India - A Failed Democarcy

India is the biggest democracy is the world. But, unfortunately, that is not the sole recognition it gets as a democracy. It is also a failed democracy.
There is no doubt that democracy is the best of available forms of governance, well, for most countries, and sadly, India doesn't belong to that category. There are two essential requisites to make a successful democratic system:
1. The political leaders of the country must be willing to provide their services for the development of the country and welfare of its people; after all, the public is supposed to choose best for them out of all the political leaders
2. The public itself should be well informed and educated. Here I am not saying that everyone should be an intellectual, but a minimum standard of awareness is essential so that people are not swindled by the politicians
And we all know the applicability of both the conditions in Indian context. Most of the politicians here are illiterate, selfish, and greedy rogues who don't flinch once even if they have to kill thousands of innocent people to get their thing done. The second condition, sadly, fails miserably too. A major portion of Indian population still lives below poverty line, people who find it hard to get two square meals a day and who would worry about what is happening to the nation, or what is good or bad for the nation when the first and foremost thing weighing on your mind is how to feed you wife, your starving children, and lastly, yourself. The problem gets compounded when you also account for number of illiterate people and this is a very serious issue. How can you expect someone to make a well informed decision, a decision about who is the most suitable person to run the country, when that person doesn't have the tools to gauge what is good and what is bad for the economy, prosperity, international presence, military strength, and future of the country.
In India, politicians can get away by making any statement and they can guise a perfectly economic or financial situation as a religious or communal one, solely because of the ignorance of people here.
The fact the the literate class of India, who can make an informed decision and vote accordingly, don't want to be bothered with electoral process and stuff. It is too much of hassle for them so they choose not to vote. They think that by debating what is good and bad for the country, how politicians are ruining the country, over coffee table and beers, they pay their due to this country.
It is no rocket science to figure out now that democracy as a model of governance is not suitable for India. What India needs is some form of monarchy till the time her citizens are rich enough to stop worrying about two square meals a day; are confident enough to make the right choice; are above the biases of religion, caste, community, region; are informed enough to know what is happening in the world and how it affects India, are educated enough to know which policies are good and which are bad; and most importantly, are ready to stand as one nation. I hope that such a time is not far.

Mayawati

Though I have never been a fan of Behenji, her recent stances on couple of issues have just left me wondering about the quality of Indian Political Leaders. The fact that she is in such a powerful position in a big state in India makes things even worse.

The first time I noticed, rather was alarmed by, her opportunism was when she withdrew support from the UPA government, apparently for no reason. Well, the reasons might have not been apparent but there was one big reason why she did that and the reason was that the UPA was fed up with her and her support was becoming a big liability for the UPA. Specially when so many money laundering scams related to her came into light. The best way, obviously, was to let her go on her own.

Well, that was just the beginning. As soon as she was out, she started spitting venom at UPA. Her first attack was on the nuclear deal. Though it is a norm in India that if you are in the opposition, you have to oppose everything that the current government is doing, even if it is for the good. So she decided not be different from the precedent set Indian politicians but the angle she attached to it was mind boggling. Putting the treaty as anti-Muslim was something that a person of normal intelligence could not comprehend. I tried hard to understand how this could be true, but all I could get was that this can't be true and the only reason to attach this angle was to lure the ignorant and ill-informed Muslims to her party; a vote bank that has been hers but has started slipping recently. But to come up with such a cheap color to paint something healthy with goes on the show that she will not stop short of anything when it comes to seizing power, if she can condemn a step for development of India, good for common man, and wouldn't think twice before opposing it with remarks that can set communal fire any moment in this communally charged up country, then, it leaves no doubt in my mind that she can go and sell this country if the need be.

The next amusing thing was her voting with BJP against the government during vote of confidence. BJP, the part she has called sanpnath (snake king) time and again. But when it came to political mileage, she never twitched before hugging this sanpnath!!

And then, unbelievably, she talks of corruption!! With her pockets overflowing with bribes and numerous ongoing inquiries on money laundering against her, she must be really shameless at calling someone else corrupt.

Now, the recent development is that she claims that no one can stop her from being the PM. Now, this has gone too far. Not that I was much interested in her political ambitions much, but when it comes to becoming the face of my country, obviously I keep my eyes open. I try to imagine she as being the face of modern, developing, young and exuberant India, but the thing is, ti simply doesn't match!! She is not the leader we need!! No way!! She says that she will remove poverty when she is the PM, well, how much poverty has she removed from UP, the state she has ruled for more than a decade? She even rejected development plans put forth by Anil Ambani, again, for reason that defy common intelligence. She talks about cutting down prices and ensure high growth, well, all I have to say in this regard is that there would be very limited people who would trust her economic wisdom on this one.

