this take is very casteist imo.
the weirdest part of anti-reservation outrage is how it treats opportunities historically monopolized by upper castes as if they were the natural property of general category students. when dalits, adivasis, and obcs were excluded from education, government jobs, land ownership, and positions of power for centuries, nobody cried about ‘merit’ being harmed. suddenly a fraction of seats are reserved to partially correct that exclusion and we’re expected to believe this is the real injustice. if your idea of fairness only begins the moment marginalized communities start getting access, you’re not defending merit, you’re defending the advantages caste already gave you.
also, can we stop pretending that reservations somehow explain the entire education system?
im a general student, I got into mumbai's best gov mbbs college with 5L spent on coaching. my peers who have reserved category seats iterally come from impoverished families, they're the first in their families to even have a degree.
student scoring higher on a multiple-choice exam does not magically prove that the system is meritocratic. it mostly proves they performed better on that exam after years of unequal access to coaching, schools, english education, study environments, parental support, and money.
and it's always amusing how people suddenly discover 'unfairness' when reservations are mentioned, but become completely blind when a kid's parents spend lakhs on coaching, private schools, management quotas, donations, networking, and internships. apparently buying advantages is merit, but compensating for centuries of exclusion is where the line gets drawn.
in central educational institutions, the standard reservation structure is 15% sc, 7.5% st, 27% obc and 10% ews. that's 59.5% reserved and 40.5% open category. importantly, reserved-category students who score high enough can and do enter through the open category as well, meaning 'general' seats are not exclusively for general-caste students.
the overwhelming majority of india's higher education seats are not in iits, aiims, iims, nits or central institutions. they're in state colleges and private institutions. many private colleges either have limited reservation requirements, management quotas, nri quotas, or admissions heavily influenced by who can afford the fees. money opens far more doors than a caste certificate ever will.
so every time someone says 'a guy with 609 lost to a guy with 505,' they're acting as if the biggest distortion in education is reservations and not the fact that an entire coaching industry worth thousands of crores exists to help people buy better odds.
the argument basically boils down to: 'i can see the seat reserved for a dalit student, therefore that's the problem.' meanwhile the management quota kid strolls past carrying a suitcase full of privilege and somehow becomes invisible.
that's not a critique of elitism. that's being so focused on the guy below you that you completely miss the guy standing on your shoulders.
a bigger issue is that there simply aren't enough quality seats. students are busy fighting over reservations while millions compete for a tiny number of seats in good colleges. if the system actually created enough universities, faculty, and public investment in education, people wouldn't be treating every admission cycle like a battle royale over scraps.
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