Voice of Merituous

(Premise: The Voice of Meritorious must rise. I ask you, each one of you, to write a blog about it, voice your opinions, in your strongest words, let the voices together tower to a proportion where the politicians and the voters can hear it.

I am writing this piece SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 2006. I hope you guys will pitch in your voices through your own blogs starting MONDAY APRIL 24.)

In 1990, I saw thousands of people protest against the implementation of Mandal Commission recommendations. Hundreds in each state committed suicide, burnt themselves to death. The reservation quotas were increased. Protests died out. It was like a communist whim or a socialist myth triumphing over the intellectual common sense. In fifteen years since, we have seen people with shameful scores get through exams for their caste allows them special privilege. They get into the schools, where they don't deserve to be on pure intellectual merit, then they get all the scholarships too (mostly irrespective of how much money their family makes), and most of them manage to scrape through with just pass scores. But since the reservation regime is so biased in their favor, they get into jobs which they won't deserve if merit was the sole criterion, they are promoted faster than their "upper class counterparts" who by now are expected to understand that merit, good work is not the card to be played these days, and then these guys are in best position to have their own kids benifit from the reservation policy.

The politicians are shrewd enough to keep Parliament out of 33% Women Reservation Bill, and 50% OBC/SC/ST Reservation. They impose will wherever they can. The latest fear of raising the quota in IITs and IIMs is a simple example of how little some people comprehend the value of hard-working intellegesia. Social change cannot be brought out by killing the merit, by drowning the standards, by propping up mediocricity, by discrimination based on caste or tribe. I would have never known or figured for some people that they belonged to a certain caste, till I saw them get what they did not deserve based on just birth. The idea of reservation is a flawed idea, that allows the richest among those castes to benifit the most, and benefit generation after generation. It selects less than the best for psoitions where better people could really allow better cure as doctors, better product as engineers and better overall administration as bereaucrats. It leaves despair in the heart of deserving.

In our country, we are born unequals, for reservation allows certain castes, classes and tribes easier access to colleges and jobs.

In our country, we discriminate against our own people for discrimination carried out in previous centuries, we as kids are supposed to understand that our high birth means we need to strive harder than others to achieve something, because our forefathers were unwilling to allow some castes access to certain professions.

In our country, we think at by having 50% of people in a Medical College come from undeserving students, (based on intellect or merit), we will transform the society into a healthier one.

In our country, where we are striving towards a free market economy, where our GDP growth and industrial and social progress is going to depend on how well we attract foreign investors and compete on international scale, on international scale where they judge only the product, WE EXPECT to compete by using our convulated standards where half of the engineers and managers may be below par, but are there for they belong to classes that must be mollycoddled for mostly political reasons.

In our country, we don't get richer or poorer based on caste. The "UN-SCHEDULED" classes have their own share of economic and other disadvantages. Allow poorer students easier access to schooling, provide them free books or free lunches, but PRAY PLEASE DON"T GIVE SOMEONE GRACE POINTS FOR HE IS FROM A PARTICULAR CASTE. Give them opportunity to do well, training to do well, but please don't impose the undeserving on positions that they donot merit.

For kicks, if IITs and IIMs need to have more reservation quota just because it is ticket to high paying jobs, I strongly insist on a 50% quota in Indian Cricket Team, in Olympic Teams, in Parliament.

In our country, where we need to come through a killer competition at every stage of our life, where it is so easy to lose hope and disappear, where places like IITs and IIMs are places that keep the flame of toil and well-deserved returns alive, WE WISH TO CONDEMN ourselves to a lack of vision by allowing people graduate without their deserving to graduate, get the jobs they did not earn by meeting the scientific standards, take decisions about rest of us by sitting on chairs that are propped by a class contigency.

WE CANNOT JUST STAND AND STARE.
WE CANNOT BE QUIET AND SCARED.

The Voice of Meritorious must rise. I ask you, each one of you, to write a blog about it, voice your opinions, in your strongest words, let the voices together tower to a proportion where the politicians and the voters can hear it.

I am writing this piece SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 2006. I hope you guys will pitch in your voices through your own blogs starting MONDAY APRIL 24. I will keep posting more stuff myself; but we all must pitch in our strongest opinions and post them on every wall, till the wise blind men we have elected see that the MERITORIOUS HAVE A VOICE.