There was this medical college student on TV ranting about merit and whether we would like to be treated by a doctor who got admission in a medical college because of quotas. My use of word "rant" clearly establishes my bias - but the argument that somehow a student who got in due to reservation has no skill shows a deep rooted bias especially against SC/ST students that is prevalent in premier educational institutions.

I was fortunate enough to study in a couple of premier educational institutions and I know what I am talking about. In my experience, getting into the elite institutions was more difficult than passing out and performing in real life. The percentage of marks one scored in high school or college had no relation to how good a student one was or how well one performed in real life. Some students who got admission on the basis of merit in Open Category performed worse than quota students in college and in real life. These students of merit were destroyed by drugs, alcohol and womanising - a few of them managed to pass and get a degree. If you are trying to avoid non-skilled doctors - do you know of a way to avoid this category of doped out students who clearly performed worse in medical school than quota students? And if how many marks the doctor scored in school was an indicator of skill, then you should be asking for Doctors who were gold medallists and avoid all others. The cold hard fact is that several book worms who do well in exams turn out to be terrible doctors completing lacking in Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ) so necessary to be able to relate well to the patient, make him talk about his symptoms and reason out a good diagnosis.

In Tamilnadu where reservations in favour of OBCs is deeply entrenched and has been practiced for more than two decades, the cut off for OBC category seats to Medical colleges is 96%. Arguing that students who get higher than 96% have no merit is stupid to say the least.

There are several important questions to be answered to justify reservation - "why do students who can score 96% or more need reservation", "Shouldn't we be excluding creamy layers - the very wealthy and the well educated?, "Shouldn't reservation be a one off event - it is really stupid to reserve a seat for a child of doctor(s) just because he is from a certain caste - we cant be providing reservations for multiple generations". I think I would support a more reasoned policy of affirmative action that provides an "one off" opportunity for sections of society that are being left behind. As Dr Manmohan Singh says progress has to be inclusive to be sustainable - we cant possibly have social and economic progress if we leave significant part of our brethren behind. However in the current political climate "reasoned policy" appears a long shot.