Reservation For Economically Weaker Section
The first criterion for qualification is if your family’s household income is 8 lakhs per year or lesser. The data tells us that 95% of households in our country earn 8 lakhs or lesser in a year. On 12th Jan 2018, Arun Jaitley said that there are only 76 lakh people in our country. Who show their income to be more than 5 lakh. I’m talking about ‘ showing income’ because many people do earn more, but misstate it. So if individuals are considered, 99% of people earn less than 8 lakh. This 99% of people are termed ‘ economically weak’.
The second criterion, states that the agricultural land owned should be less than 5 acres. The data stated that 86% of land holdings are 5 acres or less. The third criterion is that your house should be less than 1000 sq feet. Where the data shows that 80% of households have houses of 500 sq feet or less. You can see the pattern forming here. The fourth criterion is that your residential plot should be less than or equal to 100 yards if it is in a municipality. Or as per the fifth criterion, should be less than or equal to 200 yards if it’s in a non-notified municipality. What do you conclude from the first three criteria? 80-90% population of our country are eligible as they fall into these criteria. The new reservation is for the general category only and the data I showed is for the whole country. Which would mean that more or less 90% of people from the general category are eligible for this 10% quota. So what kind of a reservation is this if almost everyone qualifies for it?
As a student from the general category, What used to happen was that you were competing for the remaining 50% of sweats, with other students from the general category. What will happen now after the new 10% reservation, because almost every one of them is eligible for the reservation, is that you would still be competing with the same people, for the same seats, The Government simply took your lollipop from your pocket and give it back to you saying ” look, we’re giving you a new lollipop”.
Another interesting thing here is that the income tax slabs in India start at 2.5 lakh per year. So on one hand, our Government expects that if we earn more than or equal to 2.5 lakhs per year, we should pay the income tax, But on the other hand, the government says that if our household income is less than 8 lakhs we are economically backward. So they labeled us economically backward as well as demanded taxes from us. Reservations are aimed at uplifting weaker sections of society. Reservations based solely on economic standing are debatable. Our Government says that it would uplift the weaker section of the general category.
Think about that one earning rupees 50000 a month, both are eligible for this reservation. But if there is only one seat, who will get that? The person earning rupees 50000 per month. Politics and appeasement in the name of reservations is happening for a long time. Another problem here is that the Supreme Court had set a limit of 50% above which there cannot be reservations. The most important question that we should be asking the Government is Where are the Jobs? If there are no jobs, what would you do with the reservations?
So, Friends, this was the reality of 10% Reservation For Economically Weaker Section.
