A new Indian proposal would reserve half the seats of India’s city on a hill, the exalted halls of IIT, for historically oppressed castes.
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Would you riot for Samuel L. Jackson, foo’? |
But it’s not just India. The NYT reports that not only is the misuse of quotas politically appealing in America, it’s so appealing that white students are using DNA tests turning up two to three percent black or Native American ancestry to claim minority status in college admissions. It’s a microcosm of the American national character, both high tech and shameless 
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Prospective employees with white skin are using the tests to apply as minority candidates, while some with black skin are citing their European ancestry in claiming inheritance rights… Americans of every shade are staking a DNA claim to Indian scholarships, health services and casino money… “It’s about access to money and power…”“If someone appears to be white and then finds out they are not, they haven’t experienced the kinds of things that affirmative action is supposed to remedy…” Ashley Klett’s younger sister marked the “Asian” box on her college applications this year, after the elder Ms. Klett, 20, took a DNA test that said she was 2 percent East Asian and 98 percent European… she did get into the college of her choice. “And they gave her a scholarship…” [Link]
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p>One person is after not just money, but a Scottish castle:
Pearl Duncan… wants a castle… the DNA test confirming her 10 percent British Isles ancestry gave her the nerve to contact the Scottish cousins who had built an oil company with his fortune. The family’s 11 castles, Ms. Duncan noted, were obtained with the proceeds of her African ancestors’ labor. Perhaps they could spare one for her great-great-great-grandfather’s black heirs? [Link]
I can’t speak to American Indian princesses, but Indian-American Princesses are already legendary 
… the three-year-old company had coined the term American Indian Princess Syndrome to describe the insistent pursuit of Indian roots among many newly minted genetic genealogists. If the tests fail to turn up any, Mr. Frudakis added, “this type of customer is frequently quite angry.” [Link]
IMO economic affirmative action in education is a good idea to help break the cycle of poverty. In contrast, race-based affirmative action is incredibly imprecise, clubbing wealthy minorities in with the poor and casting a pall of suspicion on all those who made it on merit. In fact, the remedy is not only indirect, it’s intrinsically flawed. The overlap between race and class is imprecise, and the more successful affirmative action in its stated goals, the greater the divergence. In race-based affirmative action’s birth lie the seeds of its destruction.
Quotas in the workforce are a terrible idea because because no one wants someone with lower abilities as a neurosurgeon, astronaut, pilot or the cow-orker in the next cubicle. And setting the quota at 49%? Organizational suicide.
Before I abandon all my pacifist principles and shower her with ammo, I have one teensy request –
Do I get to give away her shoe collection first? For the local TN peeps ofcourse.
Shiva the original Can you post about that… I have doccumentation of nehru-gandhi family and was not able to find any thing about his families history. Its another one of those things i am interested in.
Not true! That sets a basic structure for conflict.
How the hell does having or not having a degree lead to oppression. 2 of the brightest SW developers that i have ment in india were not IIT grads but local commerce grads who learned coding the right way. And guess what they are $ millionares without persuing the VC route, and did it in haldwani hardly a tech center. A formal education creates formal mediocracy, passion is the only way to create excellence and its something you can never institutionalize.
@ggk, #154,
i only said you don’t have as much opportunities. and it is also not abt iits here, it was a comment with reference to some of punniyan’s friends he brought up.
GGK,
Here something for Feroze Gandhi. Some more. An article from Hindu newspaper.
He was one of the most brilliant Parliamentarian in India, known for Mundhra scandal. I was myself reading on him last evening. Shiva, both of my parents spent a lot of time getting educated in Allahabad (BScs, MScs, PhDs) – they talked about him often.
err brilliant and him in the same sentence seems kind of off… No i wanted to see his genealogy, since parsi community is kind of small I have never found out who is ancestors were. I suspect he cooked that up.
That sounds neat !! Then the next logical step would be to introduce reservations in the course of your career growth as well, 50 % of all managers, 60% of all Directorsetc in company should be from the reserved category, all promotions should be caste based and there should be an independent government appointed body to enforce this rule.
