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August 13, 2012

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Graphic Credits :- Sahil Jain

Every passing year, securing admission in good colleges is getting tougher and tougher. Not for everyone though. If you happen to belong to any of the numerous communities deemed to be underprivileged (SC, OBC etc), all the skill that you’ll require is that of correctly filing a form.

The reservation system has received fervent criticism from all corners but can a country which has historically discriminated against certain minority groups afford not to provide them with opportunities for bettering their status? Or is it that reservations are the wrong way to go about uplifting minorities.

This week, Juxtapose sets the jury out on whether the reservation system is good for the country as a whole. So what are you waiting for? Scroll down and voice your opinions.

Juxtapose: Are reservations in colleges justified?
Show of Hands:
Justified: 2
Not Justified: 8
The Arguments:

1. Thangchungnung Mangte, Not Justified
I do have a great respect for the founding fathers of our constitution and their empathy towards the underprivileged sections of our society who were discriminated and exploited for hundreds of years. However, if we want to help those people to be able to grow and improve their condition, the very basis of granting reservation should be on the basis of a person’s economic condition. Giving reservation to a caste, tribe etc. will only help those, who are already doing well. A poor dalit or a tribal hardly gets to use the benefit of reservation granted to his/her tribe or caste and instead it is used more by the sons & daughters of, let’s say for example, an IAS officer.

2. Vikas Jaipuria, Not Justified
The ideal situation should have been: Merit alone triumphs! Having sat on a hunger strike when I was in class 8 in AIIMS when this debate broke out in 2006, I have seen the agitation from close quarters. This is a paralytic policy decision, which is far from the principles of equality espoused by our constitution. Sure the weaker sections and minority should be uplifted, but providing reservation in higher education is not the correct means. The government should have created better infrastructure in primary/higher secondary schools in small towns/backward areas. It should have extended the benefit of its social schemes by bringing more OBC’s/SC’S/ST’s under its net. The true effects of this paralytic decision is more evident in DU – OBC’s/SC’s/ST’s from well of families are sitting in top colleges with less than qualifying marks, while hard working students of General category who slogged their ass in class XII are precluded admission (even if they fall short of cutoff by a small whisker!). And we all know in a country like ours where bribing public officials is a cakewalk, no wonder you can get yourself made a fake SC/ST/OBC certificate.

3. Ankita Mukhopadhyay (LSR), Justified
When Dr. B.R Ambedkar formulated the Constitution, little did he foresee the uproar that his policy of reservation for minorities would create once education and literacy became a prime concern for most households in India. I think reservation for minorities is justified, provided there is an income bracket to justify their need for reservation. Reservation has come into the limelight today because of the UPA government’s policy to give preference to the minorities in order to garner more votes. The issue of reservation shouldn’t be a politically contentious issue; it should be more of a moral issue.
People belonging to the Scheduled castes and tribes are still discriminated against today in the villages, and even if a person belonging to the SC/ST or OBC category manages to break the mould and succeed in the corporate segment or any other sector, he/she is always looked down upon by the general candidates as an academically weaker peer. I agree that there are many general category candidates out there who lose out on a seat because of reservation, and economically backward general candidates face a bleak future due to no government support for them, but we should also look into the historical origins of this caste problem. The government should change its policy, and instead of demarcating lower cut offs or marks for SC/ST and OBC candidates, they should evaluate them on an equal level, barring only the fact that they have a quota for themselves. One should look for a solution to the problem, not ponder over it needlessly. We should learn from our forefathers and not continue repeating the mistakes that they committed hundreds of years back.

4. Riddhi Dayal (Sri Venkatswara College), Justified
I think reservation was a justifiable means to be used in the scenario of the caste-system in India, and many people have actually benefited from the same. Therefore, to completely write-off reservation is unjustified. Many students had a problem with the fact that General Category seats would be reduced in number due to reservation, however, that was taken care of by the court order that stated that the total number of seats would be increased to incorporate reserved seats while keeping General category seats constant. Thus, I don’t think its really a big deal.
However, I’d like to clarify that I don’t believe reservation should be continued indefinitely. As with all policies, it should be in practice till one reaches the stage of emancipation of the downtrodden and then be discontinued.
The Verdict: Reservations are neither justified nor beneficial.

