Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Why reservation is misused by the REserved

The occasion was the selection of candidates for a well known business school. The panel i got was 9 candidates aspiring to make it using the OBC quota.

Of these, 4 were from middle to high income class, and 5 were from a disadvantaged background.

In addition to the fact that the 4 who were from a well off background did not make the basic cut, they had one other disqualification that led to their summary rejection.
When you have had educated parents, with one or both parents being in government service, have gone to above average educational institutes and have been an average student or more, have afforded CAT coaching and GD/PI coaching as well, and if you still want to take the reservation route to an admission just because of the caste that you were born into, that tells me that your ethics are all in the wrong place. It tells me that in a fight, you will not think twice about using unfair tactics. It also tells me that you are willing to step over other people to serve your end, even if they justifiably deserve the opportunity more than you do.

Is that the kind of manager that a B School wants to send into the world? Is this what we want to portray in our alumni?
We decided against it. We want alumni whose integrity is at least as good their intelligence.
And therefore, I am personally against all people using the quota route when they don't have any disadvantage in their background. They rob a deserving candidate of a fair seat, and they use an unfair mechanism to further a selfish end.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi ,

I was reading ur blog posts and found some of them to be wow.. u write well.. Why don't you popularize it more.. ur posts on ur blog ki-jaana-main-kaun took my particular attention as some of them are interesting topics of mine too;

BTW I help out some ex-IIMA guys who with another batch mate run www.rambhai.com where you can post links to your most loved blog-posts. Rambhai was the chaiwala at IIMA and it is a site where users can themselves share links to blog posts etc and other can find and vote on them. The best make it to the homepage!

This way you can reach out to rambhai readers some of whom could become your ardent fans.. who knows.. :)

Cheers,

The Phosgene Kid said...

It is good to give the disadvantaged a shot at a better future as long as they have the qualifications. To move a lesser qualified candidate to the head of the line because he or she is disadvantaged for some reason isn't very fair either. I am not familiar with your system, though I have heard of the caste stuff. The caste system doesn't sound very fair in and of itself.

mathew said...

This topic has been haunting me for a long long time...when will our country come out of this stigma...I sincerely wish we had a system where economic criteria was the sole criteria...

dharmabum said...

well said, hdwk!

ThoughtSafari said...

You have been tagged!

oceanic mirages said...

talk talk n talk n more talk n even more talk...
but who is goin to tie the bell around cat's neck.
m so sory for the outburst but this burning issue notb only makes me doubt the colonial political system feudalised n monarchised by our political leaders but also the human instinct that we all oughyt to have in us but even these words dont really matter, what good r they anyways...

How do we know said...

Hi ray: You don't have a blog? Sure, will chk out Rambhai.com

Hi Phos: The caste system is unfair, and the methods we are using to get past that unfairness is even more ridiculous.

Hi Mathew: if economic criteria was the sole deciding factor, we would find something to fake that too.

Hi Dharma: Thanks.

Hi smart: Nicely dont tag, that. I saw it on ur blog earlier.

Hi oceanic mirages: a little bit of the belling of the cat did happen, did it not, when they were summarily rejected?

ishqia said...
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