The hysterical upper-caste/NRI blogosphere is frightened to death of the next “logical” step, which would be their complete and utter marginalization. Hopefully, that wont happen. Sensible AA private sector proposals should focus on transition points – viz., entry into a new job, and/or educational facilities. It should also include positive discrimination in favor of businesses owned by depressed communities. Otherwise all of India may wind up with the Tamil Nadu scenario, which I am sure no one wants.
Oh well, I will just send my kids back to Kerala, get the non creamy layer certificate and tell them that they are OBCs and require special handouts. I can sleep peacefully at night anyways knowing that this has been a tried and tested formula that has worked well for the past 60 years and there arent any more farmers committing suicides and all the adivasis are jumping with joy knowing that IITs/IIMs have reservations for them.
Oh I don’t know if you want to do that. I hear the Kerala OBC category is no walk in the park. The rest of the paragraph is just an irrelevant rant. No one I know is suggesting that reservations are the panacea for all of India’s ills.
Aggain these are banal statements. How will NRIs be marginalized ? The assumption here is that some how NRIs run the show sitting in their homes…. A few people are marginaly tied to india like me… but are no players in any game And there is no “logical step” that any one is taking here. That is all every one is pointing too. And no favor of any kind should be applied in business scenario, A nationwide +ve discrimination has been applied for indian owned business particularly in manufacturing sector, which has lead to shoddy products.
Ponniyin Selvan,
From public domain, this is the best data I could get for JEE exams and socio-economic class. The source is The Tribune, Chandigarh.
Hope it answers your question. The data is dated (2001) though. Maybe, someone could bring a newer study regarding JEE.
Dharma Rani – No, I am not an alias for Razib. Even If I am, that doesn’t lessen the thrust of my accusation against those dastardly compatriots of yours. Those insidious people up north should get on planes, trains and automobiles [RIP John Candy] to head back to their ancestral home/s, forthwith. That is, if they have an iota of decency left. Alternately, the least they can do is spare us their [we are so much better than the rest of the world] lectures. Really!
Note: Comment 160 is from a letter to Editor to Tribune. I am not sure about the veracity of the data.
I challenge the concerned jokers to go ahead with 50% Reservation for not only students but also for teaching staff. Its better that Government builds one more IIT and IIM and call them RIIT and RIIM (R stands for you know what) and let others live in peace and maintain their standards. RIIT and RIIM may be put under AICTE for added glory. It will be wiser for the government to offer the best of education from primary education and make them face the world rather than give them feel of artificial security by reservation.
Naam Arjun Raknewala sab Yudh nahi jeeet saktein aur IIT IIM koi Kurushetra bi nahi hein Na is Arjun ke paas koi Krishn bhi hai Paritranaya sadhunam vinasaya Sathuskratham Dharma samsdha banarthaya sambavami yuge yuge Tora Tora Tora
Kush:
As you said, this is a letter to the editor in a Chandigarh newspaper and I believe it talks about the Entrance examinations of Haryana / Punjab / Chandigarh (??).. different from the IIT-JEE.
Ponniyin,
I read the letter carefully again (Comment 160). I agree with author’s point that at least JEE course syllabus should be totally compatible with +2 exam course-work of most of the boards in India. This might remove the need for expensive coaching class at least. There is lot of room for improvement to make the playing level if one looks carefully.
The numbers I gave above in the comment are from pre-JEE elite University days. In fact, letter points out some serious consequences of exams that require too much “prep-work”. No doubt. Apologies for mis-stating them in my earlier comment.
Universities like Roorkee (now IIT) have had entrance exams from almost 60-70 years or even earlier. BITS (Pilani) uses a complex normalized (from state to state and different boards) formula based on marks in +2 level exams, or used to for admissions. BITS, Pilani is comparable to IITs. IISc (Bangalore) has a Physics, Chemistry, Math extrance exam.
I am sure UGC (University Grants Commission), India has the data to your original question. Some SMer might dig them up.
