Quota Facts

The past few weeks have probably seen the largest single movement in India's post-independence history. Students from various disciplines and institutions combined with their alumni have stood up for their rights and prayed that common sense prevail in this mayhem of quota politics bought about by the corrupt Arjun Singh. There have been protests all through the country and this has mobilised the student population against the Congress party and its tactics of using the caste system as an agenda to gain votes.

As I said before this is a sweet sorrow for me. On one hand we have seen that students and the public in general have become fed up with the corruption and under-handed tactics of our octogenarian politicians and are ready to take a stand together. On the other hand we have seen that just this is not enough. There needs to be a mass mobilisation of citizens to overthrow, literally, these morons who claim to guard our Constitution and our Constitutional Rights, while most of them don't have the brain-power to draft a 2-page memo.

On one of the talk-shows of "Headlines Today" (another of the long list of new NEWS channels here) the ex-director of IIT-Madras was present and he provided some interesting facts and analogys which I wanted to list here. Some other facts from other sources are added in too.
*** The IIT's have the standard 24odd% reservation for SC/ST/OBC currently but these seats are filled on a reduced merit level. So the candidates of these communities have to give the JEE (Joint Entrance Examination). So if there are 3000 available seats the IIT's take the 6000th ranked student's marks and a percentage of that is used as the cut-off for the reserved students. Yet a handful of these seats are utilised each year. Moreover if any of these students are found to need some sort of educational coaching the IITs provide a 1-year course for them to prepare themselves and get into these institutes. And even then these seats lie vacant.
*** By fact it has been recorded that the average family income of the students entering the IIM-A based on reservation is greater than that of the students entering it in the general/non-reserved category.
*** A perfect analogy presented by another member in the audience, an AIIMS alumni was based on India's polio problems and the various initiatives lead by the government. He said something along these lines "We can eradicate polio by having vaccines available to children at birth and gift them a happy and normal life. In a similar way we can give equal opportunity to oppressed classes by providing them with the right and access to basic education. However what the government is currently suggesting with the quota system is similar to saying that they don't want to provide the vaccines but instead they will give free crutches to the kids who have polio once they turn 21"
*** To provide the promised increase in general category seats are promised by the government it would take 8,000cr and minimum of 3-5 years for it to be effective. This was from a report given in by a committee appointed by the government itself.
*** IIT Bombay release figures that it would take it nearly 325cr and 3-5 years to increase its capacity and get the resources to accommodate these new seats.

Some more facts
*** The women's reservation bill has been flying around the Parliament for decades now. There has been no action taken on it at all. I doubt if they would be able to find the original draft if asked for.
*** There is no such reservation in Parliament for OBCs
*** Arjun Singh is a crappy old corrupt maniac who can't stand or walk by himself and with no strand of common sense in a 1km radius around him

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