Is the Quota System (Educational) Unconstitutional?

What is wrong with the current quota system? Here are some of the issues that I can think of with the current system.


I belong to BC and grew up in a agricultural coolie family and so did my brothers and most of them are NOT educated, backwarded and poor!, to say the least. Do you think that it is fair for their kids (who are going to govt. schools in a village) to compete with my kids who are going to international schools and are already way ahead of my brothers' kids in all aspects of schooling?


How is it fair to put my kids with my brothers' in the same BC bucket? Similar logic can be applied to many of my classmates belonging to BC and myself. Similar logic can also be applied to all caste categories.


I used to have a good friend of mine who had almost the same background as me but didn't get the help of our govt. since he was of FC category!!! Is that fair? I know personally that he hated both the government and the beneficiaries of the current scheme!! What do you think he would tell his Children?


I met a child of one of my classmate for the first time, he was 8 yrs old and out on no context he asked me if I was a brahmin!! Just like that!! My classmate is not alone. I think the majority of those who deserved the help of a quota system of some kind but did not because of the caste based system would have done this to their children!


My kids have no clue what a caste is!!


So, the caste based system must be eliminated because:

1. If is unfair to current beneficiaries (see the example above)
2. It is unfair to folks who are NOT currently being benefitted (like my friend)
3. It is against the spirit of the quota system (to help all in need of help)
4. It is divisive (segregates people)
5. It is degenerative (it is a shame that everyone wants them to be categorized as lower caste)
6. It is unconstitutional (see below as to why)
7. It is shameful (my daughters have no clue what a caste is. I would love to see our society get rid of this categorization so that the notion of caste vanishes from this earth. So far I have managed it without giving religious and caste information to my daughters and their school!! I would definiltely have hard time explaining this stupid thing to them and I hope to get rid of it at least for my family!!)
8. It is a reflection of shallow thinking of our leaders. It probably made sense to do this for one or two decades after the independence but it should have been replaced with a better system long time ago.

Why is it unconstitutional?

The current policy is completely against Article 15 (1) & (2) as well as the Directive Principles of our constitution which very clearly states that state cannot discriminate purely based on religion or caste. But unfortunately they also added Article 15(4) as an exclusion, which to me is a contradiction of 15(1) and (2)(and thus violates the basic tenets of the law!). It is this 15(4) that the governments have been misusing it for 60 years... So it is a shallow thinking from the folks who created the constitution as well as the folks who have been interpreting it for 60 years and us, the citizens... We ought to think that the citizens of 21st century can think better than their predecessors and come up with a better solution than the one with so many flaws!!!

Keep your thinking machine on and I am sure we would find better options that our future generations can be proud of!

Note: I read the Supreme Court's judgement on the quota case earlier this year (2008) and felt that the court is indeed correct and it is a shame that the lawyers representing the litigants failed to win! I think that they could have won the case if the had done their home work! I will write on this seperately!!

Thanks

Raj

What I say is just my view and I am sure you have one that is better!