Education and Reservation System In India

I have always had a simple opinion on reservations - "we don't need them". By we I mean Indians of all varieties, shapes and sizes. 12 yrs of primary and secondary education is enough to train kids to be competitive. If you can't do it in 12 most productive years, as far as learning is concerned, you can never do it. I also strongly advocate that education upto 12th should be free and compulsory. We should learn from Japanese what they did after WW-II. But making education free means money, and India is left without any with growing tax breaks, inefficient tax nets, tax evations bigger than economy of Pakistan, and richer, fatter and power-hungry politicians. Our politicians are busy making law to get more "offices of profit" when they should be making "12 yrs of education" into law.

People say we are poor country. A miniscule percentage of Indian public, who invest in primary markets and who are into "retail" segment with less than $2000 each to invest, coughed up more than Rs 200,000 crores or more than $ 4.5 billion. This excludes high-networth investors and financial institutions.

I think government should setup "Basic Education Fund" which has tax exemption of 200%. So if you have income of 10 million, donate 5 million to this fund and pay no tax. I'm sure this will lead to decent corpse. But the execution also counts a lot. We need to maintain public account of this fund to see how much goes where.

With so many politicians, incl. Arjun Singh and Left, saying that so-called backward castes need reservation, I challenge them to donate all the money they have for the cause of upliftment of their caste-brothers. No. They won't do that. They want middle-class to suffer and pay for their cause, reducing their right to education at the same time. I have never seen worse arguement that this. Kill the golden goose. Kill the middle-class. Kill the India. They never think of middle-class fellows who study 16-hr a day for their right to quality education. Rich will escape to foreign education. What about your bank-clerk's daughter? What mistake has she made in her life, apart from being born in India, that deny her birth-right to fair competition to quality education.

Also, those same politicians say merit will not suffer. I received a wonderful suggestion in email, that I would to share. How about reservation in Parliament? Let all doctors that treat MPs, MLAs be from backward classes. Let all aids be that. This will ensure jobs for them and provide good oppurtunities to growth. Let all government jobs for unskilled labour be reserved for backward classes. But ensure free and fair competition for skilled jobs.

I also don't like the concept of pre-nursery, nursery, LKG and UKG before getting into 1st. Poor kids. Give them a break. Let them enjoy atleast first 5-6 yrs. After that, its competition for the rest of life.

On the same note, I found this article from Rahul Phondke interesting from my alumni site. I can't link that here but here is how it goes (quoting verbatim)

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In a significant move today, Congress announced 50 % reservation for all Left Handed people in IITs/IIMs. Said a congress spokesman , "In 60 years of independence there has not been a single left handed CEO. It is time to set the system right " . This reservation will be over and above the existing reservations taking the total reservation to 99.73 %. In order to take care of the fractions, the government also announced an increase in the number of seats taking the total IIM seats to 1000.

The official bill would be signed soon by the PM's office ....with his left hand ...
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