Quotas now a tool that discriminate differently

Any Dalit or OBC could have been sent in place of Shukla ji." This careless statement by Congress leader Udit Raj, made in response to Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla's selection for the Axiom-4 space mission, is more than just an insult to scientific achievement.

- SHIVANSHU K SRIVASTAVA

Any Dalit or OBC could have been sent in place of Shukla ji." This careless statement by Congress leader Udit Raj, made in response to Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla's selection for the Axiom-4 space mission, is more than just an insult to scientific achievement. It reflects a growing trend in public life where merit, preparation and professional excellence are seen as less important than identity. When space missions, among the highest examples of human competence and discipline, are reduced to caste politics, it becomes clear that we have lost perspective on what reservation was supposed to achieve.

Unfortunately, this is not just rhetoric. I say this from experience. In the UGC-NET December 2024 examination in the Law subject, I secured 99.45 percentile, yet I was not awarded the Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) under the general category. Meanwhile, more than 70 candidates from the caste-based reserved categories (OBC, SC, ST, EWS) were awarded the JRF at scores lower than mine only because they belonged to certain caste-based reserved groups. This is not a matter of personal frustration, but a reflection of how our system functions; a system where even meritorious performance can be ignored if you are not born into what I call the "now privileged" category.