based reservation in India, specifically in the context of education in central government sponsored institutes.
My mom is the honorary convener of a community hostel. She and her committee is responsible for directing the activities of the hostel and overseeing its smooth working. The hostel has about 6 paid employees including a cook, two wardens, part time gardner and cleaning helpers. It has about 70 boarders. The hostel actually belongs to the community association, which has sponsored 4 free seats. Now comes the problem - who should get these 4 free seats?
Since everyone belongs to the same community, there is no 'caste' by which one could differentiate.
The first factor that comes to mind is the annual family income. So what would be the difference between an annual family income of Rs.50,000/- and say Rs.60,000/-. Not much really!
So, the next factor that gets considered is the last examination score. But how do you normalize scores across disciplines? A 60% score in fine arts(painting) may be great but in physics this may be a very poor score, so a direct comparison wouldn't work.
Now, the invisible hand of region starts playing. The question is should all the districts from which the boarders come be represented? And the community association trust members try to influence my mom and her community for representation.
So what really happens? All the above factors, if not more, are considered. There are forms to fill up and copies of income certificate and marks sheet to be provided. But reality is that someone in the committee has to propose, champion and push for a candidate. This committee member has to convince the rest of the members that the candidate really deserves the benefit.
All I am trying to say is that the basis for providing any special treatment needs careful thinking, and clear understanding of why is the benefit being given and what should be the basis. If this the complexity for a community of less than 1 million people, think about the complexity if the community has a billion people... surely the complexity increases a thousand fold.
Watch out for my next post, where I will suggest a few approaches that I believe haven't been considered by both camps.
Tags: news, reservation