Ponniyin,
You are right. It might have nothing to do with IIT-JEE because the person uses the term JET. Sorry.
i don’t want to focus on this, but since the discussion has almost ended, an off topic remark from me will follow.
technically it is. nothing asked in the jee is on a topic different from +2 course work. but one should realize that often, +2 coursework based questions in board exams (in karnataka for sure, i think it is no differnet anywhere else–please correct me if i am wrong) are exact replicas of questions/practice assignments students are taught in class. the jee just does not do that, instead you are required to understand most of the material more.
but this is my opinion—before you flame me, let me also point out that the math olympiad in india, and the international one are based on high school math. i can safely bet that most people on this thread, [definitely myself even if i am wrong abt others] even those with graduate education in math will find the exam non-trivial if not hard.
the jee is not nearly that deep, but it just asks for more than mere rote memory. if you want to do the jee by rote you can, i am sure there are coaching institutes that attempt exactly that. those defeat the purpose of the exam. but it is also fair to say that at least half (i would say more, but i am being conservative here) of the students largely don’t do it the rote way.
it would be a shame to say that an exam into which so much thought goes into should emulate “cut and paste and finish setting the paper in 15 min” type exams. my 2c.
I know this conversation is over, and everyone will prob have moved on to Norah Jones and her issues with ‘little willies’ by now…and not that anyone except me cares, but in a gratuitous display of selfishness i will say that now i know why the issue troubled me…
it has to do with what dude said earlier, and the whole framework of the discussion and the terms in which this was being said. the words ‘backward castes’ themselves being applied to a group of people shows how deeply entrenched racial discrimination is within our own mindset (maybe this accounts for lower levels of vocal protests in our own community against racism towards indians vs within other communities such as african-americans). people just seem to think its no rmal. sure, gandhi loved them, and he gave them a new name, and they’ve been given some reservations in a cynical vote-buying ploy carried out by politicians. most people seem to have been saying, this is enough. let’s stop focussing on the backward castes.
saying historically-discriminate peoples instead of something like ‘backward caste’ is NOT a PC cop-out, its acknowledging that the labels we give people have an influence on how we treat them. Someone calling a Chinese person a Ching-chong Chinaman will definitely treat them differently to someone calling them Asian-American.
is this really enough to help get rid of discrimination? no-one’s going to erase it completely, and obviously the caste system will always remain a salient part of the indian psyche. but i’m just speaking from personal experience as someone who has never even had a caste (im indian christian). i didn’t even know that people cared about it until some day someone told me that i was probably outside the caste system because of my religion. when i talked to my family about this, apparently a historian in our family did a big study and found out that our ancestors were from a small group of brahmins who converted out of choice, so i could rest easy at night knowing i wasn’t an untouchable. i remember at the time feeling unexplainably relieved that i wasn’t from a low caste.
i can see now why this discussion has been tainted with such an invisible underlying layer of discrimination, because if even i who have had no links with it all my life could feel that it somehow makes up a part of my identity/past, people on this thread for whom caste plays a bigger (not a big, just a bigger) part in their lives could not help but be subconsciously affected by this stupid little thing that ‘doesn’t matter anymore’ but somehow, if we admit it, still does.
Tashie:
people just seem to think its normal. sure, gandhi loved them, and he gave them a new name, and they’ve been given some reservations in a cynical vote-buying ploy carried out by politicians. most people seem to have been saying, this is enough. let’s stop focussing on the backward castes.
Nice post. Changing the ‘lables’ is an important step. Speaking about that, no one now uses the name that ‘Gandhi’ coined. Gandhi is probably a good person, but he comes out ‘casteist’ and naive in a lot of aspects.. Dalits rightly kicked out the patronising label of “Harijan”.
Changing the labels from backward/forward etc.. to ‘historically under-privileged’ is a good step. It would help in kicking out the ‘creamy layer’ too..
