Captive Adaptations

Finally the heat of reservation debate entered our office cubicles today. Like most startups we are always scampering to meet the deadlines and find very little time for an elaborate discussion on “events” which the main stream media projects day in and day out.

But, accidentally today, I found myself in the middle of a passionate discussion that my dear colleagues were having, and the impulsive disorder that I have to rant on any subject anytime led me to make my own comments. With the simple data I had known I emphatically proclaimed that both “pro-reservation” and “pro-merit” camps missed many vital facts, let alone missing the viewpoints of the other camp.

For all the brouhaha that this debate has caused, it just occured to me that all this attention and uproar was mostly because most of us, particularly the educated Indians have “pro-merit” or “anti-reservation” sentiments, this, mostly because we do not want to lose being the “privileged” and we easily choose to ignore the “socio-economic” reality. For example how many of us have made a sincere effort to learn these facts which went unnoticed for the past 6 months. The 104th Amendment Bill, passed both the houses with almost 100% “votes” in both !. And the bill was also signed by the President of India, on Jan 20th 2006.

The entire MSM is only now after nearly 6 months, cooking up a receipe for disaster. Is this the “Rang-de-Basanthi” effect ?. Yes, envelope ignorance, incompetence and greed, (mostly the psuedo-intellectuals in the urban educated society) and stamp it with arrogance they carry while thumping their chests on “pro-merit” and proclaim to be all-knowing, and we have a sure shot receipe for disaster.

May be its time for all of us to make an effort to atleast try and be better informed. Lucky us, just today we have a very good compilation of alternative perspectives on this. Read it here !