OBC Reservation - A deadly political weapon

All the views mentioned as under are entirely personal and if someone feels hurt, it is totally coincidental and unintentional.

The much waited Supreme court judgement has been announced granting OBC reservation to non-creamy layer. I personally believe this heinous act of impeding the growth of world class educational institutes has been committed to derive political mileage in the upcoming elections. Every political party will try to harvest this issue to the maximum but here are a few facts:

1. There are approximately less than 2000 IIM seats, less than 5000 IIT seats and hardly 500 seats in the medical institutes like AIIMS etc. which are getting affected by this judgement. The total number of reserved seats (27% reservation) would mean approximately 1500-2000 students annually. Now, this is a minuscule number in our country of a population of 1 Billion whose significant percentage of population falls under OBC. So, only a small fraction of aam aadmi gets affected but a large vote bank can be moved because whether we like it or not, caste politics is still widely prevalent in this country, specially states like UP, Bihar where the regional parties like RJD, SP and BSP continually play the caste card.

2. But, it kills these institutes which have been built in last five decades with the sweat and blood of visionaries like Dr. Vikram Sarabhai. Fortunately, I have studied at both IIT and IIM and I can say for sure, their biggest strength is their incoming talent pool which will get majorly diluted with the reservation policy.

3. Our friends from the oppressed section of the society need enablement and not reservation. I have seen people from SC/ST reservation struggling in academics at IIT (which are much easier than entrance exams in difficulty level) and spending extra year. In IIT, we had a prep course for a significant number of SC/ST students to bring them at par with other students. How is the mismanagement of quality higher education justified in the name of reservation?

4. Who gets the benefit of reservation? For getting into IIT with reservation, the kid needs to do his intermediate at a good school. Now a days, he must go to an IIT coaching institute as well - who can pay for all this? Only those in reserved category who do not need reservation....
I know of friends who are studying at second line of colleges despite being adequately smart because they were born as high caste but believe me the colour of their blood is same as that of an OBC/SC/ST.

5. What should we do? More initiatives like super 30 in Patna by Mr. Anand Kumar may be a step in the right direction.

6. The honorable SC has suggested that the need for reservation should be reviewed regularly. Does any political party have the courage to withdraw reservation? If I am not wrong, even SC/ST reservation was introduced for a period of 10 years with a need to review after that and it has been extended ever since by every political party.

Finally, I would like to use this forum to urge you to express your views candidly in the comments section of this blog.