Don't let Reservation system be dysfunctional

Photo: Twitter: @jigneshmevani80

     Thousands of protesters marched against the 13 point roster and to bring back old 200 point roster on 31st January 2019 in order to save reservation in employment in the field of higher education.

     India is a diverse country and wide variety of people from different culture & society with different values live in. More than 50% (SC, ST, OBC communities) of India got centuries of darkness until India got freedom from British rule and our very own constitution of India was drafted in the leadership of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. The Constitution of India promises social justice and so it has provisions in favour of those communities who have been historically discriminated, subjugated and exploited. And, now the current government is trying to manipulate the public and make everyone fool and restore the brahmincal monopoly over education and knowledge creation. The current status of reserved category representation in all 40 central universities is shamefull and questionable i.e. why the share of the same are very few. Lets have a look at the data:

Source: Data upto April 1, 2018, provided by the UGC to The Indian Express under RTI

Even with the current reservation calculation system where representation from the reserved category is very low, the government is trying to bring in new method of calculation of reservation seats where the government is not directly curtailing reservation rather doing it from the back door by changing the formula. Everything stays as it is but the seats will be vanished and systematically killing reservation.

     The current government has been attacking continuously on the reservation system in the field of education and employment. Recently it has passed 10% reservation to poor general caste candidates and now is planning to dilute and kill the rights of reserved category people and hand it over to the unreserved category technically. At the current situation even representation from reserved category people stays very low and by bringing new 13 point roster technically govt. will snatch away rights of people. The govt. is obsessed with brahmincal control over education like the early days of India where education was not open to all. Before we jump into the two roster systems and see the difference, lets understand that why reservation? The main objective of reservation is for representation, equity and for that vulnerable categories are encouraged to participate through reservation. Basically government is there to protect rights of its citizens and encourage them to participate and achieve the highest in each sphere. In this context when some communities are socially subjugated from basic things and exploited by the others India's reservation policy plays a vital role in ensuring government's responsibilities towards the communities. Since we can't ignore the fact that social exclusion still exists on the basis of caste, community, religion, social & cultural background etc. so, the system of reservation has an important role to achieve social inclusion.

The earlier formula '200 point roster' used college as unit for calculation of reserved seats i.e. all the departments were clubbed together and calculation was done in order to ensure benefits of reservation goes even to the small departments. But, in the new department wise roster system or 13 point roster departments are considered to be unit and calculation of reserved seats will be done on that. And, in case of university faculties reservation will not only be calculated on the basis of department but further by position i.e. Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor and this will drastically convert the reserved seats to unreserved category. To understand both the system lets have a comparative analysis of data from various university advertisements:

Data source: Advertisement of various Universities, Indian Express 6-9-2016

Now, it is clearly understood how the new formula of calculation is going to convert reserved seats into unreserved category. This is a really one of the worst decision by the current government. From the data it is very clear that around 90% of the seats will be snatched away from the reserved category and bringing back thousands years old brahmincal control over education and knowledge production.

     It is very high time to awake and ask the government to stop taking decisions which will worsen the condition of SC, ST and OBC communities and roll back 13 point roster and let the reservation system function properly otherwise the new method of calculation will make the system dysfunctional.

- Bigan Mahakul