The ongoing agitation by ‘Gujarat Patels’ for the status of ‘Other Backward Castes’ should lay the ground for a nation-wide comprehensive discussion on rationalisation of reservations, said Lok Satta Party founder president Jayaprakash Narayan.
The issue needed a creative response and not confrontation. The time had come to reform reservations and a fair system of reservatison that would positively impact the lives of all was needed, he said in a statement here on Wednesday.
Dr.JP said that reservation benefits reached only those privileged few who were well educated and countless poor among SCs and OBCs were struggling for opportunities. On the other hand, the poor and despondent among OCs developed hatred towards those garnering reservations. Except those well-to-do sections who were enjoying reservation benefits, others feel they had been given a raw deal by successive governments. The crisis could only be resolved by making some changes in the reservation policy, he said.
Proposing some changes, Dr.JP said IAS, IPS and other officers, MLAs, MPs, doctors and the rich should be removed from the purview of reservations to give the benefit to the eligible poor.
For the poor students among OCs if their parents were not literate, then such students should be given additional marks to compete with other students, facilities be put in place so that no merit and talented poor student was deprived of access to higher studies due to poverty and a system be evolved to provide guaranteed quality school education, he said.
The Lok Satta leader said that with the above proposals the reservations could be brought down gradually and in 25 years, one could do away with reservations. B. R. Ambedkar hoped that rulers would provide quality education to all without any discrimination and create a system which did not require reservations.
But the political system in the country had failed to provide proper education and perpetuated poverty and used reservations to divide people and garner votes, he said.
Courtesy: The Hindu
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