With the supreme court refusing to vacate the stay and the HRD minister on his ego trip, I wonder what is going to happen to the admissions this year.
In one of his lectures, Pratap Bhanu Mehta asked the question: What is the motive behind the reservation? What does the government hope to achieve?
The politicians are fond of saying that we are a secular nation. Then why do all sundry forms ask you to state your religion?
Even more horrendous is what we found out in an informal survey of government schools. Every classroom, at least in Uttaranchal and Chattisgarh, has to put up the number of boys and girls enrolled in that class. Then they have to put up the number of students who belong to the general category and to the SC/ST. In the attendance register, in Chattisgarh, against every child is written the information whether they belong to the reserved category or not. As the government has announced special sops to the children belonging to the SC/ST, these children are given books and other aids. Naturally, the children who do not get it want to know why this special treatment. And then they console themselves:
"Yeh chamaran hai na."
So what we essentially have done through our misguided policies is to accentuate the caste lines. They exist as I found out in another separate incident that I will relate some other time. But there is no need to emphasize it or teach our children about it in the schools.
This does not happen in schools only. When our admission lists are put up in our departments, against each student is indicated whether they belong to general category or to reserved category. Now why do I need to know whether my students belong to certain section or not? I am a teacher and my job is to teach, irrespective of which section the student belongs to. What this does is that the faculties get biased against the students and there is deep resentment against them.
At Asha-Delhi we are wondering whether we can use the Right To Information/PIL to fight this nonsense.
No comments:
Post a Comment