I keep hearing about ‘Dalit Christians’ and ‘caste in Indian Christianity’. This is from the “indianchristianity” website and “reliable”.. … In practice, the Dalits remained ‘Dalits’ regardless of religion. A Dalit is a Dalit whether he is a Hindu or a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Christian. Even as members of various Christian communities, Christan Dalits suffer the same ancient segregation, oppression and unjust discrimination, the same social, educational and economic disabilities, only now at the hands of their fellow Christians of the upper castes. . Conversion into the new faith has not redeemed them from their ‘dalitness’, the stigma of ‘Untouchablity’. Dalit and untouchable they have remained, even within the Christian communities. Among the 25 million Christians in India, 20 million are Dalits: the Dalits constitute the vast majority of the Christians .
Now look at this interesting piece..
…While Dipankar sounds the warning bell, there are many who think quality education will take a direct hit with the less worthy getting into professional institutes. But this may be succumbing to a stereotype. As Sanjay, a geologist with the National Hydro Electrical Power, says, “I was better than most of the students at IIT, Roorkee.” He explains why he took recourse to reservation as a desperate measure. “You will understand when you see the community and the family I come from. With no money and my father working as a fitter, education was the only way out to fight the system,” says Sanjay. Adds Venkat, an MIT graduate now working with Bose Corporation in Massachusetts. “I availed of reservation for getting in BE. Studying at a dysfunctional government school in Andhra Pradesh and ending up at MIT has been a long journey which I couldn’t have travelled without the crucial break I got through reservations.”..
How will NRIs be marginalized ?
A large number of NRIs are on student visas and HIB visas – they’ll have to go back home and eventually raise kids there/
Here’s a nice pro-reservation artricle from this morning’s Outlook Magazine, How Sharad Got a Life
Ponniyan Selvan:
-I know that Dalits discarded Gandhi’s children of God/’Harijan’ which was seen as patronising, but it seemed like I didn’t know that so all good for pointing out to me who writes unedited rants vs your well-thought out, much more grown-up comments. I still stick by ‘historically discriminated peoples’ vs backward castes though. After all, even if people think it sounds wanky I would rather officially be known as an Indian New or bi-cultural person than a big fat fob (except by my mates, who all know the truth ;-)).
-I also have to admit that up till now my education on Indian Christians and caste consisted of reading The God of Small Things many times over and thinking about the Dalits who converted to Christianity ‘having no footprints’ vs wiping away their footprints as they were forced to when Hindu. I am aware though from what was posted by you, that my fiction-based perceptions were confirmed many Indian Christians are from low castes and still suffer the discrimination which I have never had to face because I grew up in an urban setting and was lucky enough to not get treated like shit.
-Like dharma girl and others who have stated above, reservations are NOT an insult to a person’s natural abilities but as ACKNOWLEDGING the historical injustices that have created to their current discriminatory circusmtances ie most of them are poor and are without the means to gain a university education. the virtual guarantee of employment from people graduationg from these institututes means that these reservations are not wasted resources and will have a direct impact on people who have suffered caste discrimination, most of whom remain poor.
-if people cheat the system so cleverly by manipulating their ‘race’ people could also equally manipulate their official economic status through clever accountancy, putting their income in trusts etc.
-i really think that with methods like affirmative action you cannot ask the dominant group in society whether it works. that’s kind of like asking the person who got to start the race two minutes early-‘so, how come the other guy lost?’
-neither can you point out to a few exceptions of rich people from a disadvantaged group and poor people from a rich group and distort the perspective with which you view their communities.
Reservation != Affirmative Action. Please.
It would be nice to change that particular label, but don’t expect too much from it – generally when a low-status label is changed in an attempt to alter the general thinking, much of the old stigma merely attaches itself to the new label after a time. Although you probably get some dilution after a few label switches.
(I had an example here of the progression of labels for what are now called “mentally challenged” people, but the comment submission program thought I was insulting all of you!)
Some talented people will surely be benefited by it – those who are really not that low in “quality” just lacked the background to be able to afford tuitions and coaching classes and still were able to make it to a decent level without it. But overall it will only keep generating these poster boy/girl examples of the backward classes who made it; whereas the impact on the majority is still low. Unless the massive shortage of education infrastructure is itself addressed (starting from the primary level), no significant upliftment can be achieved. These kinda schemes are mainly political gimmicks, easy way outs for vote-gathering.
