To those who feel its about competition.....

These statements like competition and merit are thrown around in such as
being really big monoliths, without realizing how these concepts even really
present themselves in the real world. Let me start by giving examples
In the last year of our job applications in IIT Mumbai, the most prized
jobs were the one’s you got in American companies where the positions were
based in America. I remember yahoo.com etc hired people only from teh
top class, with people having GPAs higher than 8 points. Now, people from
lower ranking undergrad colleges in India names you might not even have
heard come for masters in American universities by paying tuition for these
universities and these guys then end up getting jobs in American companies
like yahoo. This was something I saw after graduating from IITs and spend-
ing just 2 years in USA. Now these same guys if they were actually in IITs
I dont think they would even make up a GPA of more than 6points. Where
is competition then.
As far as entering these IITs, if you are doing a coaching in kota, ur
chances go up astronomically. In some coaching classes, entrance success
rates are more than 50 percent. The intelligence we are talking is more of
a manufactured intelligence produced through grounding in prized coaching
centers. I have a question to ask how many sc/sts are even present in these
coaching centers. I remember when I gave that IIT entrance exam, most of
the problems I just guessed the solutions to, because I didnt have specialized
coaching to go to. I remember one of my seniors from the general category
told me that the erason he got in to IITs was because of the skill of memo-
rization that he had, if he saw problem and a method he could produce that
in the exam. So it was memorized intelligence grounded in coaching centers
that helped him. He didnt go about guessing all the solutions in the exams
and removing them straight out of his ass like I or most probably most of us
did.
Face the facts, in a human population the intelligence spectrum falls
within a Gaussian curve where majority of the population is within a couple
of standard deviations away from the center. Only about 2 percent are
gifted. That is what we saw even in IITs, just about 2 percent or so had
these extended information processing abilities and these were teh toppers
or the studs as they were known, and the rest irrespective of how they got
in to that place, generally were just more or less similar, with spectrum of
differences in abilities.

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 But even with all these facts, what sc/st students have to go through is a
process of labeling. Let me tell you a small story. The guy under whom I did
my PhD, was a postdoc under Ed Witten, the guy is considered teh smartest
man in the world, is a fields medalist and is considered the Einstein of this
generation. His other boss was Frank Wilzeck, the nobel prize winner. Now
my advisor told me that he used to get scared to ask witten any questions
because witten might think he is stupid. Now, my boss was no small guy,
he was one of the pioneers of the revolution in extra dimensions research in
the 90s. Lot of this research becomes a staple for documentaries on BBC on
questions about the universe. Now even at that level of excellence doubts in
one’s abilities creep up. I have talked to intelligent people and just a little bit
of psychological evaluation shows you that when you prize something such as
your intellectual capabilities (you talking about competition does show that
is something that you prize too), fear of not measuring up presents itself in
every person. Respect for your abilities and recognition is what boosts that
fragile aspect of almost every human being. This respect and recognition is
something that comes from peers or your mentors etc.
Now what about the status of sc/st’s in IITs. Ever since you come in
to that place, you are labelled as a dumbfuck. Not that your abilities are
anyway less. Only thing is that you have not been grounded through rep-
etitious excersising in problem solving that is the hallmark of students in
coaching centers. This fragile self-confidence gets hampered not just directly
or indirectly by your peers, but also people that you may decide to look up
to, the faculty members, who look down upon you. And why is that, just
because of labelling.
I had talked to PhD students at stanford in particle physics and these
guys are among the top 2 percent as I have talked about before. These
people actually think and they dont see any difficulty in understanding my
arguments. They see it too clearly that there is no way that a guy getting 90
marks in one exam is more intelligent than a guy getting 70 marks. Especially
when constraints of manufactured intelligence are factored in.
But then why do the faculties in IIT’s not comprehend this logic. Well
for one, if they were like these stanford guys they wouldn’t be ending up in
the IITs which are not known for their research output in the first place, but
would be working for premier world institutions. But the other thing is these
IIT faculties may be intelligent enough to known that if you kill the soul of
a human being, you kill the fighting spirit of the human being.
Masters students through GATE did have a different grading scheme

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than bachelors students supposedly so that they dont have to compete with
supposedly higher grounding of the bachelor students. However these guys
used to get all the support from the faculties in IITs.
Now if I did convince you that the labelling of sc/sts was done on purpose
to make spineless sheep out of human beings, the question I ask is what is
the need. If the question was about competition, the entrance exams are just
what the name suggests. Doorways in to the institute. What about com-
petiting once you get there. Shouldn’t the institute try to make sure that
no unwanted psychological pressures traumatize any student. The obvious
thing is that they dont care about competition. It is all talk. That is why
donation based colleges are never looked at in the same way as reservation.
The reason that sc/sts are troubled is because of ’fear’. Uppercases in In-
dia make up 15 percent of the population and they dominate over all the
resources inside India. If one educated ambedkar in good position can bring
so much change, just think how much would thinking sc/sts in good position
would cause damage. Because in a country bent of producing equality every
section would ultimately endup with proportional share in teh workings of
the country, from top to bottom positions. That means the uppercase end
up with just a 15 percent share and being a minority in economics and not
just in numbers spells doom for any minority.
I am sorry if these paragraphs just seem disconnected from each other, but
I hope they give you the essence of my arguments. They are just ramblings
from my side, just flowing through as I write. Just some things to ponder
about as I close.
Why are the Ambanis, Tatas, Bajaj etc against reservation in their com-
panies. I mean when the owners of these companies, the CEOs just got their
jobs handed down to them, just because of inheritance rather than through
open competition, how can hirings in their companies based on social inher-
itance (reservations) affect the functioning of these companies.
How about the fact that in the private sector jobs are really about who
you know. Isn’t that the reason that sites such as linked-in are about. So
why is reservation still so bad.
How does experience get you a higher salary. I mean, it is not like you
really remember what you were doing 2 years back, 3 years back......