Alternate Reservation Policy

There has been so much hue and cry about the new reservation policy of the government. It is no doubt that any kind 0f reservation would kill merit. Number of seats in prestigious institutes and not increasing as fast as our population. And now with this new reservation policy in place the number of seats to general category will further reduce making it impossible for a normal student to get into these prestigious institutes.

The main question is why should there be reservation. Is it good, or is it bad?Does it serve any purpose or not?

In my opinion there is nothing known as perfectly black or perfectly white. Everything has its pros and cons. And it is upto us that we must find what is the best way so as to make the most of it.

In the context of reservation. As many politicians claim that reservation help the uplift of backward classes. But what are the backward classes? They claim, people belonging to SC/ST/OBC. Are they really backward? I dont think so. Ok, they may be still economically backward but the major benefitter of the reservation are the people who have been benefitted by it once and know how to find their way around. Same family are repeatedly using the reservation policy for their benefit, depriving other [economically] backward people to enjoy the fruits of reservation.

So I believe that this reservation policy should be based on economic status and not on the place of birth. The advantage of reservation based on economic status is that, people belonging to upper castes but are economically poor too will get the benefits of reservation. While people of so called backward class, who are not economically backward will not get the benefits as they any way can afford it.

Many people directly relate the reservation system with the quota system, but I beg to differ. Having a reservation policy and going for a quota system are two independent things. Reservation policy is an policy while quota system is the implementation. One can always find other methods of implementing the reservation policy.

Alternative to quota system.

In US, the reservation policy is implemented by giving extra time during the examination to the targetted group, which is mainly comprising of physically and mentally handicapped students. That system too is being abused because rich children are now a days buying a certificate stating that they are mentally challenged, hence getting extra time during examination gaining a clear couple of hundred points during their SATs

So one need another system to implement the required policy.

Reuirements of the system:
Merit should be given utmost importance, but still taking care of weaker sections of the society.

To fulfill this requirement, first we need to define merit. Merit is not all about scoring more marks in the exams. Merit is the product of intelligence, hard work, talent and exposure to knowledge. And the system should be able to take into account all these factors in right proportion.

We can say that current system of exam takes care of intelligence, hard work and telent, as these traits does not depend on ones financial background. But exposure to knowledge is not taken care of properly in the present system. That is why children from rich and middle-class gets away with all the meritorious seats because they are more aware of the things around them and not because they are more intellient or more hardworking.

So, I propose a new system to take care of drawbacks of our current system. The bonus system instead of quota system. In bonus system all targetted students would be given some bonus marks in the exam, and then treated at par with the general category.

For example: If a student is entiltled for 5% bonus and he scored 72% marks.

His new marks would be 72% + 5% of 72% = 75.6%.

Hence the students earning good marks inspite of their drawbacks will be awarded more handsomely that others.

Now the question arise is how to decide the bonus percent and who should be entitled for it.

If we go directly by economic status of the family then we may not able to target the right category. There are instances of poor people sending their children to good schools because of some kind of scholarship, etc. Similarly, There are indeed not so poor people who are sending their children to not so decent schools, esp. the girl child.

I believe that level of education at schools is directly proportional to the fees they charge. Secondly level of exposure of a student is directly proportional to the level of education at the schools. So i believe that the reservation policy should be based on the level of education one recieved at the schools. And as it is directly proportional to the fees they charge, it will indirectly cater poor sections of the society, while carefully leaving out the students which are getting good education on some kind of scholarship.

All the schools should be classified into four categories: A, B, C and D.
A: the best and the most expensive kinds of schools like DPS RKpuram, Doon School, Scidia School, etc
B: all major kind of schools, convent schools, private schools, etc. which charge a reasonaly amount of fees and offer a decent quality of education.
C: the lower end, cheap private schools and medium level govt. schools. Which are not so good, but certainly not the worst.
D: a typical govt school, where half of teachers dont know which class they are teaching, rural schools, which work under palm tree or in one room schools, etc.

These types should be assigned to schools by an independent agency. It will serve two purposes.

Firstly the parents will know the standard schools before sending their wards to them. Today parents face really big challenge in deciding which school to pick. If such categorisation is aviable, it would be great help to parents. To help them more sub categories could be introduced in the major four categories depending upon other criterias.


Secondly reservation could easily be given to students on the basis of school they went in. I believe that category A and B students do not need any kind of reservation. They are well prepared and well aware of the world around and giving them reservation would be a bad choice independent of their economical status, caste or religion.

Category C could be offered 2% bonus while D could be offered 5%. This way they will be equally rated and come at par with other students, and can over come the problems they faced due to their poor status.

Children of rich kids would be discouraged for going to lower level schools as middle and high class people care about their status-symbol too much to send their children to C or D kind of schools.