Me too have some reservations…

Remember the street plays titled pro-reservation and anti-reservation strikes that used to run full house (and empty classrooms) all over my country? I’m not trying to remember the similar, and much more dramatic one that was staged fifteen years back. I’m asking about the recent one. The Medicos stir. Now you remember.

Me too had forgotten about it. I don’t know any of those protests are still on. It’s media that controls collective public memory. And it is another newspaper report unintentionally brightened up my memory of medical students in their not-so-white housecoats holding candles in an early night protest. This one came up yesterday, about thousands of engineering seats in colleges in Karnataka being left unfilled.

I am not yet able to figure out the present admission procedures in Karnataka. Those are defined and controlled by two or more governing bodies, and few more in the case of institutes controlled by autonomous boards. This particular report gives me the figures about the engineering colleges that have to follow CET procedures for admissions. I had failed almost all my mathematics papers before successfully dropping out the college. But I had cleared my statistics paper. Statistics is fun for people with an average intelligent quotient. Here’s a sample. In the last academic year there were more than 9,000 vacancies in these engineering that remained vacant. This year it is about 3,200. That is after cutting the offered seats by more than 3000. In private unaided colleges, 40% of the seats are ‘reserved’ under management quota, which are duly filled (sold?) every year. 40% are under concessional-fee, and the rest 20% are under higher-fee scheme. The concession fee is Rs. 15,000 and higher-fee is around Rs. 80,000. And these fees are almost half or lesser compared to those for medical studies. The fees for last year’s admissions were higher. Now, you have all the figures, and no way to know the situation is a better one or not! If you score brilliantly in the entrance test, you will rightly be entitled to have the option: pay it, or leave it. I would like to know the number of students who are eligible for admissions, but are not. Statistics sometimes is really mean.

Exactly here is where I want to bring in the flashback: the Medicos Stir. Was it only me who wondered why the anti-reservation agitation was called the Medicos Stir, when the proposed reservations are applicable to all fields of higher education? That was because most of the organised protesters were from medical institutes. The reason is obvious; it is in medical studies the reservations will make the most impact. Is there a ‘healthcare gene’ in uppercast individuals, similar to the American discovery of ‘starvation gene’ in Asians and Africans? It is something only our medical professionals can answer.

The reservation bill is of course motivated by political ambitions. So are the protests against it. The later enabled a panwala to wear a medical professional's attire before burning himself up with it. It looks like a classic example of natural double negation to me. Those who shout for equality surely know some are more equal than others. If one has to worry about the right of learning lost by reservations, he or she has to be that rich. And the reservations are applicable only for the admissions, not the marks one should secure to pass. In our educational system you can pass most of the exams by answering up to 60% questions wrong. To add to that, we have a very healthy unemployment percentage that would ensure only the best can actually use their academic qualifications. Then, what more brain damage reservations could possibly make?