Engineering Dreams, Caste Nightmares: How “Social Justice” Is Crushing Merit in India
Every year, lakhs of indian students burn the midnight oil, chasing the dream of becoming an engineer. They spend years preparing, sacrificing sleep, family time, and even their mental health. And yet, when the admission results come out, merit often takes a backseat — while caste-based reservations decide the future.
The latest fee and cut-off structure tells the story brutally:
General Category: Cut-off 93 | Fees ₹1,69,351
SC/ST Category: Cut-off 50 | Fees ₹0
Work harder, score higher, pay 10x more — that’s the reward for being born in the “wrong caste” in India.
Here’s why this system is bleeding India’s future dry:
1. Merit Is Penalized, Not Rewarded
A general category student with 93 marks still pays ₹1.7 lakh, while someone with just 50 marks walks in free. Hard work has no value — birth does.
2. One Caste Gets All the Benefits — Forever
Decades after independence, the same communities continue to enjoy reservations and subsidies, while others are punished. The “temporary” social justice experiment has turned into a permanent entitlement.
3. Middle-Class Families Are Crushed
General category students often come from middle-class families. Their parents pay income tax, GST, road tax, education cess, fuel tax — and then cough up ₹1.7 lakh more for their child’s education. Meanwhile, others pay nothing.
4. Reservation Has Become a Political Weapon
It’s not about uplifting the poor anymore. It’s about vote banks. Politicians will never remove caste benefits because they guarantee them power, even if it destroys fairness.
5. Talent Drain: India’s Brain Export
Why does india lose its brightest minds to the US, UK, and China? Because merit is rewarded abroad, not suffocated. If you score 93 there, you get scholarships. Here, you get slapped with higher fees.
6. Social Justice or Social Injustice?
The original idea was to level the playing field. But today it has flipped: the hard-working student pays more, the less-prepared student pays nothing. This isn’t equality — this is state-sponsored discrimination.
🔥 Bottom Line: In india, caste decides your fees, your college seat, and your future. Until merit is respected and subsidies are need-based (not caste-based), india will keep losing its talent, its innovation, and its global race against nations like the USA and China.
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