While China is ignoring the "dictatorship of proletariat" and paying attention to merit in education and job recruitment, mother India is expanding the reservations scheme. Rajya sabha just passed the "dalit bill". Mayawati is taking credit for the bill! She hopes that her fortunes in UP will be brighter in the next election.

Seva must be happy that his pet politician is doing something (other than stashing money away) in Delhi.

Garibi Hatao.

Why pick on her? She is serving her voters. Other than sp no one even thought of opposing the law. Sp's opposition is for purely political reasons. Every other party supported the law for pure vote block politics.
Only mayawati was working for the people who voted for party.

Everyone (BJP, BSP, CONartists, DKheads, SP ........) is playing vote bank politics. India is shining!

It's all in the vote bank politics Sandilya. Nothing seems to change ... Misreading the election results as a mandate: http://rivr.sulekha.com/misreading-the-election-results-as-a-mandate_595077_blog

A society which is purely based on 'merit' will be a cruel one.

It will lead to many people committing suicide and giving up all their hopes.

We should give truly disadvantaged people second chance regardless of their background. The disability could be physical or social.

We should implement affirmative action program for minority groups like dalits who have been oppressed for centuries, women particularly widows, sons and daughters of soldiers and policemen, orphans who never got a chance to be adopted by loving families, tribals who were exploited by mining corporations etc.

Countries like the United States can afford to pass affirmative action laws and has institutions to implement these laws.

Unfortunately, India being poor and overpopulated does not have all the resources. But that should not deter us from doing the right thing.

Rishiji,
Which century are you living in? Which country do you come from? India has a very aggressive reservation policy and spends significantly higher proportion of its resources on so called subsidy programs. The fact that India cannot solve poverty and backwardness is a complex issue for another discussion.

Rishi wrote:
Unfortunately, India being poor and overpopulated does not have all the resources. But that should not deter us from doing the right thing.

What is the right thing -- have Govt. issue quotas to people doing work with hands to find another type of work (in offices etc.)?

Incidentally, India is not a resources-deprived country. Moreover, people are not poor because of their caste. Poverty among people in India seems to be for other reasons, as indicated below.

"The use of caste in quotas to help people in jobs etc. has also given an opportunity to politicians and officials to think and act that caste system is the main reason for country’s problems of poverty and backwardness. Thus they seem to forget and overlook corruption, inefficiency and unaccountability in Govt. and public sectors and keep on concentrating on caste based quotas in jobs etc. to help people get out of misery. But that is a futile effort because corruption, inefficiency and unaccountability in official circles are wasting and scamming enormous amounts of public money without bringing any real changes and improvements in public works and infrastructure etc. for people. In this regard, consider reference (4) below which indicates that since 1992 (during last 17 years) at least Rs. 73,000,000,000,000 (73 trillion rupees) were scammed and squandered from public money. If that amount of money had just been distributed equally among people without doing anything else, each and everyone in India (country of one billion people) would receive a total payment of Rs. 73000 (or nearly Rs. 3 lakhs for a family of four). That much extra money going to each family (about Rs. 3 lakhs) would enable almost everyone in India to cross the threshold of poverty (Rs. 18000 per year family income) during at least last 17 years (1992-2009). But that did not happen in reality and many people continue to live below the poverty line in spite of endless caste based quotas for last 60 years. This indicates poverty, backwardness and misery among people are mostly due to corruption and mismanagement of public resources, and overpopulation, but not because of caste of people. It means that caste based quotas in education and jobs are not the effective tools to get rid of poverty and backwardness in the country and Govt. should instead try something else, like getting rid of corruption etc. and giving help to people only if they are really poor (under PNH, or Poor Needing Help, category)." http://rivr.sulekha.com/politicization-of-caste-system_456766_blog