This has to stop!

I sympathize with agitation of the Indian students and professionals against the continued quota system for the backward community there. The Government is going to allot a whopping 27% of the seats in highly sought after medical colleges and engineering colleges for the Other Backward Classes (OBC). This means that one out of four students in an educational institution got there by a shortcut. This is outrageous, especially when you realize that most of these ‘backward’ students are actually well off having faced no handicaps in their lives. They still qualify, as seats are allotted on a purely ‘caste’ basis without taking into consideration of ones household income and other means of support. (I remember that when I completed the pre-University exam (with honors), some of my affluent friends with lesser qualifications, managed to prove that they are indeed backward, and got into more prestigious colleges. I was not bitter about it then as I was not the ‘questioning’ type)

I am very much for the system here in USA, where a few seats of every college are given based on special circumstances of the student– some economic and some cultural. In India it is all based on race. Nothing else. This has to stop!