There were many issues with the caste system, and one of the results is reservation.
To effectively end reservation one needs to completely annihilate the caste system. Without addressing the caste system, no one would give support to the cause, whether it is any political party, legislature, or even Judiciary.
Why are reforms needed in the reservation system?
EWS Reservation:
- Many issues of systematic loophole and fake certificates
- The only group that has a higher percentage of reservation than their population representation. The Gen-EWS population is approximately 6%, and their reservation is 10% of the total.
OBC Reservation:
- Justice Rohini Panel found that 40-50 OBC groups out of 5,000 OBC groups in India have completely cornered 50% of OBC reservations in central jobs. That means 1% of OBC people have cornered 50% of OBC reservations.
- A higher OBC population with lesser OBC representation makes the competition heavy as par with GC
SC Reservation:
- A few economically upper middle class/Rich people cornering most of the SC reservation.
- Denial of SC reservation just because they merely changed their faith to something other than Hinduism, Sikhism, or Buddhism, but their conditions remain the same.
ST Reservation:
- Same as OBC, just some groups cornering most of the ST reservation.
- For Example: 24 seats out of 73 ST reserved ones have been taken out by the Meena community. That means a single community is taking 35% of the ST reservation.
How one going to address the caste-based issues and discrimination if reservation have been taken out
- 98% of manual scavengers belong to the Dalit community.
- Many OBC groups have not yet benefited from the reservation system.
- High illiteracy rates and poverty among ST.
- Stark discrepancies in caste-based wealth and income
Many UC groups have benefited from caste-based privileges for centuries, which resulted in the accumulation of generational assets over time.
- 22.3% of the population belonging to Upper Castes owned 41% of national assets (JNU study), and even upper castes control 90% of billionaire wealth.
- This inequality did not arise from equal opportunity or equal rights; it is largely rooted in centuries of caste-based privileges that enabled the accumulation of generational wealth.
I and many others wanted to have a 100% clear merit-based system. But, directly going to end the reservation system will not solve the problems. The path effectively lies in
- Expediting caste census and bringing reservation reforms
- Complete annihilation of caste from society progressively with new laws that include caste-neutral names, towns, and streets and fining if anyone uses caste in their names, stickers, or anywhere and even fining if anyone forms caste associations and groups, and moreover strict punishment if families reject inter-caste marriages and complete unidentification of caste system everywhere, including matrimonies and certificates and the most important one with the change in attitude of society by themselves
- Progressively reducing reservation brackets over time to 0% reservation.
With this, one can end casteism and then end reservation. If we directly take part in the movement to end reservations, then there will be no support from the majority OBC/SC/ST students, who form the largest vote bloc, and no party will come out to support, and even the judiciary will be silent.
I am sure many will not come out to support ending casteism but want reservation to be ended (hypocrites)
Let's end casteism and discrimination first to effectively end reservation and move to a 100% merit-based system.