What India today needs is young and dedicated politicians, people who have long term vision, people with understanding of global issues, international politics, economics, finance, people who knwo what development is, people who can think of India as India and Indians as Indians and not UP/Maharashtra or Hindu/Muslim.

There are such people now. The number is not big as of now but the beginning has happened and I am confident that soon there will be more, we will have dynamic leaders like Clinton, Blair, Sarkozy and then, Behenji, the most appropriate thing for you to would be go back to the village you hail from.

God or no God?

Whether or not there is God has been a topic of heated discussion (and at times more than discussion) since long and I don't think that there is a way to prove it either way. All we can do is give logical reasons and arrive at a conclusion or rather inference and I don't think there is anything wrong with that, after all, that is what human brain does. That is how philosophers have found answers to gravest of issues and scientists have solved incomprehensible mysteries. Remember, Occam's Razor? such a powerful tool it is.

Ok, so we were talking if there is God or not. There are innumerable arguments on both the sides. Some say that such magnificent creation could not have happened on its own and a divine intervention was indeed responsible for the creation of universe while the opponents say that there was nothing divine about creation of universe and life came into existence just by sheer luck!! There are arguments and counter arguments for both the beliefs.

I personally am agnostic with more inclination toward no God. Though I am no expert in human psychology, something that I have observed about human nature is that no matter how independent or successful people become, they have a tendency to feel protected, feel sheltered and their faith in a Supreme being gives them this comfort that there is someone who can take care of them, no matter what happens. But as we see all around us, it doesn't happen. There are millions of people suffering all over the world but there is no one to save them. But let us leave that aside. That's a separate topic of discussion altogether.
So, I was talking about tendency of human beings to look for a superior power that they feel will shelter them, come what may!! Coupled with this is the tendency of human beings to accredit inexplicable phenomena to some supreme being. There are numerous examples of this is our anthropological history. In ancient times, things like eclipses and tides were also thought to be curse of God but now even a 10 yr old can explain the cause behind them. Snakes were prayed, now they are milked for venom!! There still are so many things that are beyond our understanding, and human brain might not be intelligent enough to comprehend all the mysteries of the universe; we find it easier to accredit all such things to God so that we can sleep peacefully at night.

Whatever may be the case, there seems to be no end to this debate. Our natural tendency will most of the times overpower us and will make us believe in the existence of a supreme being but if we can step outside this shadow of our own mind that makes us believe in God, we will see that there is no decisive reason for God to be there, rather, there are more reasons for him not to be there, specially the kind of God as is accepted by people.

Black Vs White

The raging debate over black vs white has been there probably since mankind learned to differentiate between colors. Today, though we are brought up with this mentality that people do not become good or bad just because of the color of their skin, the basic question that remains to be answered is - why is it that someone has to tell us that you can't judge a person by the color of their skin, why doesn't such a thing come naturally to us?

I think the answer to this question lies in the way we are brought up. Unknowingly, perhaps, there are so many instances of color discrimination in our forming years that on our sub-conscious this notion gets imprinted that white is good and black is bad. One example that I think contributes significantly to this imprinting is - "from darkness to light", which, needless to say, associates white with good and black with evil. There are other examples of such associations of black with bad/evil in our textbooks and also in holy scriptures.

Therefore, for us, this notion is already imprinted on our sub-conscious. Some of us have chosen to look beyond the skin color of people while others have not. But whatever be the case, the fact remains that even those who don't believe in color discrimination have to put up a conscious effort to overlook it. What is interesting, though, is whether people would still develop similar notion if they were to be brought up in an atmosphere totally free from any form of discrimination (not just color discrimination because the idea is to keep the entire notion of discrimination away and not just color based discrimination).

In my opinion, it would come naturally to us that black is not good while white is good; not as an universal truth but situational. For example, we would notice that in the night human efficiency goes down, darkness restricts our motion and impedes vision, darkness causes uncertainty and thus anxiety and fear. So, there are instances that happen in daily life that help in forming the opinion that white is conducive for human beings while black is not. But, whether the notion formed because of above instances would lead to formation of idea that white human beings are superior to black is something that can't be commented upon, though, in my opinion, over time, people would start believing in it and that is how I think this notion came into existence in the first place.

