More on the controversy

Again, some info before I start. I do not belong to any OBC or any other such which would get me reservations of any sort. I’m where I am on merit and am damn proud of the fact. Also there’s nobody who I’d want to help who gets to use the reservations.

So that out of the way.

Now, for the entire reservation deal. Everybody has an opinion about it. Here’s mine.

Firstly, we have to agree that the current software boom bringing in all the money to the country is not necessarily a good thing. The middle class (economically) is slowly fading out and the difference between the higher and the lower classes is quite large.

Now it’s easy to say we don’t care about it and that it’s survival of the fittest and they ought to work their way up like we did. But honestly, if the gap keeps growing, the obvious jealousy and contempt of the one class toward the other also going to increase.

The recent Rajkumar incident in Bangalore being a good example. The people fighting there were not the original fans, they were just the lower classes giving vent to their frustrations and also making good use of the opportunity to loot a few people.
This has been happening over the years. Same deal with the Kaveri water issue. I remember seeing folks from Kammana Halli standing on the ring road and stopping cars. Now, if the people in the car spoke Kannada, they spoke Tamil and vice versa. (They were fluent in both languages). Only the local familiar faces were spared.
Same deal with religions and Pakistan. As long as Pak stays poor, there are going to be people who are driven by the religious cause to do something drastic, and there are going to be people taking advantage of it. All the communal fighting that’s happening in India is also generally in the lower classes (economically) with a few opportunistic leaders and the upper classes are just probably getting into discussions about it and doing nothing.

Now poverty is definitely lack of opportunity. And without opportunity, the gap is only going to grow and the existing problems aren’t going to leave.

Is anybody doing anything to bridge the gap? Screw the government and taxes, everybody knows about that.

It’s easy to say nice things about merit when you know that’s good enough for you to qualify. Let’s face it; there are people with a handicap with education. Not all families give priority to education. That makes a huge difference. If you have people behind you pushing you, you tend to do better (especially at a young age). This wouldn’t be the case if your folks at home were always hinting at you taking up a manual job somewhere.

(Considering most people reading this being from educated backgrounds) you might have noticed somebody who didn’t do well enough in his studies and yet got placed somewhere by some relative or friend or somebody else. Now is there a possibility of this happening in say, the slums?

So there should be some assistance provided to people of the lower classes. Not caste based, just economically backward. But then if this becomes official, there would be plenty of misuse, going by the pressure for education here. This is not going to help the people it was intended to help.

I’m not sure if reservation is the right way forward, but suggest an alternative way out.

Let me also remind you, the midday meal scheme was a flop and did nothing for anybody, it continues doing nothing for anybody to this day.

Financing some kid’s education is not enough for the family; they want the kid to be a source of income, not an extra mouth to feed.
You can’t pay the family extra to probably cover for the child’s prospective income. This would only increase the bloody demand in the methyl-alcohol market and local village brothels.

So again, reservations are probably not the right ay forward, but bridging the gap is necessary for our sakes and if not reservations, suggest a better way. Don’t just protest, suggest as well.
Nobody is suggesting yet.

BTW, I didn’t vote for the party that's currently in power, don’t think I’ll be doing so next time either, but that’s for other reasons.
And I hated Rang De Basanti, pathetic movie.
I hate moral science class as well… this is more about our comfort than anybody else’s life or whatever. Them staying backward isn’t good for us.

Komodo Dragon

p.s. Definite fall side of reservation: Till my 10th STD, I had no idea who in my class was SC or ST or OBC… it’s during and after the boards that I got to know, and I did have a feeling of contempt towards them. It didn’t seem fair.