My Letter to HR & Dean Against Signatures of TA for Salary

Dear Sirs,
This is with reference to the your mail regarding "no signature no stipend". I would like to request you to reconsider and abolish this demeaning practice. Allow me to put forth my argument against it.

1)We, as TA's, are not full time employees of DA-IICT. In this respect, it is illogical to ask each TA to sign everyday. It would be better to penalize the TA's in case they are not present for their duties.
2)The TA's are chosen on the basis of merit and the reason for that is sincerity. By asking the TA's to sign, you are questioning their sincerity thereby questioning your selection procedure itself.
3)This practice does not give the right message to the TA's. In this system, one can get away with performing below par and putting proxy each day. Not only that, the TA's who are honest find it demeaning.
4)The practice of signing not only wastes the time of the TA's, it eats up valuable human resource of DA-IICT whereby one person has to take care of entering the attendance of the TA's everyday.

Hence, I just do not understand the rationale behind the practice. It is not just socially undesirable but also economically useless(unless you consider the amount of money saved by not paying for the absentees a profit).
In the light of this, I would request you to abolish this practice and send a healthy message to the TA's.
Thanks.

-Chintan Agarwal
(200301066)

The Rational Behind Reservation

The intelligentsia commonly opposes the politicians of today questioning their ability to manage the affairs of a country, and in a country like India it is more so. The reservation bill and its effect thereon has been a classic example of this. The reservation bill was passed by the government almost unanimously. Public questioned the motives behind passing such a bill and labelled the move as one for getting votes. I wonder if it is just that.
Surely the politicians need votes and the reservation bill did them no harm in that terms. To think of it, I think that the reservation bill is an act of genius. The idea is that government has established institutes of national and international repute. Now how do you use them to aid in equal development, given that these institutes have not contributed to the extent one would have thought they would given their potential? Well, the idea is simple, let there be some seats allocated for people who have traditionally been backward. Amazing, isn't it. These people would, no matter what, reach somewhere riding on the brand name developed by the institutes and their next generation would be no longer backward! In this term, I think that reservation has been an amazing enabler. However, there are certain repercussions of the bill which I think need to be analyzed before it can be called a success.

Right to Equality

A recent article carried news about a renowned author, Shiv Khera, going to court challenging the recently passes bill of reservation for OBC in all government funded institutions. This comes as a ray of hope for many across the country. The ease with which the reservation bill was passed is something that is amazing. Rarely do you get all political parties agreeing to something, and that too so fast!
However, this incident brings a lot of issues that I think are important and need to be looked into in detail. First is that what is the rational behind reservation and is it justified to such a large extent? Secondly, what are its implications to the social and economical situation of India? I think that the implication of reservation bill in terms of societal effects is very important and has conveniently been ignored in front of the adverse economic effects that it might have in the future. In subsequent posts I will write my opinions on the matter.