Is it necessary to relocate tribal people out of the forests to conserve environment?

Hardly anyone who would contradict me if I say that human beings are the most intelligent race on this planet; this is a statement that has a lot of scientific backing as well. But no matter how intelligent as a race we are, there are numerous examples from past where we have used our own intelligence (?) against ourselves and such incidents have mostly happened in situations when the impact of our actions was very slow and any observable change could be seen only after a significant period of time so that hardly few of those who contributed to this change were alive to actually see it and it is because of this fact that most of us seem to hardly care about the mess we are creating around us. The other thing that aggravates the situation is the basic human nature which is full of greed. The ones who have access to natural resources keep exploiting them knowing that they are destroying the environment but they keep doing it because though the ill effects are shared by the entire humanity, it is they who get to keep the entire profits. I sometimes also feel that human beings also have a tendency to be careless, alcoholism, rash driving, smoking are all examples pointing to it; this again, I think, contributes because there are people who actually don’t care about the damage they are doing.
No matter how slow the effects of human activities are, the cumulative effect becomes evident after a certain point. The consequences become so grave that it becomes impossible for most of us to ignore them that is the reason that the carnage, though slow in nature, that we human beings have done over last thousand years on the environment has aggravated to the extent that it at least has come to our notice now and today we are aware of the destruction that our activities can cause in year to come. The trade off between greed and preservation of the environment is still to be found. It might be actually impossible to find such a balance that suits the needs and greed of all the human beings but still something generic that can be applied to majority of the population is possible. It is nothing new today, at least in the educated society, if someone comes up to you and tells you horrible stories about civilizations that kept exploiting its natural resources at a very rapid pace eventually ceased to exit because in the process they caused irreparable damage to their surroundings and over a period of time the cumulative effect of their activities was so powerful that their surroundings could not support the survival of those civilizations. Maya and Indus Valley civilizations are two examples of many such civilizations; both of these civilizations blossomed and mastered the art of survival and in retrospect are considered to belong to the most intelligent civilizations to live on this earth. Both these civilizations had their peaks but eventually had a downfall as well. The activities of these civilizations were the reason why they were able to reach their peaks, and not surprisingly, it was due to those activities itself that these civilizations had to see their downfall followed by ultimate wipeout.
Today, we can confidently say that we have learnt from the mistakes that our ancestors made in the past and therefore, it makes a lot of sense to make sure that we do not repeat those mistakes. But this is not just an individual responsibility in the sense that just not making mistake as an individual is not the solution, one also has to be observant to see what’s happening around him/her and intervene in every possible situation to ensure that people who are not aware of the gravity of the situation become aware of it and find ways to deal with the problem. Also, we need to be prudent in our actions so that we can mend, at least to certain extent, the damage caused by our past actions. So, the environmentalists who warn of possible damage to the environment by the tribes simply because of their lack of knowledge do make a valid point. But then why is there so much of opposition from the activists, after all, these activists are also educated people and know what they are talking about; they sure will not defend destruction of the environment they themselves live in. Well, the one reason is that the environmentalists argue that because the activities of these tribes most certainly will have a negative impact on the surrounding environment and as we have already deforested most of our lands, we should relocate these tribes from the forest and make forests free from human interface. This argument surely causes a lot of agitation because in a way it is like saying that the way the tribes live is harmful to us so let us ensure that we change their way of life. Let us, for a while, think of a tribal who has spent his/her entire life in the forest, living the way the life is there, how easy or difficult a transition from such a life would be for that person is not hard to imagine. Moreover, ethically also, we have no right to change someone else’s life so that it suits our scheme of things. There is hardly any human being whose activities do not harm the environment, so who gave us the right to say that poor, illiterate tribal should change and not us? How would an environmentalist feel is someone told him/her that your activities in the city you live in are harmful for the society as a whole so you should shift to some remote village? Obviously, none of us would be happy if we were to face a situation like this. That is the most important reason why the solution that advocates the relocation of tribes, though productive, sounds inhumane and we must not forget while figuring out the solution that it is the human race for whose betterment we are debating here.
So, does that mean there is no solution to this problem and if there is, then what is that solution? The solution to this problem, just like most of the environment related issues, lies in adapting better life style. The macro problem of overall degradation of the environment does not have removal of the entire human race from the earth and relocation to some other planet and thus the solution to the problem at hand is also not relocation. The solution lies in the fact that one must make others aware of ways in which all of us should operate so that we do not harm our environment irreparably; shifting of the tribes from one location or taking off human interface completely is not a solution, rather it is like shutting ourselves from a situation we have created because we are too scared and do not want to take responsibility to mend what we damaged. From the example of Indus valley and Maya civilizations given above, we must learn to change the way we conduct our activities to suit the environment because our activities have an impact on the environment and the environment keeps changing. Therefore, we must constantly keep observing the environment and adapt our activities accordingly.
The possible solution can be worked out with the intervention of authorities to educate the tribes and to ensure that their activities are not causing irreparable damage to the environment. The shifting of tribes from their natural habitat makes absolutely no sense according to me and thus should be discouraged, rather more innovative ways to tackle the problem should be thought of. The solution should vaguely look like what I have said above and should have the following points in it:
The tribes should be educated about the ill practices that lead to significant damage to the environment and they should be encouraged to use healthy practices
The government and NGOs should introduce scientific methods for activities like cooking, farming etc to conserve the environment
There is no need for relocation outside their natural habitat because of the reasons stated above
Relocation, however, can be done from one part of the habitat to another. This would ensure that the damage does not reach irreparable lavels
Authorities like the forest department should constantly monitor if the changes are taking place due to the above steps
Suitable punishment should be devised for frequent offenders
But implementation of the above would also need a few changes in the administration as the above steps have a sound administrative system and a prerequisite. The process will be a slower one but the improvement is sure to come.

