Monday, May 7, 2012

Patriarchal Absurdity in the 21st century: St Stephen's reservation

Sixty five percent of the students in the prestigious St. Stephan's college are women, so to fix this skewed sex ratio, they come up with an atrociously absurd idea of reserving forty percent seats for men. Oh wow! And where does the proposal come from? From the Supreme Council!


And they say it was proposed while the college was made co-educational in 1975, that seventy five percent of the seats should be occupied by male students and the remaining by girl students for at that time the focus was to do away with the "Men's college" tag and later when the proposal to have equal number of seats for both boys and girls came it was a move to do away with the "male dominated institution" label. Since those times, girls have studied harder than boys and scored on the basis of merit getting into St. Stephen's and other colleges for their brain and not beauty (Some mindless opinions on a blog said that when the institution was made co-educational, it was seen as a move to add some glamour quotient to the college!) the sex ratio in the college distorted to see more women than men. It might have then become rueful for the patriarchal church management, the Supreme council in this case to see women abhorring the future of an educational institution they had made to educate men, oh yes Christian men for forty percent seats are reserved for Christians, it is aching for them to see that since they can't increase the competencies of men, this might come as a mollified move to improve the disparate sex ratio.



And as far as it goes the Supreme council (comprising of the Bishop of the church of North India in Delhi, the church members, the Diocesan board of education and the principal) is responsible for maintaining the religious and moral character of the institution as a Christian college and are supposed to keep their nose out of the administrative and academic matters, what made them come up with such a retrograde idea is question too quivering. This dismantled sex ratio is observed in any and every college teaching pure Sciences and arts courses, since most boys opt for engineering and the trend there has a different tale to tell. Shouldn't Rev. Thampu maintain the academic standards of the institution rather than come up with vain old age schemes to dishonor his office of operation?

This reservation system has been entrenched in the Indian mindset, and as we see we have all kinds of reservation based on caste, colour, creed and sex, can't we concentrate our means and methods to do away with this kind of discrimination? We are the first to call the West "racist" but with these kind of ideas being propagated what are we? Let's concentrate on the other four fingers pointed at us while we are pinning our finger in name calling the west racist and discriminating.





An admission into an educational institution should be solely determined on the basis of the merit and not sex, colour, caste or creed!

And why are women a waste in higher education, as said by one of the HT/TOI readers, because marriage and motherhood are the only roles (as infamously believed!) that can help her attain salvation in India!




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