The deplorable episode of cold-blooded slaying of six innocent Sikhs by a white supremacist skinhead Wade Michael Page in a gurudwara in Wisconsin can’t be dismissed as a sheer paradigm of hate crime incident. Apparently, the fact that it has broached more than a few imperative questions is difficult to neglect.

While the precise motivations of this outlandish act are yet to be indentified, the reports that the killer had been a leader of a xenophobic white-power group connote it wasn’t just a random attack but one that was accurately deliberated to single out a community for its dissimilarity or rather for its misconceived proximity, in terms of corporeal peculiarity, to Islamist fundamentalists.

Unfortunately, Sikhs – one of the initial Asian communities in North America – have confronted such vandalism and dogmatism ever since 9/11 when racial bigots began to see in them a semblance to Osama Bin Laden, predominantly because of their turban and beard. In this context, no one is oblivious to the infamous case of Balbir Singh Sodhi – a gas station owner in Mesa, Arizona – who was shot dead four days after the towers crumbled, allegedly by a man who sought retaliation.

However, this is not the sole example of Sikh community being under attack in the disguise of ‘patriotism’. In a report last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center – a nonprofit civil rights organization committed to combating hate and bigotry- reported quite a few assaults and incidents of arson at Sikh temples after September 11.

This sort of killing rampage is undeniably a catastrophe, and it is so not only for six people who lost their lives or their aggrieved families or for that matter the Sikh community but also for United States as a nation which is often reckoned an impeccable specimen of juxtaposed cultures and religions – a product of large-scale immigration from various countries. It poses a question on the credibility of the country in protecting people of all races, as promised in its Constitution.

Although it might sound mordant but one of the concrete reasons for such crisis finds its roots in the laws that confer upon civilians a right to carry guns without any complications. Paradoxically, a law was passed in Wisconsin last year that gave liberty to the inhabitants to purchase a handgun or firearm with much ease. The 9 mm semi-automatic handgun found at the sight of the incident is just a metaphor of how prolific are the implications of this law. Even the rationale that probable victims need guns for their fortification sounds nothing more than ridiculous.

We can keep deriving the political insinuations of the occurrence but what needs vital attention is that the Sikh community has for a long, long time quietly endured the pain of wounds they never inflicted and it’s high time that both the United States government as well the Indian government take measures to ensure that no discrimination of any sort is met out to this community anymore.

 

Vatsal Verma
[email protected]

On Saturday, 11th August 2012, the students of Sri Ram College Of Commerce organised ‘The Youth Conference’ at Sir Shankar Lal concert hall, North Campus. The theme of the conference was ‘Here is Where our Story Begins’ and well known personalities like Suhel Seth- managing partner of counselage India, Alvinder Dhindsa- CEO of Zomato, Bimal Jalan- former governor of RBI,  Ajay Chaturvedi- founder and chairman of HarVa, Utsav Mitra- ex president of student council of SRCC and Gaurav Kapoor- VJ, Actor and sports presenter; all spoke on the theme interpreting it in their own way. All the speeches made were convincing and well received. Mr.Suhel Seth advised the students to be ‘brutally honest since a lie is time consuming’. His unconventional way of focusing on conventional values like honesty, respectfulness and patriotism won the loudest round of applause. Gaurav talked about his 3 A’s- ambition, audacity and action and appealed the audience to take risk- ‘udan bharne ke liye chhalang lagana zaruri hai’. Bimal Jalan urged students to pursue a career because of interest and not for money. The organising members, with Pratik handa as the convener and Bikash Agarwal as the conference secretery did quite a good job in making the event a successful one. A good number of delegates turned up and were given a certificate of participation as well. The event which continued for about 6 to 7 hours was sponsored by Nestle, Nescafe, Amtek group, PETA India, Red FM 93.5, Hourglass Project etc. Some lines like ‘ravel in the arts- smell flowers, go for a long walk and smile, smile and smile even more!’, ‘being patriotic is not important, being a nationalist is’, ‘don’t be afraid of failure, yes it sucks, but don’t be afraid of it’, ‘there is nothing more derogatory and it’s a bloody farce  that we worship all these goddesses when we abuse our women’, ‘in future, farmers, not bankers, will drive Ferraris’- made the event an unforgettable one for students. Aishwarya Chaurasia [email protected] ]]>