When Quota did me in

It was the summer of 1996. It was also the year of loss of innocence in my life. With grand plans of stepping into college life, we were all busy filling up forms for junior college after our CBSE class Xth result. And in that twilight zone, between school and college, we were left bewildered by a column in the form that later I concurred was devised by political expediency and electoral greed. Claiming to champion the cause of social justice, the Bihar government that year had introduced 27% reservation for OBCs in addition to already existing 22.5% quota for SC/ST in the state’s universities and asked teenagers, just out of school, to reveal their caste identity. All of a sudden, childhood friends, untouched by Mandalisation of politics and social engineering in school days, were preparing to deconstruct the new lexicon of caste the column had introduced in their simple lives.
Scores soon became secondary and caste calculations came into play for that coveted seat. Now, secretively all of us wanted to know each other’s castes, a piece of information that held no importance in the school days. But with little experience in decoding the caste matrix, it turned out to be a futile exercise. Surnames were more often that not ambiguous. The Prasads, Singhs, Sharmas, Thakurs always led to open-ended answers. We were soon to find out that the caste dynamics was not as simple as it was explained in the school history textbooks. It was only when the list was declared, the real identities came to light. I was, of course, didn’t figure in the hall of fame.
For some of us, the number of seats and faith in the State had been severely dented. Under the veil of undoing the oppression of ages, the ‘government of the underprivileged’ had done its bit to sow the seeds of caste feelings and disenchantment, denying the ‘privileged’ a level-playing field. Having secured 86% in the boards and looking at the trend of the previous years, I was sure to make it to the best institution in undivided Bihar. But it was not to be. Needless to say I was filled with angst and cursed myself for being born in an upper caste family. At that impressionable age, when I should have been balancing chemical equations, I was tirelessly trying to think of ways to be downwardly mobile. Why didn’t I belong to the OBC category? I had yearned as an impatient teen. Though I finally did reconcile to the harsh reality, I consider it nothing more than a political ploy to consolidate votebank.