Brand IIT - Part-1: Reservation

During past two three years some key decisions were made by Ministry of Human Resource Development and IIT Council, which met with a lot of criticism by either general public and/or by IIT community, which includes present students, alumni and professors. Issue of extending reservation to OBC was met with protests from nearly whole of student community. Issue of increasing number of IITs and increasing seats per IIT was welcomed by a majority of “stressed out” parents whose child was preparing for IIT; however this issue was condemned by nearly whole IIT community.

Everybody has his own views on these topics. I had my own, most of them being purely sentimental, after all it relates to my own Alma matar. So I thought why not do a little research to check what do the facts say. Here is my analysis and do let me know what do you think.

Reservation
On the first look reserving additional 27% seats looks totally disastrous, of course even the concept of reservation is against meritocracy. But let’s look more closely, what are the factors that influence quality of students getting admission?
a) The competition faced and ultimately
b) The cutoff marks.
In order to do a comparison of “competitiveness” across categories I normalized their ranks, within category such that the ranking is mapped to a scale of 1 to 100. Using following formula:

Where,
Rn is normalized rank,
Rl is last rank in category
R is the original rank in category
So now I have something reverse of percentile, following graph shows these normalized ranks and the aggregate marks achieved by candidate in JEE-2008. (Data was provided on JEE2008 website)

Now from above graph you can clearly see curves for Open category and OBC category totally overlapping, whereas the curves for SC and ST overlap each other while lying significantly below the curves for Open and OBC categories.

Consider these hard facts:
A total of 384977 candidates appeared in JEE-2009 and out of them 10035 candidates have been declared qualified, giving out a selectivity of 2.6%. Out of 104045 OBC candidates who wrote JEE, 1930 have qualified. This is a selectivity of 1.85%.

For open category aggregate cutoff was determined to declare the required no. of candidates (1.15 times the number of seats available) qualified:
Aggregate cutoff - 172No. of candidates qualified – 7903

Relaxation given to reserved categories is as follows:
OBC & PD - 10% lower than the aggregate of the last qualified candidate in the common merit list.SC & ST - 40% lower than the aggregate total of the last qualified candidate.
For reserved categories cutoff is decided on following basis: Cutoff calculated using relaxed criterion or till the required number of candidates (1.15 times the number of seats available in the category, except for OBC) qualify, whichever is higher.

Following were the actual aggregate cutoffs based on above criteria:

Note that the cutoff for OBC category is same as that for open category and significantly higher than the relaxed cutoff ie. 154.8, however for other categories the cutoff is exactly as per the relaxations given (PD – 10% relaxed, 154.8; SC and ST – 40% relaxed, 103.2).

This implies following:
Competition among OBC category is high enough to avoid cutoff reaching the “relaxed” region. OBC reservation in reality is not needed and has no effect either. Ratio of OBC candidates to total number of candidates is in proportion with ratio of reserved seats and the total seats. It’s just a political card played by our politicians. Other Backward Castes are really not at all backward, they have access to same resources as available to upper caste candidates.

Another interesting conclusion that can be drawn is that the much controversial estimate of OBC population (27%) cannot be very inflated, at least the ratio of JEE candidates, which is mostly middle class, happen to lie in this range (104045 candidates out of total 384977 turn out to be 27.026%).

On similar lines we can draw conclusions on SC-ST categories. The competition is not high enough within SC, ST and PD candidates. The number of meritorious candidates is so less that lesser qualified candidates are getting into IIT with the help of relaxed cutoffs (which, 40%, IMHO is too relaxed).This again implies that either the estimate of their population is wrong or the population of these categories having access to proper resources is very low. Speaking in numbers, 36117 SC candidates appeared in JEE-2008 which constitutes 9.38% of total strength of candidates. For ST candidates figures are even more shocking, 12484 ST candidates translate to 3.24% only. I would say it has to be the latter case or a mix or both. Figures of 7.5% population of scheduled tribes and 15% population of scheduled castes can be a little, but not much, on the higher side. But one thing is certain; a majority of students from these categories are not even appearing for exam, which in turn implies that they don’t have proper resources to get qualifications needed for appearing in IIT-JEE, i.e. education till 10+2.

Indian government has failed terribly to provide these children with the basic schooling and until this is done forcing reservation in higher education is not going to serve any purpose.

Come Back!!

Oops.. its been a long lllllong break from this blog. Shifted more onto my other blog confessions of a hillarious mind. Don't know why but didn't feel like writing on serious stuff. Anyways now i found a issue which is very close to my heart - Brand IIT. I'll be writing a series on this where i'll talk about Reservation, Seat increase, New IITs etc. Actually I had written some of this stuff much earlier, infact 2-3 months back but didn't get time to finish and post. I also want to post something on marxism but lets see with wedding coming up and 55 work hours what can i do :-)

Sare Jahan Se Achcha

sāre jahān se acchā hindostān hamārā

ham bulbulain hai is ki, yeh gulsitān hamārā

These are the words of famous poet Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal, which I am sure all Indians would have heard. I had heard and sang this song a number of times, especially in my school days but never thought about it. That time I sang in praise of India just because I am an Indian and like everybody I was showing my patriotism. Today again I want to sing this poem not just because I am an Indian but because I really mean it.

I was thinking of writing this entry just after returning from Germany that is August 2006 but somehow I couldn’t. Last summers when I was in Germany, for a research project, I got a chance to observe a society other than India. It was at this point that it occurred to me what is so special about our society, our culture and this country India.

