Mandal Again!!!

The latest controversy related to govt is related to education sector reservation. Thanks to tireless Mr. Arjun Singh whose only qualification seems to be creating controversies (be it IIM, Aligarh Muslim Univ or in toxification of text books). This time he has recommended 27% reservations for OBCs. This threatens to snowball in Mandal-II controversy.
The question is my mind is has this policy of reservation paid any dividends? Have we assessed its real benefits to the downtrodden sections? In my mind it has actually harmed those very sections. To elaborate this I count on my experiences in Engg College. I passed out from a reputed Government college in Maharashtra where cut off for Mechanical engg in general category was above 98% and that for reserved category was @ 55-60%. Well that’s fine. But bigger issue is out of the 50% seats filled through reservation only 5-10% manage to complete their degree course in 4 years. Rest of population takes 6-8 years and some actually drop out. I am sure medical and other professional course have similar story. That means all these government measures have failed to improve the standards of education in this sections. And nobody is bothered about it. Can Mr. Arjun singh find answer to this?
There are different possible reasons for it.
Government policy is not reaching to people who are bright and unable to provide for the education expenses as majority people stay in villages and small towns where general standards of education are really questionable and disgusting at best.
Because of these reservations the general mindset in community is they get job even if they are not very good academics. This mindset has become root cause for the non developments. If you look at history, people with fewer choices become more efficient and smart. E.g. student in UP/Bihar are good at UPSC exams because lack of other alternatives like engg/medicine courses. Brahmins are good at education as they are taught value education and most importantly have no means like huge farms/political power.

Now what are disadvantages of this policy? Well institutes like IIM/IIT are known for their best talent. There is cut throat competition to get good job. Lets assume that we get 1000 such engg from IIT every year. With 27% reservation, there will be 270 people with lesser capabilities to deal with the competition. (We can take 25% of these students actually able to compete). That means now we have only 800 people who have the required capabilities. That means 20% reduction in supply of skilled manpower. With economy growing at this pace can we afford this? More over it reduces competitive instinct from these students that are in danger of lacking for ever.

So what is solution?
Best way is reservation of Economically Backward classes (EBC) rather than caste based reservations.
This will ensure needy gets the support and politicians can not play vote bank politics.
Second most important thing is improve the quality and availability of education at grass root level and rather than creating mark getting machines create citizens with different abilities. Today the student in 10th or 12th is blindly attracted towards engg/IT/medicin rather than realizing what he is good at. With economical progress, there are a lot of different avenues today for making a good living. But who knows and cares for them.

This will actually help in removing the caste discrimination in society. Because if the govt itself is not willing to get rid of caste how can it expect it removed from society. For any govt favour economic abilities should only be the criteria and nothing else.