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Arun Shourie recently gave a speech at the IISC Bangalore ( the premier institute in the country for research ) on Equality of Opportunity .
A bit of the background :
The Mandal Commission
In India , the Scheduled Castes and Tribes have been given a fixed percentage of the seats in educational institutions ( including privately owned and run ones - a gross violation of both the Constution and property rights ) . These reservations were implemented ( with much opposition from the top leaders of the time ) at the time of Indian independence to help the educationally and socially backward SCs and STs , and make them competetive with the normal castes . This was supposed to be restricted to ten years .
But politicians , in order to garner votes from these castes , kept on extending these reservations , and they exist even now , and the politicians of the moment saying that to garner even more votes , they will be extending these reservations to other , non-discriminated castes ( the ones who were traditionally not discriminated against , but remained backward because they enjoyed a high social standing in the villages and therefore did not come to the cities ) called the Other Backward Castes .
The data they use for this reservation is from the 1931 census - because no census after that has enumerated caste as a category . They forget that at that time , India included Pakistan , Burma , Sri Lanks , Nepal , and Bangladesh .
A link to the speech : Google Video .
It's rather long , but well worth watching .
In it , he advocates absolutely secular criterion for deciding who should get aid - economic criterion , mostly - and advocates that the unit of deciding who should get help and who should not should be the individual . He advocates that there be on discrimination on the basis of caste , race , language , residence , gender , or religion .
I'd like to ask your opinions on this issue - and I don't want general opinions , I want you , the reader , to actually watch the speech , and only then comment .
A bit of the background :
The Mandal Commission
In India , the Scheduled Castes and Tribes have been given a fixed percentage of the seats in educational institutions ( including privately owned and run ones - a gross violation of both the Constution and property rights ) . These reservations were implemented ( with much opposition from the top leaders of the time ) at the time of Indian independence to help the educationally and socially backward SCs and STs , and make them competetive with the normal castes . This was supposed to be restricted to ten years .
But politicians , in order to garner votes from these castes , kept on extending these reservations , and they exist even now , and the politicians of the moment saying that to garner even more votes , they will be extending these reservations to other , non-discriminated castes ( the ones who were traditionally not discriminated against , but remained backward because they enjoyed a high social standing in the villages and therefore did not come to the cities ) called the Other Backward Castes .
The data they use for this reservation is from the 1931 census - because no census after that has enumerated caste as a category . They forget that at that time , India included Pakistan , Burma , Sri Lanks , Nepal , and Bangladesh .
A link to the speech : Google Video .
It's rather long , but well worth watching .
In it , he advocates absolutely secular criterion for deciding who should get aid - economic criterion , mostly - and advocates that the unit of deciding who should get help and who should not should be the individual . He advocates that there be on discrimination on the basis of caste , race , language , residence , gender , or religion .
I'd like to ask your opinions on this issue - and I don't want general opinions , I want you , the reader , to actually watch the speech , and only then comment .
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