Anti-reservation

With all the reservation controversy in India, I felt I had to express myself too. So, here goes :

I think that the goal of any affirmative action program should be to redress the
differences in oppurtunites and access to resources that people have in life.
In modern day india, caste is no longer a clean and clear dividing line.
i.e. there are "lower caste" people who are very well-to-do and at the same time
there are "upper caste" people who are not well off.

So, any affirmative action program that is caste based is going to have real problems
actually benefiting people who need to be helped. I think that an affirmative action
program that is grounded on economic status is something that will help people
individually and the country as a whole a lot more. Ideally, such a program would
have a graduated scale rather than all-or-nothing, providing more help to people who are
worse off (as a side benefit, reducing incentive to cheat by getting false certificates)

In my experience, the current reservation system mainly helps lower-caste
students get ahead of better qualified upper-caste students of similar economic
means and opportunities. On the other hand, a graduated program based on
economic circumstances will actually benefit us all by allowing the most talented
youth to come forward in spite of the problems they may have suffered in life.

Also see Bay Area 4 Equality