Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Remove reservation system from India' that was published in Newsband

Remove reservation system from India

This practice of providing reservation in employment and education is become a major issue in India. It was evident from the way the Patel community has been agitating to get the community included in the Other Backward Classes list. This agitation has brought the State almost to an administrative halt.

Inclusion of more communities in the reservation list is already a highly controversial issue. Other communities currently excluded from the OBC list would demand to be treated on a par with the Patels. Recently, the decision to include Jats in the OBC list was overturned by the Supreme Court. Like the Jats, the Patels will not find it easy to meet the specified criteria for social and educational backwardness.

For the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in power both at the Centre and in the State, the Patel agitation is a fresh political headache. BJP counts the Patels among its key constituencies,

The crux of the problem doesn’t lie in the various communities but it lies in the way they are divided by our policy framers into various stratas from the very beginning. The decision of policy framers to grant reservation based on caste instead of need created the base for the instability created till now.

The complete demand made by Patel community is "Either scrap the reservation system or grant it only to economically backward class or give us reservation." They are right. Most of the people taking advantages of reservations are economically sound people who really do not need any reservation like sons and daughters of IAS\IPS\Ministers\business. They are people who live in big houses, drive luxury cars and then belong to backward caste during the time of admission.

The way things are going, especially after 60 years of reservations one is reminded of the following words of Aristotle delivered 2500 years ago: "The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal"

The framers of our constitution had made the provision of reservation for those who are really backward in nature: but in a recent days, various communities themselves are deliberately declaring backward to get the advantages: this is surely not in accordance with the constitution: if this happens, we will have to redefine the term backwardness.

The primary purpose of the reservation was to uplift the Harijans in the pre-independent state and the benefits were extended to such deprived society at large. But, of late, even the upper class society converts themselves to BC and SC/ST in order to enjoy the privileges proffered by the Government. If this be the case, then everyone can claim to be in the list of backward list leaving the Government high and dry. If at all the poorer sections of the society have to be benefited, then only economically constrained ones have to be offered the benefits and that would be the lasting solution to the current imbroglio because the stark reality is not all the SC/ST people are economically unsound and not all the OC category falls under the influential status. Only in India, do we have reservations negating the merits to the sub-ordinate position making the country regressive in all spheres.

Demand for reservation is very wasteful matter; it decreases the efficiency of any community. The reservation system should be removed from India. After that, it will be a developed country.