Reservations...Good, Bad or Ugly ?

This is a topic that has bugged me right from my school days. This is also a very controversial topic that has been debated widely. I think the fundamental core of the problem is to balance the problem of minority. To some extent, I think the idea of balancing out resources among unequal consumers is a classical act of a communistic society. While everyone is totally against communism and claim that it is not a good model after all, I dont understand why balancing out the resources is even considered. On the other hand, the question about the condition of poor and suppressed people who live in a negative spiral of economy is a very important issue that needs to be seriously considered as well. The question then becomes, what is the cost of balancing ?

I read in a siliconindia article today that IITs, IIMs and other leading government based elite institutions have been asked to reserve 49.5% of their seats to SC, ST and OBCs. I think it is a ridiculous move and will have significant long term impacts. Till I completed my +2, I never had any notion of what reservation was. As a school student, I never looked at my fellow students in the mental filter of caste, creed or race. Things were very simple. But, as I wrote my entrance exam and waited for the results to come, that's when I realised how skewed the system was, in the act of "balancing". Anyway, I got into a decent college (I am sure I have a majority here by saying that..:)) and was able to succeed. I can think of a large pool of students who didnt get into a good college just because of the so called "reservation". I also know of a large pool of "qualified" students whose future was spoiled for the same reason. Where did they go wrong?

When I looked back into history, I can understand that people like Ambedkar and others wanted to see a society which is not limited based on their racial background. I perfectly agree with it. No one in this world should be devoid of an oppurtunity based on their racial background. I would even go as much as to say that, people from certain communities should be given some discounts, not based on their castes but based on their economic background. A little amount of "discounting" of the order of 10% is still understandable. But, numbers of the order of 50% or 65% (used to be the case in Tamilnadu) is just intolerable. I think politicians in India play a major role behind these moves. Are they to be blamed? Should people who back up political parties based on these reservations be blamed? I dont know. I was wondering what you guys thought about the same.