Reach

Mandal Commision is back. This time Arjun Singh, the HRD minister of India, wants to formulate a policy to introduce reservations in the elite institutes of India, the IITs and IIMs.

I've an anecdote to share related to the OBC quota issue.

One of my friend belongs to the OBC caste. One day I met him and we were discussing our education. My friend proudly told me that he completed his education on open merit, and not the OBC seat. He was of the strong belief that he should study at a place where his marks warrant him a seat and not the government quota. In other words, he took admission on an open seat in one of the engineering colleges in Pune. Since his marks were not in proportion to those required by the topmost educational institutes based on the open merit criteria, he did not get a seat in the topmost educational institutes in Pune but rather took it in another college based on his marks for the open seat. I admired his courage to do that. Afterall, I haven't met many people with such high self-esteem. He could have easily taken the reserved seat in the topmost college in Pune, which he, according to the rules, was entitled to.

However, he did commit, according to me, one mistake. He took admission through the open category. Now, you would ask, so what's wrong with it. Well, lets say a typical engineering college has 40 seats for each engineering stream. Of the 40, 50% are reserved payment seats. So we have 20 free seats. Of the 20, 50% are reserved. So we have 10 free seats for open category. If I'm not mistaken, there is some amount of reservation for the girls, I'm not sure how much, but lets take it 30%. So we remain with only 7 free seats for an open candidate! Of the only 7 seats that are available for the open candidate, 1 is grabbed by my friend. So we now have just 6 of the 40 seats for an open merit male candidate. If 6 other OBC candidates think this way, an open merit male candidate has no engineering future, for sure. God save him! He would never get that seat even when he deserved it.

The OBC candidates who had the guts to take admission based on their merits are really role models. Not many can think like that. However, while taking their admission, I believe, they should still choose the OBC seat. They should opt for the college where they would get admission based on open merit criteria (like my friend did), however, while taking admission, choose the OBC seat instead of open. That way, they would not end up consuming an open seat which an open male candidate badly needs.

Manish.