Evil - morally reprehensible
Let me start off with a brief overview of caste based reservation in India.
For centuries the Hindu society was divided into 4 different castes. The lower caste or the Shutras were subjected to torture, humiliation and abject poverty. Enter the era of independence and the leaders of free India (spearheaded in this effort by Ambedkar) decided to do something about it and introduced caste based reservation. A certain percentage of seats in colleges/universities and government jobs were reserved for the lower caste. This was perceived to "improve" their conditions. But, alas this suffered from several fundamental flaws.
First, the reservation was based on caste and not on financial conditions. The fundamental reasoning behind reservations is to promote the minorities that did not have adequate opportunities. And opportunity (mainly to receive quality education) is related to financial status and NOT caste. One may claim that the above two are correlated (lower caste => financially backward). However, there is a significant portion of the lower caste population that is financially better off than most of India. It turns out that this is the population that receives most of the benefits. If the real objective of reservation is to "iron" out the differences in opportunities, then financial standing and NOT caste should form the basis for reservation.
Second, the initial reservation was supposed to last for 15 years (or so). However, our so called "paragons of social justice" started extending it till date (and beyond). Why should reservation extend to a family that has already been at the receiving end? In other words, why should the son of an IAS officer get the "priviledge" when the son of a priest (earning about a $1 a day) be considered "forward"?
Third, reservation opened a pandora's box for caste based politics. In TN, it was raised to 69% !!! Give me a break !! And reservation was also extended to promotions. Consider this - you reserve a seat in a college, get him the job and why the f!@#$ does one need to reserve his promotion? Is this social equality?
Forth and the one that prompted me to write this blog - reservation in the private sector. Our dear friends from the left were highly successful in making sure that India remained a third world until the 90s. Privatization was considered an expletive and the the only "decent" jobs were the ones that were available in the public sector. The public sectors provided models for incompetence. Then came the 90s and privatization. This opened up immense opportunities. Private companies attracted (and respected) talent. In fact, talented young engineers started shunning public sector and moving into the private sector and the job market flourished. In came the leftists and their "ideolologies". Now they want to force reservation into the private sector.
Let's for a second consider the impact of such a decision. Private and public sectors work differently. Public sector has fixed salaries and promotions (to a large extent). In other words, if one joins in at position x, then he/she gets a pay check y (decided by the government) and will be promoted to position z in k years - x, y, z, k being constants independent of competency. This infact was the recipe to breed incompetency. Why would I work hard for something that I will achieve eventually? Private sector is different. Promotion and salary are based on competency. Now with reservation, you obviously don't expect the same level of competency which existed before. So, companies might be forced to hire lesser talented personnel to "satisfy" the left. Governments will start hiking the percentage reservations as well as introduce quotas for backward, most backword, ridiculously backword etc etc. (like the TN govt.)
In all, this is a recipe for disaster and thanks to the left for bringing it up.
The blog has got longer than I expected. I will continue it in the sequels (if possible).
