Re: [IAC#RG] No political party has resolve to eliminate reservations

It is important to not fall prey to casteist propaganda when understanding these issues.

Reservations are important for several reasons, but two are the most important.

• The obvious - to prevent exclusion of marginalized communities.
• To create opportunities for the upliftment of marginalized communities.

This issue isn't merely about seeing some seats that could be freed up to the golden children. It is a complex social upliftment intervention. These are important national goals that go beyond the entitlement of the already privileged to get the cut-off maybe one or two percent lower by denying entire swathes the opportunity to educate themselves. Even without reservation, the cut-off marks would be unreasonably high. This is because the facilities for education are inadequate, not because of the underprivileged.

The underprivileged also suffer from poorer facilities for education all through. Government schools have horrendous standards and the further deterioration in the last five years is mind boggling. Where hundreds of schools fail to have a single student passing matric and inter exams at all (100% fail. Not a single person passed.), I think it is clear that education for the underprivileged does not prepare them for competitive exams. Additionally, the underprivileged are disproportionately less likely to benefit from additional coaching or a lack of other responsibilities (like work in home/farm/etc) in order to become a one trick pony and puke out marks at showtime. Few of your upper caste/class students are likely to study in such schools. The student's background and access to basic education determines a lot about what they learn, and this is the responsibility of the government, which we have failed at. 

Then, to further use the poor results to deny the few that do pass the right to educating themselves further and influencing their community may make a few elites happy, but will further handicap the influence of education among the underprivileged. Let us begin with understanding the magnitude of the impact. Where cut-offs are in the high 90s, getting rid of total reservation still won't even drop them below 90%. Like I said, the issue isn't one of reservation, it is one of inadequate facilities. This suits powerful people, because demand and supply means great big fat bribes. I think they call them donations, these days. If seats were in plenty, the cost of education too would have to come down, not to mention standards would matter. In short, providers of education would have to do better and have less control to auction off.

Anyway, that is a separate issue. The key issue is the reach of higher education, jobs, prosperity. Where your schools are so horrendous that none of the students pass, you can forget about the people from that area doing higher jobs, getting access to information, or even achieving basic literacy reliably. You have to live among the underprivileged to see how much inspiration as well as assistance the few achievers are to the community. It is worth taking as many as possible to higher education, because they in turn will encourage more from the community to study. This in turn means a better educated population.

It serves the purpose of casteist propagandists to emotionally influence the powerful elites against the underprivileged, by blaming their discontent on the very existence of those they wish to do away. By creating a perception that if only those people didn't take the seats, your son would have got it. The fact is that even if all the underprivileged simply went extinct, the seats are still unlikely to be enough for your son to get in, unless he narrowly missed cut-off. The reality is that the capacity for education is a national resource and even with reservation is currently not shared with any kind of equable proportion. Without reservation, the whole would be appropriated by the able, and the divide between the haves and have nots will be rendered near impossible to bridge.

There is a reason a certain level of marks is considered PASS - it is because it denotes passable knowledge for the level tested. As long as someone has passed, them going on to study further is not the end of the world. Regardless of whether they passed with 99% or 80% or 45%. There are bigger things at stake here than turning education into a race track and gamifying the very right to education among those who have better gaming stations. There are lives of entire communities at stake. Not to mention the role of reservation in preventing flat out discrimination. In a country where college canteens have separate tableware for dalits or entirely separate canteens altogether. In a country where it is impossible to prosecute flat out murders of the underprivileged by the privileged, how long do you think it will take to deny admissions to even the underprivileged who do meet general cut-offs? Where murders don't get justice, you think denying admissions is going to get anything?

And I say this as an extremely high scoring upper caste, upper middle class "star student" with an IQ of 145 who did not get enough marks to meet the cut-offs (I didn't try either, which is a different matter). There are bigger things at stake than the entitlement of a few to the resources of a whole and the utter rage when they are prevented from doing so.

On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 2:36 AM Sarbajit Roy <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net> wrote:

Dear Vidyut

1) Reservation today is the biggest discriminator, in INDIA (as distinguished from "Bharat").

2) Let us look at the HAVOC which reservation is wreaking in society by analysing this in-line graphic of the IIT JEE Main cut-off scores released 4 hours ago.

A General category student has to have a 90+ percentile (ie. to be in the top 10% of all candidates) to be able to sit for the qualify exam to get in an IIT, whereas an SC has to be in the top 45% and an ST to be in the top 55%.

But these percentiles are grossly misleading by virtue of BAYESian distributions as applied to this exam.

The lowest qualifying "General" candidate would need about 45 "nett correct" answers out of 90 to SIT for the next exam, whereas an SC or ST would qualify for ADMISSION to IIT even if they got 10 "nett wrong" answers out of  90.

ie. a "General" candidate needs to score of 200+ marks out of 360  to qualify but a reserved candidate could even qualify with a raw score of -10 (a negative score because there is negative marking) marks.

Ball is in your court.

Sarbajit Roy

On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 12:20 AM Vidyut <wide.aware@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't think removal of reservations before discrimination is resolved is a good idea.

Vidyut

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On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 9:25 AM Sarbajit Roy <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net> wrote:

If there is one thing which these 2019 elections expose, it is that no major political party has the resolve to publicly oppose caste, sex or religion based reservations and demand immediate scrapping of all reservations for employment, representation or admissions based on these criteria.

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