Falling over backwards: an essay against reservations and against judicial populism; by Arun Shourie

Most people, whether individually or as social groups, communities, have two very distinct, very separate needs, often but not always necessarily, conflicting.

One is for more of wealth, more of power, stability of well being, security, and so forth. This is of course well understood and often used for a hold over the person or group as a leverage to use them.

Another is of the sort that might begin to border on higher ideal - of a rise in terms of things other than those considered worldly needs.

However, when the two conflict, often people free to choose will go for the worldly needs rather than higher ideals. And then resent those that do not, or cannot, for whatever reason.

Hence the effort to portray one's community as higher if that gives a rise in status and all out efforts to prove it so, and on the other hand the opposite if that pays in terms of economic security.

Given a chance - that is, if the two do not conflict - most people would prefer the higher ideal and rise in terms of other than worldly criteria.

It is a pity that such chances are withdrawn and instead there is an incentive to downgrade one's roots in order to secure a better economic status.

But it is a far more bitter shame to a nation to encourage this, or to perpetrate fraud of the sort that Shourie describes, for reasons of clamouring to be seen as "more secular than thou" while downgrading quality of personnel of nation by requiring very little except a certificate to the effect of a low caste birth, an no merit if such a certificate is indeed possible.

Affirmative action in US is based on all other criteria being equal, in which case offering a position to the person of an under priviledged group indeed has some justice. But this practice in name of reservations in India aided and abetted by the judges of not only giving low level entry positions but all possible promotions and advantages to people of low or no merit, indeed not even taking into account a proportion of merit scaled to the background but a blank cheque so to speak, cna only go towards downgrading the nation's affairs.

If this is hard to believe, just imagine you have a near and dear in dire need of surgery and the person to perform it not only was given an entry but every possible promotion and position on basis of birth and no merit shown at any stage. I doubt the most secular or pseudo secular of people would view such a moment without flinching.