Sour Cream

I spoke to a few of my friends in the last few days and the topic of reservation generally came up. To my surprise, most of them were none too concerned about it. As a matter of fact most of them said they favored reservation. Most of us actually have happy memories of that one guy from the SC/ST background who had made it against all odds. Unfortunately, that one guy in my immediate friend circle did not manage to graduate.

If you have been casually following all this, I urge you to read this current recruitment notice for cabin crews at Air India. See for yourself just how atrocious this is. Specifically, let me point out this section:










Back to the topic at hand - the so called creamy layer.

It is inherently dangerous to provide peripheral arguments to something as fundamentally wrong as the reservation system. One may get trumped by pseudo-logic and thus trivialize the main issue. I feel the reservation system is immoral, plain and simple. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to discuss the "creamy layer" idea because I find it inherently funny.

The official definition of creamy layer can be found here. Apparently it is not the most up to date one, specifically the family income ceiling for eligibility seems to have been raised to Rs. 2.5 lakhs. Read more in this blog.

The creamy layer concept makes OBC candidates ineligible for jobs if they are above a certain economic level based on a given set of rules. For instance, children of Class 1 officers can not apply for reserved positions.

Note that the creamy layer exclusions do not apply to SC/STs.

Now, isn't that funny?