Reservations:

The whole of India is talking about reservations. NDTV, CNN-IBN and a whole lot of bloggers come up with exactly the same reasons as to why they all oppose reservations. No one’s thinking differently , the topic at hand by itself is quite old and beaten to death, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to discuss a totally clichéd topic in a slightly different way.

Alright, so here goes it:

Now let’s take the 2 options we got at hand.

Option 1 – No reservations. What happens? India’s population is currently around 1,000,000,000. Out of this around 50% is effectively illiterate (this is different from actual illiteracy). If there are no reservations (assuming that the rate at which illiterates and literates contribute to our population growth is exactly equal), this percentage will remain the same (if not, illiteracy will increase). It’s not wrong to assume that 70% of the parents who are literate will educate their children properly, and 70% of the parents who are illiterate will NOT educate their children properly. In the remaining 30%, people like Rahul Mahajan and Sunil Bharathi Mittal will balance out. Educated folks like Rahul will effectively be illiterate (as they don’t behave like educated people anyway) and smart people like Mittal will be very literate even though they didn’t go through any formal education.

So, if we chose option 1 – India will continue to be the same. 50 % illiteracy will continue , the economic divide will keep expanding, and we all should sit back and hope that we’ll have more and more Sunil Mittals and Dirubhai Ambanis and fewer Rahul Mahajans.

Let’s take option 2. Say we have about 25% reservations. Let’s say 80% of the people who use this 25% reservation, are actually backward (the other 20% are people who buy OBC certificates - thanks to NDTV). These people will move into the literate category. Out of these people, let’s say 80% are effectively literate, we have 16% more people who are literate. Hope you guys got the complicated math here (0.8*0.8*0.25*100). If this were a case interview, I would have said: This sounds too high, let’s make it 10%.

So, what do we have now? 10% of the people would have moved from the illiterate to the literate category. Because of reservations, is there a chance that some people can move from the educated to the non-educated category? Nopes, no way. People, who planned to study medicine, might miss out studying medicine because of the reservations but they could always study something else. Maybe they could become a journalist and join NDTV and fight against the reservations. Basically, there’s no chance that someone who would have been in the educated category will become an illiterate because of reservations. Correct?

So, approx 10% of the people move from the non-educated side to the educated side (if our politicians implemented this whole thing properly- now that’s a whole new ball game). So, if we have to make a decision keeping in mind the overall growth of India, option 2 doesn’t sound too bad.

I know a lot has been said about how illiteracy should be corrected at the grassroots level and how the government should find ways to educate kids at the middle-school and high-school levels and not use reservations as a method to achieve whatever growth they are talking about. This is a point well-made, and a lot of organizations are working towards this. But thinking very carefully, reservations if implemented properly might not be a bad thing. Changes at the basic school level should happen in tandem with reservations.

There are a lot of other questions that need to be addressed. Is 25% an optimal number? We’ll be sacrificing some Sabeer Bhatia’s to gain a decent number of BPO engineers, but that’s the trade-off we’ll have to consider. There’s obviously more thought that needs to go into picking the right % for reservations, but the idea itself is not bad. The sad part is, no one – not anyone from NDTV, not anyone from Congress, not anyone from IIT/IIM has come up with some analysis on what this number should be, why it should be so etc. etc. There’s just blind opposition or support for/against reservations and that’s just very sad to know.

Update(from the comments section): Just so that more people can understand this point of view better:

Just wanted to add to that. I am not arguing for the sake of arguing here(Like in most other cases). I am just trying to assess the situation from a different angle.Take for example our class at SVCE. Say we had some 6 people from SC/ST ( rightly deserved SC/ST ) , I am pretty sure they are doing quite decently for themselves right now. Maybe SVCE helped them be in a position they are right now. Now, since those 6 people got into SVCE, some FC people went to SRM, Hindustan etc. Had they taken 7 people into SC/ST, then Murari ( who was the last person to get into EE Payment at SVCE) would have missed out and gone to SRM. Murari would have done fine anyway. He might have even gone to Stanford had he gone to SRM. But, the 7th SC/ST person might have needed SVCE's placement help to actually get the same job. Though this was added to get some comedy into the picture, hope you get my point !

