Reservations Are Not Working. Why Are We Still Continuing With It? Reservation is a hotly debated topic among youngsters all over the country. Especially right after exam results are announced. After so many years of reservation, the condition of the people who were to be benefitted has not improved. Are we doing it wrong? Elections are coming up. These elections are probably the most important elections that we have had in long time. The country is at the brink. Politicians are talking about every possible topic. Every topic but one. Reservations. Its like a ticking time bomb. Its the elephant in the room. No one wants to talk about it but everyone knows its important. When did this all start? The Constitution of India originally did not have anything about reservations. In 1982, the Constitution was amended and it was decided to have 15% and 7.5% reservation in government aided educational institutions for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Schedule Tribes (ST) respectively for a period of five year. It was decided that this quote system would be reviewed after every five years. This period has been routinely reviewed by succeeding governments. The Supreme Court of India in the case of Indra Sawhney and Others v Union of India, ruled that reservations could not exceed 50% and thus put a cap on reservation. It was done because the court felt that anything about this would violate equal access guaranteed by the Constitution. There are a few states which have given caste based reservations and those laws are still under scrutiny in the Supreme Court. So currently the reservation break up in India based on category is as shown below: Category Reservation Percentage Scheduled Castes 15 Scheduled Tribes 7.5 Other Backward Castes 27 General Category 50.5 Why just caste reservation? We have reservation for women in so many Universities. It would seem that reservation is our answer to everything. Gujjars are agitating? Give them reservation. Women empowerment? Give them reservation. More women politicians needed? Give them reservations. 18-year-old upper caste boy who got 99.9% in boards? Sorry, you should try your luck in another country. I have nothing against any caste or religion or sex. I believe that all of us are born equal and should be given equal rights. Our Constitution makers have made it very clear that all equals should be treated equally. The reason for which reservations were started had good intentions. Few castes in India had been taken advantage of and did not enjoy the freedom that other castes enjoyed. It is for this reason, that the government, in an effort to level the playing field, started reservations. The main part of that decision was the five years time that was mentioned. Our politicians have now-a-days completely forgotten about that part. Year on year, different castes have been added to the SC, ST and OBC list. Parties in power keep adding new caste in order to win votes. The situation is so bad that now castes are fighting with the government to be recognised as a backward caste! The situation of people who actually needed reservation has not improved at all over all these years. The court had specifically mentioned that the rich members of these ST, SC and OBC members should not be given reservation but we all know that this rule is far from being implemented. My central premise is that reservation is just a bad way of solving this inequality problem. We were taught in school that to be someone’s equal or to be better than someone, you had to increase the size of your line and not decrease the size of their line. Reservation entails taking a part of the longer line to give it to the shorter line. It might seem like were are creating equality but we are in turn just punishing people for sins they did not commit. I agree that some castes were exploited. I agree that they did not get the rights that the rest of the people got. I agree that we should have done something about it. We choose reservation which even though was a bad option, was something that involved sacrifice by the higher caste for the people of the lower caste. Did it work? No! Then why are we still continuing with it? After so many years of reservations, the ST, SC and OBC castes have the same problems. They are still exploited. In fact, reservations are almost the first time kids learn about the castes of their friends. It is creating caste differences instead of bridging them. The harm it does to one the society is a LOT more than the good it does to a very minuscule part of the society. Reservations have aggravated our country’s caste based problems instead of improving them. There is no data to suggest otherwise. Our politicians choose reservation because it is a populist move. It wins votes. Everyone likes a free meal but as some great man/woman once very rightly said, “There are no free meals.” We all pay for it in one way or another. Our hearts might be in the right place but are reservations actually doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing? Are reservations the best way to solve our caste based inequality problem? If yes, why haven’t we seen positive results yet? Are you doing reservations wrong? =========================