Ekalavya still missing the opportunity

Caste Pyramid shall break further

Kurukshetra missed one of great talents, this talent could have sat at one corner and finished whole Kurukshetra war and sent home either of pandavas or kauravas in less than a day depending on for which group he fought for. This talent was the impeccable Ekalavya who had mastered all alone the art of "Shabdavedi" which Arjuna could not at the highest level. For Ekalavya the environment was conducive as his opponents were cruel wild fauna that moved at great speed. This clearly stresses on need of diverse representation.The town bred Arjuna could not develop this art for whatever reason or maybe, The Great Master Dhrona thought this was not necessary.

    Ultimately caste system played its role and unlike Karna, Ekalavya did not get support. Dhrona forced Ekalavya to remain in forest by taking his thumb away.  This is a clear case of talent not meeting opportunity (which happens to be what the IPL swears by).

    In Modern India, such incidents of talent missing opportunity are witnessed almost daily, creating many such Ekalavya's. Equality has embraced the suppressed class only on paper but in reality, equality in the economic and social plane is yet to be seen. Poorest of the poor belong to backward communities. In the social plane they continue to be ostracised. Reservation offered some sort of respite to this class. If at all Modern India is shining as claimed by BJP Govt a decade ago, is because of active involvement of dalits and women, otherwise it is impossible only for upper caste to contribute in service industry including technology, by the sheer lack of their numbers and the sheer vastness of our nation in comparison. For a brief period it seemed like suppressed class had some breathing room in the form of Reservation. But somehow the "RSS mentality" has crept in among many of us who previously sympathised members of this class devoid of their rights. Whereas Reservation should stand for Equality, "RSS Mentality" has floated a new theory about reservation which all these days seemed to mean Equal representation.

    a) Reservation is for people who cannot afford education etc i.e. based on income or for people who are not talented as such".b) In addition Private firms deny reservation saying quality etc...

    Let us see the above points and discuss the attitude of private firms which seem to resound the Rightist definition of Reservation. When they receive resumes we expect them not to be prejudiced.  After all these private companies boast themselves representing equality including gender. Unfortunately the below study by Dr Thorat in 2005 shows the social discrimination in hiring although no candidate had mentioned explicitly his religion or caste.

    In the first major correspondence study in India, Thorat and Attewell, sent out exactly identical resumes to private companies, both domestic and MNCs, in response to newspaper advertisements in New Delhi [TOI and Hindustan times] during 2005-06. The only difference in the resumes was the easily identifiable names of applicants: Hindu upper caste, Hindu Dalit and Muslims. The study revealed significant differences in call-backs between Hindu upper castes and the other two categories. In sum, both models [logistical regression model based on adaptive Gauss-Hermite quadrature algorithm]   yielded consistent findings that job applicants with a Dalit or Muslim name were on average significantly less likely to have a positive application outcome than equivalently-qualified persons with a high caste Hindu name.

  These findings are confirmed by Siddique (2009) in a study of Chennai. She additionally tests for the interaction between caste and gender and finds that the lowest call-backs are received by Dalit women.

    Yes if it was not for law which said anyone can enter a temple, the suppressed class would still be not allowed into temples. And, despite the law, these incidents still prevail (as mentioned earlier these laws are on paper). Thus reservation introduced as a law is justifiable in this sense. It seems castism has a very deep impact on Indian society which fundamentally is tuned to differentiate, so private firms and citizens with upper-caste elitist mentality should not differentiate people.

 We should understand that "Reservation means equal representation", if at all it was not this case, Ambedkar had two action points

    a) Instead of Buddhism he could have converted into Christian or Muslim, international funds would have swept India. But he did not do this, as he was aware of the consequences.
    b) Or he could have pleaded Europe, America and Rich kings to raise funds for the upliftment of suppressed class.

    So Reservation does not only mean upliftment, but also equal opportunity. No doubt IIM follows policy of recruiting people from different streams arts, commerce, science, applied science and also sports. No doubt Suppressed talent deals with Hardship daily unlike fellow upper-caste, this attitude of dealing hardship  with ease in addition to diverse representation can show the way to India.

PS
    www.dalitstudies.org.in/download/wp/0901.pdf,  Urban Labour Market Discrimination Sukhadeo Thorat, Paul Attewell and Firdaus Fatima Rizvi. Thanks to shivsundar (charvaka coloumnist) and dalitstudies.org and from those websites where i have picked the images.