Sthabir Khora The patel agitation has reignited the anti-reservationists. The anti-reservationists thrive on popular, superfluous, ahistorical arguments about merit, justice and the state. The demand by well-off communities like Patels, Jats and others has created a sort of desert storm – that everyone deserves reservation. I will take up the following principal ahistorical arguments …
Are SCs, STs and OBCs less talented?
Mahitosh Mandal Often I notice people degrading, sometimes publicly, the SCs, STs, and OBCs as inefficient at their workplaces. Be it an SC doctor or an SC professor or even an SC student, the person in question is not an individual human being but a ‘reserved category candidate’, and hence promptly to be dismissed …
Revealing the ‘Male Teacher Authority Figure’
Nidhin Shobhana ‘Every Image embodies a way of seeing’ – John Berger. He enters the giant classroom in his crisp white short kurta, he walks with an ease which inspires pensive and fearful silence; he is fair-skinned, well-fed and tall, and he speaks clearly with authority. One of the most powerful images of our …
Representation to the President: Review FYUP in Delhi University
Text of Representation given to the Visitor Of Delhi University, the President of India, on May 14, 2013 by the Joint Action Front for Democratic Education ~ ToShri Pranab MukherjeeVisitor, University of Delhi & President of IndiaRashtrapathi BhavanNew Delhi. May 14, 2013 The 4-Year Degree at Delhi University: Request to institute a Visitorial inquiry …
Reinventing the Feudal Village in Delhi University
Dr. N. Sukumar “A University stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for the adventure of ideas and for the search of truth. It stands for the onward march of the human race towards ever higher objectives. If the Universities discharge their duties adequately, then it is well with the Nation and the People.” …
The Killing Fields of Academia
N. Sukumar & Shailaja To those children whoIn coal mines, soot, and ash,Furnaces and masonry…….Bathe in the dust of sand, lime and cement,And carry the stinking leather from the bone mill;AndIn the modern social order—-In hotels, schools, hostelsAnd in the abode of the pseudo-religiousBecome a victim of abuse,And under the shadow ofPain, misery, vulnerability, …
Let’s skim the upper caste creamy layer
(This is the second part of the article ‘The compulsive need to oppose reservations’, continued from here) Kuffir What does Pratap Bhanu Mehta really want? He wants ‘alternative paradigms‘ other than caste based reservations to be considered. Why? To build a sense of ‘common citizenship’. His worry is ‘we are also about to do that to …
Some ‘Non-Meritorious’ Reflections: Reservation Policy and Its Side Effects
Anoop Kumar (This article was first published in INSIGHT in its November 2004 issue on ‘Reservations’. Anoop Kumar is one of the founder-members of the magazine) 1. Why India continuously gets outwitted by Pakistan in diplomacy at various international fora? Can any of the readers guess? No? Let me explain to you. It is because …
‘Twice-Born’ Riot against Democracy
Gail Omvedt (First published in September 1990) Any caste based reservation system, in this case the Mandal Commission, has to be judged in terms of what it can do and not in terms of what it is not supposed to do—and in this case its goal is the limited but important one of ending caste …