Quota Systems

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

World over the democracies foster quota systems.  It simply is that the politics drive establishing quota from a portion of available opportunities and funding from colleges, schools, jobs, money, housing, land, and any other resources of the nation/s.  Politicians continuously believe and use the quota system while in power, or posturing for power.  Politicians and the power of quota systems constantly play to the polls and politics.  Quota systems pander to vote banks, and continues to be popular with all countries, especially when it is time for reaching out for votes, and as an election promise and also reaching out to interest group, quotas still touch a nerve with people.

For some reason we believe that somehow or someone has at some point of time taken advantage of our people, and we want the so called old wrong to be done right today.  It’s a long statement, but everyone has a grouse about something, and we want today’s society so something about the past.  No one is interested in the context, just some new benefit, and if the overall human race is to believe that the history of mankind has some issues with their particular sect of people at some point of time, then we all need to be in a quota system, not just a few people at a time.

What drives the quota systems and politics which primarily drive quotas is the communities constantly vying for such classification to stake claims to allocations.  With a single stroke of a pen, politicians have been penning legislation that forces quotas on the societies (without an expiration date) and so far in some cases more than 50% of the available resources, jobs, seats, opportunities are reserved.  There is little room for any more classifications into the quota system.  We have actually over extended the quotas, and never remove the groups from quotas.  We constantly have groups vying for quotas, and we constantly identify people as downtrodden or deprived to demand quotas.  The over used and overburdened quota system is still very popular for agitations and attracting popular voice.

The quota system is perpetuated and doesn’t have an end time line.  There is only a start to the quota and never an end.  The political system keeps pandering to the groups of people (who are all down trodden), and both the politicians and quota holders have perfected the act of paying the poor house, and they will constantly refer to a person, at one time who belonged to the community to keep milking the words of the old time, which might not even be relevant to today, and will drive in the comments as thing to remember and uphold today.  What is forgotten here is that the world has always had inequalities and also self corrects itself.  The evolution applies to people and communities.  We are very smart to find solutions, if we want to find solutions.

The global democracies always had the rich and poor, and the have’s and have not’s.  Transfer of opportunity and wealth is basic evolution.  Wealth and opportunity does get circulated just like the wheels.  The global markets constantly self-correct and reinvent.  Change is constant.  Only thing that gets perpetuated is the quota system, and despite the changes to societies and markets, the politicians keep the quotas in play simply to keep playing to the vote banks. 

The constant waste of money and resources, the incompetence of seat selection in professional and educational institutions, the allocation of jobs without competence and qualifications, the wasted money and resources that bring no positive change to the communities, above all unaccounted and unplanned development that is forced on any community or its people because of quota systems, have shown no impact to uplift the groups as a whole.  Despite all this, we continue to have demands for more and more quotas.  No one really cares that a brilliant student can’t get into school because of quota system, someone very well qualified can’t get a job, someone can’t further in career because of a last name; the atrocious politics of quota systems continue, and keep pushing people to desperate measures.

From the United States to India and just about every nation in between, the quota systems keep the politicians busy, and keep their speeches in high voltage.  Instead of fostering positive change they constantly fuel distrust and despair.  There are definitely pockets of success, but by and large they continue to drive despair and don’t push communities to the main stream.  The quota systems constantly raise communal tensions, and public dissent, political opportunism, and above all abuse of the system.

There is no end to the quota system, once it is implemented.  It is for infinite amount of time, and by trying to change or modify or remove the quotas cause only more upheaval and unrest.  We best implement quota for everyone so there is global coverage for every type of people, and it is for sure the best way to eliminate the grouses and inequalities that are contributing to the society today.