But overall it will only keep generating these poster boy/girl examples of the backward classes who made it; whereas the impact on the majority is still low.
According to the Dean of IIT Kharagpur, quoted in the Outlook article, only 5/700 or so failed out of that IIT. The impact of IITS and other elite institutions upon ALL of India is negligible. Even the so-called dwija castes have very high numbers in poverty and are victims of illiteracy. We are talking about a Third World country with a per capita GDP of 3400.
Unless the massive shortage of education infrastructure is itself addressed (starting from the primary level), no significant upliftment can be achieved.
This is true
These kinda schemes are mainly political gimmicks, easy way outs for vote-gathering.
Politicians are elected by the people. Don’t blame the politicians, blame the people.
Hate to beat what may be a dead horse… but it’s a shame that with the reservation system, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of post-admission support structure to help the applicable students actually succeed. (Or am I wrong?)
It’s like, you’re recognizing that these students had to struggle with daily survival/discrimination along with the intense studying needed to get in… but once they’re in, it’s like, “OK, good luck!”
In the USA most universities have Native American, African American, etc. offices to support those populations… some are pretty effective with having workshops and other things to actually help their groups develop life management skills, emotional resilience, or when the man sticks it to you, stick it to him and *you’re not alone” support groups and that other soft stuff — which address the more subtle things which can affect how well your intelligence is expressed.
Primary education for all is a big answer, but not the only one…
@173, tashie yes, using backward is not a good idea—people use it in india anyway not because even social workers, and the relevant castes themselves use it. even the govt uses it. it does not have the sting that it may have for you since in most cases, people do not use english too often. local languages do not necessarily use “backward”.
but to be fair, it is also not used in the context of dalits or the adivasis or some others who bore the brunt of discrimination. they are listed as scheduled castes/tribes (sc/st)—scheduled because they are listed in some schedule of the constitution.
@everyone i am not making any points below, but i would like to remind people of some aspects of this discussion:
while i know some on this board argue for economics based reservations, there is NO real debate in india abt this. reservations are caste-based now, and will remain that way. more so, there is also NO real debate in india abt dismantling reservations.
the debate in india is mainly abt having 50% reservations or 70% (the iit case, it is 25 or 50). and i pointed this out several times, but seems to have been ignored—the increase will NOT benefit sc/sts. several of you point out the tragic and moving stories of dalits, but this increase is NOT intended for them at all. the reservation earmarked for them remains as it is, this is to include others in the reservation net.
this is not to say the intended recipients may not be worthy—simply that the examples many of you quote (thx for digging them up though) are not relevant for the points you intend to make. it is a growing concern among some dalit leaders in india today that dalit sc/sts are marginalized from this ambiguity. if others quote dalit troubles to obtain sops for themselves, guess who is still stuck at the bottom? dalit-sc/st reservation levels will hardly change significantly from ’47 (25% today), while the overall reservation has increased to 70% in tn, and intended to be that in the mandal recommendations.
and again, it is a misconception that:
once agin, the point i am making is that it is not “rich/poor” issue. forward castes have an educational advantage since they have never been discriminated against. dalits, sc/sts are usually very very poor, but it gets more murky when you compare obcs (who this reservation increase is intended for) and non-obcs. some obc communities are poor, and some are not. you are right in assuming is that community wise you will not find non-obc castes at the bottom of the poverty table, but neither will you find them at the top. i am not talking abt a few in each community here, rather a community average.
you are right in not believing me, but you are wrong in assuming it is a “rich vs poor” debate as you have insisted all along (you say caste reservation and rich-poor reservations differ on a technicality). for the sake of argument again, if you change it to economic criteria (which does not have much support in india) a significant number of the castes which would benefit from the reservation increase intended will drop out.
you are right for the most part. some institutions (iits included) do have a “support” structure, but no one is required to have one, and most do not. even the iit support structure is skeletal, it just includes certain extra previlages. there is no counseling etc as far as i know.
we all seem to have missed this: (from outlook)
the magazine does not address if the seats open for competition remain the same or not. 200 in iit kgp is not sufficient information to decide this though (200 for btech/mtech together? just entrance exam seats?).
however, i doubt there would have been 181 comments if we knew the answer to the question above. 🙂
Anyways, I would really like somebody to explain this concept of reservations to me and where is it going to end.