This Indian society is so diverse that people in other countries cannot even imagine. India is home to largest population of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Zoroastrians, Bahá'ís, second largest population of Muslims in the world. Other religious groups, which include Christians, Buddhists, Jews and Ahmadis also, have a significant population. While growing up an average Indian is exposed to such a number of religions and communities that is simply not possible in any other part of world. This exposure is what teaches an Indian to respect religious beliefs, traditions and culture which may not be followed in his own house. Besides variation in religious beliefs and traditions, physical features of Indians also vary specially with their geographical location. Indians can have features from Middle Eastern to Asian (I find it funny that people in west call east Asian features as Asian.), we have all shades of skin colors, from much fairer to much darker one. This is the reason why an Indian would never judge a person on the basis of his religion or color. And it is this multicultural and pluralistic society which I love most about this country.

Please note that I am talking about a normal majority of population leaving aside some negligibly small percentage of people who preach hatred towards other religions, such people constitute an insignificant percentage of population and are motivated by political reasons rather than religious.

Right from my school days I have had friends from really diverse cultural backgrounds. They followed different religions, castes and communities. But I don’t remember even a single incident where our cultural background became a point of conflict. We studied together, played together shared our lunches without ever thinking about any difference. Why? Because a child growing up here gets it as a common knowledge that there are people following different path than his own family and they are as much human as he is. All major festivals, of different religions, were celebrated in my school. We visited friends from other community to greet them on their festivals. Festivals in this country are what they should be for, creating festive mood, enjoying,

Just compare this situation with that in any other country in world. How many religions live there or how many religions do people living there know about, how many places of worship can they name? I am confident no country can parallel India in these grounds. Most western countries have a history of religious intolerance whether it is massacre of Protestants or anti-Semitism or racial discrimination of non-whites. In Germany, I felt that even now there is a small wall between Protestants and Catholics, although it’s not as high as earlier but still if you talk to locals about it you will find that it’s also not completely gone. As for the racial discrimination, last few months we can see our newspapers, which are reporting more and more incidents of attack on non-whites, especially in Britain. However now you won’t find anti-Semitism in Europe because now there are no Jews left for them to hate. In recent years there has also been a rise in anti-Islamic views in west. The west has also been very intolerant in dealing with turban issue of Sikhs. Condition in Arab countries is even worse, where they don’t even allow people to follow their religion freely, they can’t build their worship places, they can’t celebrate their festivals, etc, etc.

But in India also there are a few organizations and groups which are threatening the secular fabric of society. There have been a few cases which show an alarming similarity with the examples from other countries that I cited, be it communal riots in Gujarat, be it violence against Biharis in northeast and vice versa or be it demand of Shiv Sena to draw out all non-Marathi people from Mumbai. We should learn a lesson from these countries and try to control such non-tolerant elements of our society otherwise our country would end up breaking into smaller nations such as European ones.

Now after living in such a diverse and tolerant society I can never imagine myself in a country where all people have same religion, same culture, and same language. That is how you would feel about a canvas painted by a single colour after watching a rainbow in sky.

Opium for Masses

The concept of religion fascinates me a lot. Its interesting how this one concept has affected every sphere of our life, be it art, culture, history or politics, nothing is left untouched by it.

When I observe the concept of religion I see two completely different and unrelated facets. The first part of religion, which dies with the founder of religion, is its spiritual or philosophical part. Religions are based on interpretations of the teachings of some noble and wise persons, interpretations and not the actual teachings. These interpretations, which are done by not so noble people and not so wise people, are often corrupted and distorted, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. Either ways it results in gradual death of the spirituality from the religion. And what survives is the crust of religion which is nothing but a set of traditions and beliefs. It’s like a hollow sphere, without any solid core. This hollow, hypocritical 'organization' is the religion for masses.

This, the more popular part of religion is more related to our culture than to anything else, it is more a identity symbol than spiritual. People like it mainly because it gives them a feeling of being a part of some group or society. Nothing wrong in such functioning also, but I am afraid that the people don't realise that it’s just a part of culture and society rather than some unquestionable divine words. Religion has made many more deleterious contributions than positive ones.

This religion has been misused by kings, politicians and 'religious' leaders for controlling people, to gain power and for other purely selfish interests. You don’t need to strain your brain for examples, look around, everywhere, in India, in Pakistan, in Europe, every corner of world. What can be a better example than partition of India. Sixty years ago some rotten minded people divided my country into two parts and yesterdays brothers and today’s neighbours are still killing each other for some petty reasons. History is full of such megalomaniacs like crusader kings, like Hitler, like Taliban, like Mr. Modi and numerous other psychopaths.

This concept of 'religion' is also misused for the satisfying human fixation for claiming self-superiority. The attitude 'I am right and you are wrong' is an inherent human characteristic. It's hard to get over this mentality. Religion just provided man with another opportunity to realize his ugly ambitions. It should be noted that religion is just one of the ways for man and not the only one. Where there is a will there is a way, if you want to kill somebody and still feel glad about it then we also have castes, creeds and nations. Caste clashes in Hindus, Shia-Sunni fights in Muslims, Catholic-Protestant tensions, ethnic cleansing by Nazis and many other instances justify the point. People just want to believe that they are better than others and worse they try to propose some logic for this absurd thought. This logic often turns out to be religion, race or nation. Man needed a reason to fight, to kill and religion is just one of them.

Then there are people, 'common people', who use religion to escape the realities. They only search for a escape route and what they have.....RELIGION. This majority madly and blindly performs ‘religious’ practices and assumes this guarantees them a place in some utopian heaven.
They don’t focus on their deeds, make no efforts for betterment of society, they just obtusely follow words from some book written hundreds of years ago. Also, often, the context of these words is overlooked and people try to generalize them. Karl Marks beautifully described this point in his famous words:

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. "

These people are just lost in search of mirage of a mythical heaven, when they can create their own paradise right here on Earth; and the Earth..........it just continues to burn like hell.