My two cents on the OBC reservation issue in India
A lot has been said about the Supreme Court’s ruling regarding the 27% reservation in educational institutes for students which belong to OBC groups. I don’t want to give an opinion on this (as whatever my opinion might be, it’s been given by others so many times). What I want to talk about is the word Amelioration. The reason I want to do that is that at home I came upon an old 1954 copy of “The Rajasthan Herald” which talks about the First Five Year Plan and in it it talks about “Amelioration of Backward Classes”. Take a look at these pictures here from the newspaper (click to see a larger version):
I took a picture of the page discussing this plan. What is interesting is this breakup of planned expenditure for the First Five Year plan for the state of Rajasthan:
Notice the amount allotted towards “Amelioration of Backward Classes”. A full 2.5% of the entire state’s budget. Now I don’t know how much money this is in today’s currency, but I bet it is a lot.
If you had followed the link (or if you are smart unlike me), “Amelioration” means “to act toward improvement”. So, we have been trying to improve upon the state of Backward Classes for almost 60 years now. Improve? By the looks of it, we have been going backwards.
Food for thought?
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April 23rd, 2008 at 1:15 am
Hello there. I was sent a link to your blog by a friend a while ago. I have been reading a long for a while now. Just wanted to say HI. Thanks for putting in all the hard work.
Jennifer Lancey
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Heh. Indeed we are going backwards now. And 2.5% of the state’s budget sounds stupid. I wonder how those damned planners got away with that.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:07 pm
@Krishna What I wonder is where the money went?
April 24th, 2008 at 6:39 am
Err… In the pockets of our Babus. What say?
April 24th, 2008 at 10:36 am
You are probably right….
May 1st, 2008 at 4:18 am
Our politicians sadly only know divisive politics. Their formula is simple…divide people on the basis of language, religion, caste, etc and then sit back and rule. That diverts attention and money from real problems…
How can we ever achieve so called “superpower” status when real problems like ‘40% of children under 5 are malnourished’ are not addressed.
India ranks lower than Sub-Saharan Africa on several Human Development indicators. I am not making this up… i have been following the UNDP reports and it seems India will miss the MDG goals…
All this talk about potential superpower is all BS…
May 1st, 2008 at 4:20 am
@Sayan,
you are dead on. don’t even get me started on the politicians.
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:49 pm
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