Hail reservation!

Human resource and development ministry is one every national party secretly wishes to abolish. Murli Manohar Joshi tried to write history books and reduce IIM fees to curb its autonomy. Arjun Singh's recent move to get 50% reservations for minorities in prestigious institutes like IITs and IIMs and medical colleges faces upper caste backlash. Surely HRD ministers have a knack of putting Governments in a fix only a few ministries can match.

So what if 50% seats are reserved for minorities? IT firms aren't recruting from IITs but hordes of second and third tier colleges and the industry is doing fine. IIMs total strength is 1400 but India inc is not complaining. There might be concerns about quality, but in the bigger scheme of things, the impact is marginal.

Everytime, reservations issues crop up, the standard excuses crop as well- The system discriminates a poor brahmin to an elite dalit bureaucrat, it affects quality, reservations have been in place for too long with little results and lastly, give them opportunities in education, not seats or jobs. Lets see it one by one.

First one- affirmative action is intended to target those segments of population which has been deprived of opportunities for long so that social imbalances are corrected. The issue needs to be dealt with independently of reservation on basis of economic imbalances.

The system doesn't place minorities in IITs. It only relaxes criteria for them- its like having a shorter boundary for a OBC cricket player- he still has to get the runs himself.That is why inspite of reservations, institutes find it difficult to fill them with actual minority candidates.

There is no reason to think reservations must've delivered after 6 decades- see the endless potholes, frequent powercuts, traffic jams. Don't be too hard on the poor system;it never works.

As far as giving them opportunities than reserve jobs, the former is taken care by the latter. Its very difficult to correlate the rupees spent on opportunities and the results. If a way is found, its the best way to go about it.

Hail affirmative action! Thank god minister's move is after I got into IIM.

Musings from munirka

We have a serious problem, my guide tells me, we find it difficult to sell the resin during lean months. I’ll reserve my strong emotions for worse disasters. I nod my head gravely anyway.

The summers project started a month back, with an orientation session. A whole session went off with the company history. One Lala Shriram who founded DCM, gave birth to three Shrirams who in turn gave birth to well, lot of shrirams. They fought among each other and gave birth to even more shriram companies and here we are, he showed one corner with a laser pointer. Thank god for flowcharts, it might well have turned out a disorientation session. I already had first three pages of my report ready.

Tell you what, there is a saying in tamil – oru paanai sotrukku oru soru padham. (How do you know whether the rice is cooked? Sample one grain and see.) It couldn’t be truer with my survey. I could’ve written the whole report after meeting one consumer. They are all the same. The good thing is I chose my time to work and when to go to office.

I frequent my relatives place here during weekends to eat south Indian food and well, keep in touch in the process. Wherever I go, I’m asked to advise the kids- Jyotika, anna is brilliant and hardworking (I know) so ask for his advise. The kid comes to me and looks at me like I’m some…whatever. Where do you stand in class, kid? Last time, I missed the first rank, she avers. Hmmm, how can you miss first rank? I shout at her. What comes around goes around. Hahahahaha. Thankfully, she didn’t ask the same question.