Was not a part of this caste discourse shitshow last night but I am going to pitch my 50 cents here about the whole "reservations are hurting UC people" spiel. Full disclosure, I am a UC woman(intercaste but whatevs) from an upper middle class andhra family settled in Hyderabad.

Me and my younger sister had everything money could buy handed out to us on a platter. When my sister whose lifelong dream is to be a surgeon finished her 10th, my parents put her in the best chaitanya jr college in our area. The fees was 1.5 lacs but...

...she got a 50% fee waiver due to her stellar grades in the 10th boards. Which is still 75k. For each year. On top of which, my parents spent no less than 40k in two years for guides. The amount of textbooks my sister purchased just to crack NEET ran in the sixties if not 100s.

When I put a photo of her bookshelf on Instagram, one of my classmates who is now a medico ruefully commented, "Wait till she joins medical school, the books she will need will double."

On top of this, my parents got her online education "packages" from three sites(Byjus, unacademy and some other similar website) . Unacademy costs about 8k a month. Pls do the math because I can't. You could never be ready enough, my mom who failed the EAMCET in her time said.

We live 5 kms away from the college so my dad dropped her by car every morning and V, our driver, got her home every evening. Point is my parents spent a lot of money in college fees, books, online education packages, car petrol etc etc.

My mom shut down her business and became a housewife so that she can supervise my sister full time. She still had income in the form of the rent her properties accrue, not to mention the money my grandmother left her before dying.

My parents spent the money with zero thought because they could. Most of my parents' friends with teenage kids do the same. After pulling off all this and after my sister did nothing but study for two years, she cracked the exam and got a seat in a top medical college.

Is my sister smart? Yes. Is my sister hardworking? Fuck yes. But would she have cracked the exam without spending massive amounts of money, where chaitanya and co trained my sister over and over to answer highly unpredictable questions in very little time? No.

Hard work matters, but not without resources. NEET is ridiculously difficult and those mfs hoodwink you everytime and young teenagers who have any hope of being a doctor have to give up everything to attend 12+ hrs of daily classes and do mocks every week, every day sometimes.

Did I mention V, our driver? Let us talk about him now. V is a dalit man. V makes 8k a month. His wife a 5k. His daughter wants to be a doctor as well. But V does not have the resources to put her in chaitanya or buy her multiple guides.

V does not have the time to drop his daughter to college. His wife cannot afford to let go of her job to oversee her girl's education. She does not have properties or inheritance, you see. My mom is a homoeopathy doctor, my dad is a lawyer. V studied till 10th, his wife till 3rd.

Now you tell me, are my sister and V's daughter equal? Can V's daughter have any hope of entering a medical college if she just studies from her state syllabus issued textbooks and little else? Can V and his wife help their daughter in any way in her studies?

Here is where reservations come in. This is why we have a lower bar for SC/ST kids. It is not because bahujan kids are incapable of hard work. If that was the case, then this country would collapse in a second. It is because they don't have the resources.

It is because they are starting the race from a very different starting point. A 100 meter dash for a reddy kid is a 5k marathon for a madiga one. And make no mistake, both are required to finish the race in the same time. How is that fair? Reservations are an attempt to fix that

And to those who say "Ohhh but the exam is tough because saving lives is serious business" let me just tell you that we as a nation need MORE doctors not LESS. The pandemic has pretty much drilled this point into our collective skulls, I'm sure.

And as far as "oh that sc kid took my seat" is concerned, i urge you to ask why do we have such few seats in the first place? If you want to bully somebody, bully your politicians for not building enough colleges, not your bahujan contemporaries for trying to make it in life.

Ask the politicians, where our tax money is going. Upper caste people love making a big deal of how exclusive MBBS is, because it is so hard to get into a medical college. Abbe chutiye, stop glorifying this. Plugging in an opinion someone managed to put it more eloquently than me

And let's be real, the primary motivation for indians to study MBBS is not saving lives it is status. God knows my parents' image got a facelift after my sister cracked NEET. And it is this status mongering that continues to market medical education, or any higher

education for that matter as an exclusive pursuit, because if everybody can do it how will people pat your back and sing your praises in public? So we build fewer college and make exams which require enormous financial investments which only some can afford.

We think that is good for us but look at this country now. Look at our government, our infrastructure, our state of collective empathy. We are a garbage country. We built inequalities and called it merit and that shit has fucked you and me, the upper castes as well.

And before I press tweet all, let me address those who are like "ohhh poor UCs ughhhh rich SCs". Poor UCs have parents, grandparents and great grandparents who went to school. Rich SCs are (mostly) first or second gen literates. Poor UCs atleast have 2 acres of land...

The grandparents of rich SCs had no option but to till the fields of those who owned lands. The poor UC has sympathy because he is not rich yet. The rich SC has hate because he is not poor anymore. Please, please please be kind. Educate yourself. Be open to different opinions.

Fin.