Youth for Equality - But where is the Equality?

Youth for Equality - Errr...I think I have recently heard it somewhere and that too repeatedly. Oh yes, I remember it now, it is the anti-reservation protestors who walk down the roads holding placards saying "Youth for Equality".
I am not going to say anything about reservations here, the only thing that had my mind churning with thoughts was those placards: the ones suggesting that Indian youth believe in equality.

We Indians can progress as much as possible but we will never be able to rise above the various stupid standards that have been introduced in the Indian social composition over ages to "distinguish" people from each other.
People are distinguished from each other based upon innumerable criteria. Caste, religion, professional and social rank, economy, skin color, region, gender, and language are some of them.
During most of his childhood, an average Indian child has to listen to all such aspects that his parents deem to be important. When he is not old enough to understand what caste is, he would still be able to analyze the toys, clothes his friends have and be able to rate them accordingly.
He grows a little more and now he very well understands that there are different religions people follow and there are different castes people belong to. No, he still doesn't understand what religion/caste is but he sure understands the important role they play in India socio-economic structure.
By the age of 10, the child is well aware of his caste and its position in the society. If he happens to belong to a high caste, he sure will be beaming with the pride to be a high caste when along with his friends and if he is unlucky and belongs to a low caste, he will grow up hearing the 'casteism remarks' from his colleagues.
If he is a Hindu, he slowly starts believing that India is his country only and religious minorities should have fled to Pakistan. Those, part of such religious minorities, have to hear with a pang all such remarks.
North-South divide is pretty evident. I don't think I even need to comment on it.
These are the children who grow to be the youth of India someday. The same children who have, all their lives, witnessed inequality in almost every sphere of life. How will they ever be able to take this out from their heart and mind?
There would hardly be a handful of such people, who really think that inequality should not creep in from such principles.

The funniest part is that when it became evident that high castes would be losing out to their low caste coutnerparts as far as seats are concerned once the reservation proposal is implemented, suddenly they woke up to realise that everyone is equal and youth of India wish for equality. Before the reservation proposal came into light, how many of these people even gave a damn about equality? But once the proposal is there everyone is crying out hoarse demamding equality.

Equality doesn't come by holding a placard. It comes from within and to use equality as a shield behind which one can hide and try to sort out his own slefish motives is utterly pathetic.
Is it only the upper caste who want equality? No...certainly not. In fact it has to be the lower caste people who would, more fervently, embrace the principle of equality. But the question is - where is the equality?
Had the propoganda of youth for equality had any spine, it would have got support from all the quater of society, rather, it has got opposition from the lower caste. This itself shows how much the lower caste trust the high castes when it comes to equality.

If the high caste youth of India really want equality then they will have to show it in action rather than just writing it across a placard and it is after you have gained trust of the lower caste that slogans like 'Youth for Equality" should be put forth else it will be nothing but just a cheap tactic to achieve personal gains, as it tunrs out to be this time.

