Dear Friends,
I wonder if the question of reservation is as simple as just having two facets - eiethr provide or abolish. I will tell you the ground reality of my village where i have grown. India got her independence some 60 odd years back and literacy and education has gone up from a mere 1 % in 1901 to 10 % in 1951 and 75 % approximately in 2011. However, when i try to analyse the plight of lower strata of our society, i find still they are uneducated, barely literate now (get dropped out after middle class) and have not been able to take the benefit of reservation. Only 3 students from SC have made it to graduation and out of that 2 dropped it in graduation due to financial strain. One moved ahead but didn't get a respectable job.
During life, as my aspiration gone, i countered many people of SC community who are undeserving and still benefiting out of reservation system. One of my friend was son of commissioner of Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) and still got the reservation benefit. At the same time, i observed that many people of so called upper-caste badly disadvantaged due to financial strain and coulddn't afford to give education to their child.
These two contrasting examples bring light on paradoxical nature of reservation system. As being Indian,
i do feel that, if a significant population of india are kept outside the development and growth aura, it will create dissonance in longer term (even in shorter term, we are witnessing in the form of naxalism) and hamper the growth of India as a nation. So somehow, we have ethical responsibility to bring back this disadvantageous section of society in to mainstream to create a harmonious environment for growth with equity else nation may run in civil war sometime. Further, it may be observed that village-schooling system is far away to enthuse those traits and skill which are required by say an IIM.
How can we really identify the disadvantaged section? That is a subject of brainstorming .
But multiple factor comes - Place of upbringing, Education medium, Parents education, Parents monthly income, Caste, Gender etc
So, i am an advocate of affirmative action based on multiple factors in which caste is just one factor. Comprehensively multiple factors could be decided and weight can be assigned to each. Reservation entitlement and extent both must be based on these multiple factors.
Pr. Purushottam Agrawal, UPSC member and former Prof. at JNU made an humble attempt in designing such multi-factor based reservation system. His views can be accessed from here -
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main18....yond_caste.asp
PS: It may be noted down that i do not belong to disadvantaged section and views are purely unbiased.