[Reader-list] Mandal Exposed: Part I

[Shivam]

There are more than enough seats for all higher education students in
the country. Be it engineering or medicine or management or plain old
BA courses, there are more than enough seats in this country. Why then
are the anti-reservation alarmists painting a picture that some
general category people will go without an education?

If you read this:
http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web2196523711Hoot122711%20AM1229&pn=1

and this:
http://www.countercurrents.org/dalit-vij061204.htm

you will know more or less why I support reservations in principle:
I've seen how caste prejudice works and I have seen how reservations
help.

There is this whole one-point facetious argument of merit. In my
college 22 or so per sent seats are reserved for Christian students.
Fair enough: the college was established by Christian missionaries and
wishes to preserve its Christian character. As a result I have
Christian classmates who got much less marks in their Class 12 exams
than I did. But many of them are performing much better in their
academics than I am. Quotas and the issue of merit is much more
complicated than what it is being made out to be. Quota doesn't mean
that an absolute nutcase is going to sit in an engineering class. It
means that a student with 65% marks could be studying in a class with
a student who got 95%. To say that the two can't co-exist is absurd.

The media has coined a corny title for this one - Mandal II. In the
last post Dilip has already mentioned media bias in the coverage of
the issue. I've been getting all kinds of sms-es from friends in Delhi
University: gather here for protest, gather there for protest. NDTV
has promised support. Sahara has promised support. And then an sms
said that Aditya Sarma (a III Maths student of Hans Raj College) is on
a hunger strike and may immolate himself soon.

I wonder if Mr Sarma is planning to contest Delhi University Students'
Union elections next year. That's what Rajiv Goswami had done after
attempting to immolate himself in 1990. Goswami finally succumbed to
health problems in 2004. Do you see the irony here: by the time his
immolation killed him, Shining India had arrived. The picture they had
painted in Mandal I - that 'we' will be left unemployed, uneducated -
is the last thing you see today.

If Aditya Sarma does immolate himself, all those of you igniting this
false frenzy - all the bloggers and editors and the chai-shop
gossipers - you will be responsible for it.

Lastly, all those opposing "Mandal II" should tell us whether they are
non-OBC. Upper castes are no doubt meritocratic (which is why sons
inherit fathers' businesses), and they are no doubt oblivious to caste
(just see the matrimonial pages), but there is the hint of vested
interest here. And if you are opposing reservations because admissions
will become tougher for you, you won't get the point of affirmative
action anyway.

Lastly, as an aside, will you believe me that I have met Mandal? No,
not Justice BP Mandal but Ashok Mandal. He is a rickshaw puller in
Delhi University and hails from Murho in Madhepura. Just where Justice
Mandal came from.