If we can't be strong enough to endorse an ideology, we should, at least, not be so despicable to use it for personal gains!!

Reservation - My Views

I have always wondered why we Indians feel so bad when a white skinned American says that dark people are inferior to white or when a European says that Asians are substandard as compared to them, after all, we have always strongly believed, since eons, in the caste/creed/community based division of meritocracy. But if today we are reasonable enough to dismiss the above remarks as baseless and exclaim with pride that Indians are equally meritorious, we should also be sensible enough to accept the fact that the people who belong to the oppressed castes are also equally talented, intelligent and meritorious.
Agreeing to that, we should next focus our attention to the fact that SC, ST and OBCs combined constitute more than 75% of the total population of India but their representation in fields like Medicine, Science and Technology, Law and others that require rigorous training and merit is hardly noticeable. What could be the reason for such a disparity if they are equally meritorious?

Well, in my personal opinion it is not the lack of merit that keeps these people below par with their general counterparts, rather it is the lack of opportunities these people get. If we just give a casual glance at the Indian history of past thousand years, the fact that these oppressed classes were treated like animals by the so called high castes will not escape our eyes. These people hardly had any money to feed themselves twice a day, wear anything that could be classified more than a rag and live in the houses with crumbling walls and dripping roofs. They had been denied education, freedom to trade or any other such opportunity. The tyranny was to the extent that these people were not even allowed inside the temples and more shockingly were even denied treatment by the so called high caste doctors and vaidhs. These segments, thus, had accepted being treated like animals as their destiny and had succumbed to their fate.
At the time of independence, senior leaders and intellectuals of India; in order to realize their dream of holistic development of India and ensuring proportional representation from all segments of the society decided to implement caste based reservations as a means to encourage weaker segment to contribute towards the development on India. Keeping in mind that there are a lot many people who have been denied the basic human rights for centuries together, the committee concluded that some relaxations need to be provided, against their background, to the lower castes so that they get a fair playground while competing against their general caste counterparts. It has to be borne in mind at this junction that the basis behind reservations was NOT the poor background of these castes but the total lack of exposure and deprivation from opportunities.
Some people argue that developed economies like US do not have any such system. But these people should not forget two things:
1. US is a capitalistic economy while India is a Socialist. It is not the principle of a capitalistic economy to ensure a fair distribution of goods and opportunities while it forms the underlying basis of a Socialistic economy.
2. Even though a capitalistic economy, the US still believes in 'commitment to diversity' in all its offices and institutes to ensure that people are not left out just because of their caste, creed, religion, age, sex. Kalpana Chawla was selected to NASA ahead of other more meritorious candidates under this principle.

Now we have completed more than 50 years with reservations well in place. The conspicuous difference it has brought about in the society can also be noticed easily. It has helped to achieve a more balanced representation from different segments of the society. Also, it has given a person of lower caste the opportunity to rise up to the general castes, work shoulder to shoulder with them and more importantly, the self esteem to look him straight into the eyes and say I am no less than you!! Those who say that reservations have failed to achieve their purpose should meet people who have used this opportunity to its full and from their dismal background have come to hold a respectable and commanding office today.

I was motivated to write this because of the furor caused by the government's decision to introduce for OBCs in IITs/IIMs/AIIMS. With so many protest march being organized all over the country, I wondered if the move was really a good one. Once on the TV I saw a medico girl with a placard saying "Don't sacrifice life for caste" and another one saying "Respect Merit, Respect Life". Then a cartoon in a famous newspaper had a patient being pulled on a wheelchair by a nurse towards an OBC ward, the patient was desperately trying to get away while the nurse was consoling him saying that this OBC is not what you think...it means....(some medical terminology).
I hardly see any point in such arguments put forth by the protesting students and such cartoonists (newspapers).
I agree to the fact that students who avail reservations get relaxations for age limit, minimum marks secured in 12th, and performance in entrance examinations. But once the student is inside the college he attends the same lectures, he reads from the same books, he performs the same set of practical, he takes the same exams and his copies are checked by the same professors. There are no relaxations as far as passing from the institute is concerned, the relaxations are only restricted to the entry into these colleges. So, if a person has performed good enough to pass from that college and the examination system of the college thinks he is fit enough to be a doctor/engineer then I too think that he is fit to be one and if he is not suitable to be one, he will not be able to pass the examinations conducted by the college. But if people still doubt the capabilities of a person who has successfully met the minimum criteria to obtain a degree then it raises serious questions about the efficacy of the examination system of the colleges and universities and bodies like IMA (Indian Medical Association) and MCI (Medical Council Of India). And if the system is not efficient enough to filter out incapable people then a general category doctor needs to be feared equally but if the system is fine, then why such arguments?

