A seat with a Caste Certificate

In a human life-time, a person is most reflective when he is halfway through it. Most people think about the life they have lived, the ideals they lived for, the joys that they shared with others and the direction that they are going to take from then on when they reach an age which is neither young nor ripe.
I too am in a similar stage of my IIT life at Kharagpur. It has been almost two academic years at IIT.I am almost halfway through. This series of blogs is a medium to put to paper my thoughts about IIT system in general and IIT Kharagpur in particular.
In particular, this blog is about the recent approval of the 27 percent reservation meted out to the OBCs by the Supreme Court. To go into a bit of very recent history, this 27 percent reservation was proposed by MHRD in summer 2006. At that time I was opposed to the reservation, I am now as well. At that time I was just an outsider and had the opinions that were reflective of the majority of meritocratic Indian society. However now, I being an insider have a little more insight to the IIT system.
First and foremost problem with 27 percent reservation is the sheer size of it. Let us take a particular case of IIT Kharagpur. The current intake of B.Tech students is roughly 850 per year. A 27% reservation for OBC would mean that the total no. of seats have to be increased so that the number of seats for other categories isn't diminished. This would in effect result in a 54% overall increase in seats. So with the full reservation being implemented, the intake would be 1300 in IIT Kgp alone.
The infrastructure of IIT Kgp is minimal at best. There is simply a shortage of 300 rooms already. There is no construction of any new boys' hostel going on currently except for the increase in size of some pre-existing hostels. Then how on earth is the 27 percent reservation(read 450 more students implying 450 more rooms) be implemented.
This problem is quite tangible and could be solved if a swift action be taken regarding the construction of hostels, which however seems to be quite a big ask considering the work culture in Bengal.
Another big issue is the insufficiency of academic infrastructure. This would seem quite surprising to any outsider. Let me put it like this: IITs simply lack good professors. It is very evident when we look at the quality of teaching at IIT Kharagpur. If you ever opened the faculty page on the web-page of IIT Kharagpur, you would easily see the shockingly small fraction of professors who are educated from any reputed foreign university. Further, the number of new faculty that is added is very small. It suggests that in an ideal world the size of new faculty would be at-least one fourth the size of pre-existing faculty. Then, would the MHRD be kind enough to explain how are they going to find the faculty befitting the standard of IIT in such large numbers, in such a small amount of time ,considering the rate at which new faculty is being added over the recent years.
Then too reservation would achieve its intended goal only if it is meted out to the people who truly require it. That is to say, the people who are OBCs but have access to all the facilities should be left out of the reservation bouquet. This again seems to be quite tough with all the caste-based politics being played.
In the end, it is a really dicey situation. An under-privileged should be given some advantage or some relaxation in criteria. But the criteria for selecting the under-privileged is itself very obscure. Such a high reservation is no solution for this problem considering that IITs already have trouble filling in the reserved seats for the category candidates.
I personally feel that seats shouldn't be reserved, However the cutoff for under-privileged class should be quite relaxed. This would ensure that the merit of the system isn't compromised.
But believe me, the Minister of H.R.D doesn't have even that little sense that he would give a non-politically motivated thought to it and try increase the infrastructure first.