Advantages & Disadvantages of the Reservation System in India

Reservation is a form of affirmative action to uplift the status of socially and educationally backward communities in India.

Let’s talk about its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:-

1. Increase in no. of people from backward sections in various decision making i.e.,Increase in representation from different sections of society.
2. It has helped some people from backward sections to achieve higherposts or services in the public sector as well as in some private institutions.
3. It has encouraged the people to fight for the justice whenever there is violation of their human rights.
4. Meritocracy is meaningless without equality.First of all people must be brought to the same level whether it elevates a section or decelerates another regardless of merit.
5. Reservation has slowed down the process of forward becoming richer and backward becoming poorer

Disadvantages:-

1. It is a form of ethnic discrimination.It’s working as a barrier for inter-caste marriages.
2. It’s a biggest enemy of meritocracy.It’s resulting into the degradationof quality of students and workers enrolled in different institutions.
3. It’s propagating notion of caste based society instead of eliminating it.
4. Poor people from forward castes don’t have any social or economic advantage over rich people from backward caste.If this prevails,it may result into the formation of another backward caste of people belonging from poor people of forward caste.
5. Beneficiaries of reservation are largely from dominant class in backward castes.Marginalised section still remains marginalised.