When people stop asking for a boy from a suitable subcaste on shaadi.com? Never maybe?
Yeah, whats all that about punjabi khatri only or maratha only contact. WTF. This is america. Maybe they should start americanshadi.com. 🙂
A combination of “reservations” and “unemployment insurance” will be a win-win proposition for all.
@106:Ponniyin Selvan
I had not taken any coaching whatsoever. Infact, I was not even preparing for entrace as I was underage for IIT (the cut-off was 17 years and I was just 15 years). I decided that I will study for two years and then go to IIT. I gave Roorkee CEE (which is at par with IIT-JEE in difficulty and format, Roorkee has become IIT since 2001) just for fun and scored 652 all india rank. I was surprised too. I am from UP Board and Hindi Medium and not from a rich background. My mom is a teacher in a government school.
You can debate on CEE vs JEE here. But ranks are almost similar across these two exams. Also, while JEE is known for its difficult Physics, CEE was known for its difficult Maths.
BTW, I know various IITians who never took coaching. I must also say that having educated parents did help (though none are from elite schools and not engineers or doctors – but they understand the importance of education).
I’m for reservations for temporary short term solution, but the basis has to be economic backwardness. I would have gotten one in that case too. But I probably didn’t need it. I finished my bachelors and joined my first job at the age of 18.
(Posting here because the comments on the latest thread are closed)
Abhi,
I went back and re-read what you wrote…
So you were just quoting. Somehow I mistook that this is in fact your position. Sorry about that.
Going back to the topic…
I think with this issue, India is at a pivotal point in history. A piece of legislation is being shoved in without any debate, and the people backing the legislation have little more than the next election in their sights. Competitive populism has known to bring down civilisations in the past, and India won’t be an exception to the laws of nature.
If this goes through, in a few years (if Congress wins the next general elections), the entire reservation system will be made applicable to the private sector. Initially they will bring it “only for companies who have more than 1000 workers” – thus brining the large business houses under it. Wipro’s Premji will have to not only hire based on quotas, but he will have to hand out work based on quotas as well. So he will have to assign a certain %age of US projects to OBC’s, certain %age of European projects to SC’s, so on and so forth. If the company has twelve directors on its board, ten would have to be in the reservation category. If Narayanamurthy cannot find ten, then he will be forced to sell his shares in the open market, and the government will provide funds to Dalit organisations to buy the shares and come on board. I am not kidding about this – this will happen.
In another few years, they will gradually reduce the company size, so even a company with twenty employees will come under the law. If a producer makes a movie, he will get a visit from the government employee verifying that he is adhering to quotas. If he made the last movie with an upper-caste hero, he will be forced to make the next one with a lower-caste hero. If he cannot find one, the government will assign him one. Again, I am not kidding around with a slippery slope argument. This will happen.
If the agitators give up, barring any stroke of luck (like discovery of large oil reserves in India etc), you may as well write off India within the next thirty-forty years. It will become a conglomeration of Rwandas and Burundis, with people hacking each other off on the streets.
M. Nam
If the agitators give up, barring any stroke of luck (like discovery of large oil reserves in India etc), you may as well write off India within the next thirty-forty years. It will become a conglomeration of Rwandas and Burundis, with people hacking each other off on the streets.
Well.. no need to worry on that front, The southern states have used reservations for decades and are among the top growing states..
So you have talked about the problems.. what’s your solution to all this.. Do you support “inter-caste marriages” , so that “caste” as a discriminator really becomes a thing of the past in future generations..??