Reservation is a crutch that has prevented many of our youth from excelling in their fields. It is wrong to say that intelligence is genetically modulated. Many who make it to the top do so through sheer hard work and dedication. There is in today’s Meghalaya two sets of youth. One is the type that settles for mediocrity and hankers after the good life without putting in any effort. This is also the category that clamours for rights without responsibility. The second category have no time for wailing and moaning because they are too busy working their way up the ladder of success. The second category are ready to throw away their reservation crutch because they see it as an impediment. The best way to beat your enemy is not to bawl and bark at what he does but to learn his survival techniques. Many of our youth are doing that and doing it with finesse. You see them in Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Gurgaon. They slog because that’s the way of this globalised world.
It’s good to have the Indian Institute of Management in Shillong. Such institutes also serve as models of back-breaking studies that our own youngsters are not used to. Talking to the students of IIM Shillong you get to know that they sleep only 4-5 hours daily. They work 18-19 hours at a stretch. Their assignments are humungous. Yet they are also told to step out into the real world and find ways of working with communities. Our own youth should get a flavour about what being in an IIM actually entails. Instead of constantly whining about what they should get from the State and what Governments should do for them, they should be arming themselves with the wherewithal to pursue a livelihood of dignity. Unfortunately there are so few to tell our youth to get real. Elders in society, politicians and people with vested interests feed them the daily dose of how to get more out of reservation. After getting a National Institute of Technology (NIT) we now want to corner as many seats, not through hard work but by arguing through the reservation prism. It seems that we are keen to squeeze out whatever is possible by shirking from honest pursuits. The elders are actually taking away from the youth the indomitable spirit to fight the good fight. Its time for society to sit and introspect whether reservation has helpful or whether it has robbed us of the will and determination to succeed against all odds.