Lok Paritran Returns

After all the opposition I got for my “opinions” on Lok Paritran, I was just thinking about this.

Lok Paritran’s website has some crap about ideology and strategy. If (a big IF, its painfully, excruciatingly, tortuously boring) you read it carefully, it’s a combination of some philosophical stuff which is completely abstract. The bottom line according to them is “Knowing the problem is knowing the solution”. Well, don’t you think “implementing the solution” is the key? They have nothing in their website or press releases that talks about what exactly they are planning to do.

The other point I noticed was…they seem to be targeting the educated class, the middle class that usually doesn’t vote. But, the educated middle-class is actually quite satisfied with the current political system. Lot of people still keep complaining, but whatever said and done the Indian economy has grown quite handsomely over the past few years. So, there’s no reason to be unhappy with the current political system, when actually, the educated middle class have risen a notch to give the upper class a run for their money.
If at all, anyone has to be unhappy with the current political system, it’s the people below the poverty line. “Lok Paritran” wants to do something for them, but its asking for votes from the educated group. Weird.

I have a question for them. It’s totally cool they want to get into politics and change the system top-down. But, why not, atleast on the side, do something concrete for the people below the poverty line? This will also help them get some votes.

I am not trying to say these guys aren’t doing anything useful, but I feel they could do much more than just talk. If they are going to do just that, might as well stick to the known folks who are atleast not doing a bad job(atleast as far as the educated group is concerned)

Now, I had a question for myself? Would I go out there and do something like these guys? I don’t think so, NO. But then why keep criticizing folks who atleast are trying to do something?

Well, the answer to that is, criticism is fair if there’s some valid reasoning associated with it. If every cricket journalist were a cricketer, then we wouldn’t read any cricket-related articles.

Lok Paritran

A bunch of highly qualified economists and ex-IITans have started this political party – “Lok Paritran”. They are contesting the Tamil Nadu elections this time and it’ll be interesting to see what happens. Here’s some analysis on Lok Paritran, the people who have started this party and what I think about their strategy to date.

The people:

A lot has been written about how these highly qualified, US educated guys have “sacrificed” top notch jobs to work for “our” nation. Frankly, I don’t think they have sacrificed anything. What they are doing is very similar to doing a start-up. After their high-quality education they have seen this opportunity to do a start-up in politics. They have this idea and the idea is to form a political party for the “educated Indians” and they want to see how things go. It’s definitely a very good idea. There is no question about it. If the start-up works out, great, India can look forward to some sensible educated leaders. If it doesn’t work out, these guys can always get back to some pretty good jobs.

Their Strategy- the positives:

They have chosen the right constituencies to contest the elections. If at all anybody is going to vote for them, it’s the educated class. The highest % of the educated dudes in TN live in: Mylapore, T.Nagar, Anna Nagar, Thousand Light, Park Town, Saidapet, and Rasipuram. Mylapore especially will be interesting because Vasudev (Lok Paritran’s chief advisor) is fighting against SV Sekar and Napoleon. 70 % of Mylapore usually doesn’t vote. Let’s see if economist Vasudev can change this trend.

All these guys have a good background in economics, so they really know, at least theoretically, what it takes to build on a nation’s economy and what developing and developed economies mean.

They have also got their basics right. These guys are getting full-time into politics. This is not their part(y)-time job. They seem pretty committed to their ideals and principles. And, it seems like if their start-up fails, they wouldn’t modify their ideals just to be successful.

The negatives:

Dude, remember you are contesting an election in Tamil Nadu. Half the people there can’t pronounce “Lok Paritran” even after loads of help. It doesn’t take a New York University economist to figure this out.

Marketing: They haven’t done the right things as far as marketing goes. I know a huge bunch of people who would definitely vote for them, who have no clue these guys exist.


It’s wonderful someone decided to implement Mani Ratnam’s idea. But to be a successful start-up, it takes more than just high quality education. Their performance in Mylapore, T.Nagar and Annanagar will give us a good indication of how well these guys started off.