A few months ago, I upload an image regarding a protest against the Mandal’s commission from Uma Chakravarti’s book “Gendering Caste” on Instagram. In it, she writes about how Delhi University’s upper-caste women students protested carrying placards that read “We don’t want an unemployed husband”. Women students protested not for themselves but on behalf of their potential husbands.
What the placards were saying was that these girls would be deprived of upper-caste IAS husbands. But what they were also saying was that the OBCs and Dalits who would occupy these positions in the IAS could never be their potential husbands.
This post triggered my many friends and they started arguing that casteism is not present in metropolitan areas like Delhi. They have lots of arguments about how casteism is a hurdle of the present generation and they didn’t get admissions in central universities because of reservation policies.
They have points about how reservation affects merit but they never realise that the lack of potential for OBC/SC/ST students in comparison to them have devastating effects on these students.
When an ST student comes from Jharkhand to study at Delhi University, on their first day of college, students from metropolitan areas start asking their percentage and comparing the scores and then passing comments. It is triggering for the newcomer who left their home.
These metropolitan youth never realise that this action is casteism, which they thought is only existed in rural areas. In our daily life, we see how people on Twitter make fun of SC/ST doctors and judge their potential. They don’t use their common sense that reservation is not applied on college term examination.
We should educate our youth about why we need reservation policies. Teachers should tell them that affirmative action is for “representation” of all strata of society in our institutions. Before this youngster goes to college they at least know that different cut-offs are not a hurdle to meritocracy but benefit the marginalised section of students to tackle social inequality and represent themselves.
We need to understand that reservation is not a poverty alleviation scheme, this is for representation.