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| It took four generations of education in two dalit families, to produce a Tina Dabi. |
May 13, 2016, NewsCrunch
The first Dalit girl to top the coveted civil services exam, Tina Dabi did not need any reservation.
She had topped CBSE exam in 12th and then again topped in political science at Delhi's LSR college.
Her success is a story of “patience and consistency”, Tina Dabi says.
But her story could not have been perhaps possible without reservation lifting sections of Dalits to levels where they could compete with the general category students, woman to woman.
Writing in Indian Express Dalit MP and ex-IAS officer himself, Udit Raj, says Tina Dabi's achievement would not have been possible 50 years ago.
Tina Dabi's feat is historic because there is no exam in India which is as valued as civil services. For many, after cracking IIT, IAS is the next step, probably due to lingering colonial memories.
By topping it in first attempt and without any prop, Tina Dabi has dented the argument that reservation kills merit.
As her own experience shows, over the generations it enables merit among the people, who are totally excluded from education.
As Indian Express found out, it took four generations of education and dignified employment in two dalit families, many of those accomplishment with the assistance of reservation, to produce a Tina Dabi.
Both her parents Jaswant Dabi and Himali Kamble are engineers.
Two of his sons became engineers, one joined Merchant Navy and the only daughter became an educationist.
Himali's grandfather from a village Pulgaon, near Nagpur, was a station master. He and his wife ensured good education for all their children and her father had topped in school.
Knowing the value of education, Himali gave up er own career to coach her two daughters - Tina Dabi and her younger sister, like a tapasya.
Probably due to the world she comes from, for Tina, the discrimination discussion focuses om gender.
She says it is the gender which is the glass ceiling and that is why she chose Haryana as her cadre. a state with a deep patriarchal society.