More musings on quota

I had some comments, and I realized that i had left my earlier reply unattended, so here are some more musing, I totally welcome your suggestions comments, as long as you think levelheadedly, and not with prejudice in your mind!

Ok, first of all there is huge misconceptions in the discussions regarding quoata, ppl are mixing everything, they are prejudiced and not looking out of the box.

Let me elaborate my position first. First of all, I am not living in India right now, so I have a sort of a more independent analysis of the whole thing, not being bugged by the day today problems of Indian life I am at a position to paint rosy pictures, as some of you have said. But then again on the other hand, since I have been away, and seen the rosy pictures of Europe, US, and Australia I am definatley in a position to compare the life here and over there, and recommend that on many accounts life in India is rather bloody better. Let me restate my stand:

1. Cheap labour: kaamwali, eating out, travel, hoteling, netcafe, plumber, garagewallah, home delivered vegetables are distant dreams in western countries.
2. Roads are better in western countries, not much you can do abou that but wait untill the infra projects are finished. But really, come on what did you expect, a whole make over of India in a week? We have had good developments in these years, comeon, thers the NH4, Delhi-Jaipur road, airport privatization, declaration of special vehicles for infra project.....
3. Power: Maharashtra has major power problems, but the govt is trying to work on it, plus thers the nuclear deal, not that it will bring much, but it atleast shows govts commitment.

Plus other thing, point being, India is developing, and currently its much cheaper than western countries. There are a hell of a lot of benifits in living in India.

The most imp point being, these things have nothing to do with quota row. Neither do the quality of quoata doctors/engineers/nurses has to do anything with allocation of quoata. You see, you need to think like the policy makers do, the problem of affirmating a low socioeconomic class of the society and the problem of ensuring that the result of the affirmative action are good (i.e. quality doctors, engineers etc) are two independent problems for them. Infact, the latter is more or less the problem of the education system, which is also under a revamp.

The govt imposes quoata on unis, unis take students, students dont pass, the govt doesnt make the unis pass the students! If the student is crappy, then he will be crappy all the way through, he wont get his first job in the private sector (atleast not yet) And even then, crappy students are good, many HR ppl prefer crappy students, because they can be made into loyal employees, Give them a job and a salary more than their worth, get them used to the good life and then hang a sword on their head of job loss! You got urselves a class A loyal worker. Stops attirtion, plus, a lot of jobs dont really need brains!

You see, the govt is just allocating quota, it is unfortunate that the quota ppl are still scoring less than the open class, why coz there is less competition. And thats exactly what the policy makers want to change, the competition in quota! The issue of giving quoata seats and the problem of making sure that the quota ppl themselves become competent are two different problems. We have to understand it. Quotas will become as competent as the open sector in the future, when more and more quota ppl start applying for jobs. In any case, the quotas are supposed to be in the proportion of the spread of population right! Well not really right now, but the courts are looking into that.

Plus some ppl mentioned something about bad infra, I dont understand what that has to do with the quota problem, tomorrow you will blame the excess rains on quotas!

Anyway, I was talking to an IIT prof the other day, and I asked him whats the deal with quota and how do they filter quota student, here is the algorithm he told me:

1. Set a cutoff lower than normal intake, say if the normal intake is at 90 of 100, then quota cutoff is 70
2. If the quota fills then good else set anather lower cutoff, say at 50 but do not admit those students directly to first year, rather have them go through one year refreshment course and make them sit an exam at the end, usually 50% of students make it through.

THe most imp thing is that these cutoffs are decided before the exam is set. The prof also said that many-a-times the qutoa seats are not filled at all. Hence the problem is not quota, but the proper implementation of it.

A lot of us are also confusing financial aid with affirmative action, and suggesting that quotas should be allocated on financial need. There are two problems with this argument, first of all, financial aid is a totally different problem and it should be handled independently of caste issues. Secondly, financial aid is NOT affirmative action, affirmative action is aimed at increaing the confidence of a treaded upon class of the society, while financial aid lends crutches of money. If you affirmate with financial aid you tend to run the risk of losing, why? because as soon as the benificiary are above the financial aid limit they dont get financial aid, hence that makes them lazy and makes them stay below the financial aid limit. Just like its right now in Germany with the jobless claims problem.

And finally, we seem to forget that we are living in a country where the majority need financial aid, then my dear friends, if seats were reserved on financial needs, there wont be any left for you and me!