Dear Editor,
This is in response to the highly appropriate relevant article titled “Quotas and Queues”(November 14) by Poonam I Kaushish.
At first we need to acknowledge three eternal truths — All men/women are born equal with God-gifted equal potential of success; all individuals should be awarded the same platform to attain success; nobody should be delivered any post/seat on a platter by banking on his/her demographic credential or monetary muscle.
In our unequal society it gets often witnessed that a boy gets forced to skip school or higher education because of lack of finance. In contrast another boy of privileged background boldly ends his educational pursuit with high university degree and bags a respectable job and his car is being driven by that first boy who had to skip studies! Far from acknowledging such blatant social injustice, the society will see “merit” in the second boy only. However the fact remains that the boy-turned-driver could have also attained equal career-related success had he got the same opportunity to prosper.
But far from ensuring free education and books to the children of non-privileged background so as to bring them at par with their privileged counterparts; the concerned authorities offer sops like reservation in educational and job sector, based on demographic credential like caste, so as to boost vote bank in the guise of “positive discrimination”! As a result what we witness is persons scoring extremely low marks in examinations bagging coveted seats in higher education and high posts in job sector by overlooking the much better performing candidates of non-reserved category. In such a pathetic scenario; a fatal assault gets posed on all things quality, efficiency and merit thereby affecting the society in a negative way.
Yes, merit lies neither in monetary power nor demographic credential. So to achieve meritocracy, each and every individual need to be bestowed with equal opportunity for growth and thereafter the doors of higher education and jobs need to be opened for only the best performers in the form of mark sheet, position in merit list and interview process. However, performers of poor financial background, bagging seats in say medical/engineering colleges, should be charged minimal fees as a part of social responsibility of the State.
Yours,
Kajal Chatterjee,
Kolkata