A Reserved Nation

Government planning to increase the seats at higher education level by 27.5% taking the overall reservation to a whopping 50%!!!My first reaction was 'What the heck.This is utter non sense'. I know many people would have reacted the same way or much beyond.Perfectly justified.

How else do you describe government's totally irresponsible and brash act that correctly coincided with the state elections.Are we to buy the story that government suddenly got interested in the upliftment of backward classes and decided quotas, that too in IIMs and IITs, are the only way ahead for the salvation of the down trodden.Any responsible citizen who must have had a close look at this must have understood the real motive behind this sudden interest in backward classes.A political drama aimed at garnering votes.Thats it.Full stop.

India is all set to celebrate 60 years of its existence as an independent country.And weren't these 60 years enough to do something substantial for the down trodden.The problem is politicians are just not interested in their welfare.In fact they are not interested in the welfare of the whole nation.How can you try to bring social equality by denying the general public the right to education in prestigious institutions like IITs and IIMs or other medical colleges.There are thousands of students in this country who burn the midnight oil for the coveted seats in these institutes.Now they have to compete even more for a far less number of seats.And does any real benefit come out of this whole exercise.Answer is a sad NO.

Recently I heard an Ex director of IIT talking on the television.Apparently most of the reserved seats just go waste as there are not enough qualified candidates to fill them up.So if 50 seats are getting wasted now , government can take pride in telling it has managed to waste 100 seats after the quota is implemented.So how are you doing justice to a general category student.Just imagine a student who might have lost the last seat in one of the premiere institutes by a small margin.We can afford to waste 100 seats, but cant give that to people who truly deserve it.This is what you call murder of merit and talent.That too a brutal one at that.Unfolding right before your eyes and set to consume the nation gradually and kill it one day.Then our politicians can have the last laugh.

Is reservation the only way to do justice to the backward classes.How can you do justice to someone by denying justice to a larger populace.There are hell lot of issues which the Government has failed to address.India has the highest number of malnourished children in India, beating even the African countries.Isn't that an issue of national shame.What about the millions of children who have dropped out from school and doing menial jobs to make ends meet.What about the millions of people who live below poverty line, who cant have one square meal.What about the widespread superstitions and beliefs that has spread like a contagion in thousand of Indian villages.What about the tax payer's money that the government always squanders away.What about the bad roads, infrastructure and widespread corruption prevalent at all levels of Indian bureaucracy.Can someone please tell me why all this issues were never addressed nor did the successive Governments take any steps to build a concrete solution for all this.Now we suddenly discover that reservation is the solution to alleviate the poor of their sufferings.Well done, Gov.

I am proud of the students who have called for the strike.I very well support their cause.It proves two things.First, people wont take all things lying down.Secondly, the ability to react and respond to things is still very much there as the hunger strikes country wide are proving.It is indeed a call to all the people who are really interested in the wefare of the nation.We must always remember that the collective power of people is much more than the politicians and their goons put together.Government cannot go on implementing laws that are to wreck the very delicate framework of this society and divide people on the basis of caste.What is the difference between the 'Divide and Rule' by the British and the present government.Except for the origin, the very face of governance has not changed.People just have the power to vote and elect people, but seldom do these elected people do any justice to the people who elected them.

Increasing seats or expanding infrastructure is just an awkward solution to an awkward problem.It is more like a quick fix.It does not address the root cause of the issue and wont serve the purpose in the long run. How are we going to build India as a nation, where equality for all is respected, should be our long term goal.I hope this issue has atleast opened up the eyes of the apathetic politicians who are addicted to power and the benefits that come with it.Let us exhort them not to reduce democracy to a mere melodrama.