People also have come forward totally overthrowing the idea of reservations on caste basis; they argue if there should be reservation it should be given to the poor people. Well, firstly what is the guarantee that same people will not raise their eyebrows if reservations indeed are made only for poor. Also, the policies to run the country cannot be formulated based upon the whims of certain section of people. Secondly, there is around 65-70% of Indian population still living below poverty line and SC/ST/OBC combined make around 75% of the Indian population. Do the numbers tally? Coincidence.. I don't think so!! And third and the most important point, as I said previously as well, reservations were not introduced to eradicate poverty. Poverty is a different problem altogether and there are different programs and agenda for its eradication.

I've heard many a times people saying that provide scholarships to the oppressed categories but don't reserve seats for them. What a noble thing to do if we had US like education system in place. But unfortunately that is not the case. In India, as we all know, it is almost impossible to get into an educational institute of good reputation unless you go through a rigorous and of course very costly 'coaching' conducted by numerous coaching institutes for the entrance exam of almost every prestigious institute. Such a coaching requires a lot of time, minimum of one year of dedicated training. People do this coaching while in class 12th while many others do it after 12th. Such coaching, even by the not so famous coaching institutes, costs dearly. The rough estimate is around 50k per year to 1 lakh per year. It can even be more.
My question is - who is going to provide scholarship for such coaching?
Does a general category student become more meritorious if his parents had the money to spend on his coaching?
If possible, introduce an education system in place that ensures that students get into colleges depending upon their true merit rather than based on some well directed and lavish training for a particular entrance exam and if this is not possible, let the reservations be there to provide a fair playground.

One thing that amuses me about the current protests is - in all the private colleges in India, there is considerable number of seats put aside for management quota, for NRI quota and for payment seats. In simple terms, this means: Pay the money, buy the seat!!
Why has this country never seen any protest march against these seats?
Is it because it is the same students who are protesting against reservation are the most avaricious bidders when such seats are auctioned?
There are relaxations for reserved category students but there are still some minimum criteria that need to be satisfied to get an admission into a college. For money seats, its not so, you pay the money and buy the seat.
Is this system not compromising the merit?? If not then how come reservations compromise the merit and if yes, why no protests against this system?
Is it because the payment system serves the need of those who are protesting against the reservations?

But I also feel that the current system of reservation is obsolete and it is not fully serving its purpose. For example, I cannot understand what is the need for reservation in jobs (both, public and private). You gave a person the chance to get into good colleges, on relaxed norms; and after graduating from a good college the person should look for the job on his own. Providing reservation in jobs means that you believe that the person who studied in a good college still is not competent enough; that would be doubting the quality of education provided in these colleges.
Also, I feel that the reservation criteria need to be changed on a periodic basis. Currently, it is being availed by the members of those families that could avail it in the intial stages. After a generation or two of well educated people in the same family, there is enough exposure and infrastructure available for the new generations to be at par with general category students. If government provides reservation to such people then the underlying principle of reservations is compromised; which I don't think should happen.

According to the present situation, I have a reservation system in mind that I will put down here. I think this system addresses all the issues (the valid ones) that are being raised in every corner of the country.
The system should have the following guidelines:

- The percentages of the reservation could be maintained the way they are. In case the percentages are changed, it should be borne in mind that general caste students don't have to bear the brunt. Number of general seats should be, after nomalization, be maintained.
- There should be no reservation in jobs, both public and private. There should also be no reservation for PG studies unless of course, a specialized coaching for such purpose is more or less imperative.
- Reservation should not be only caste based. It should also be ensured that only those of the reserved castes get the reservation who actually need it as per the basic principle.
- Quota seats that could not find a deserving candidate should not go waste. It makes total sense to offer those seats to general students. But a transparent and fool-proof system will be required to ascertain that.
- Also, I believe that there should be a system in place to periodically monitor if all the castes specified as reserved are growing or is the reservation being utilized only by certain strong castes within the reserved castes.

I think that would be all.