Divide and rule

‘You don’t give wine and caviar to someone who is starving, you give them dal-roti. You give kurta pajama to a naked man, not a pashmina shawl.’ I quote the words of a lady in this week’s ‘We the People.’ If you give them dal-roti, they will equip themselves to have wine (if the have/develop the taste). 49.5% reservations in some of the premier institutions of our country and other centrally funded colleges is yet another corroboration of the level to which Indian politicians can stoop in their ‘quest’ to garner votes. It is a step towards racism which is against the ‘humanitarian principles which make our country a citadel of secularism.’ I know that you are beginning to get the drift.
52% of our population comprises of OBCs. It logically follows that the majority of the population is ‘backward’, the civilization, the second generation after independence is backward. But lets just stop here and ask ourselves what we mean by backward. Backward in context of OBCs does not mean regressive. If I remember correctly, the Mandal commission enlisted 3741 castes that were deprived of their social and economic rights. The concept in totality is itself backward because Mandal used 1931 data which even in 1980, when the commission was conceived, was backward, let alone 26 years after that!!!!!! Moreover, from the reports I have followed, some of these castes are doing very well. The others are basically farmers. But………..hey, wait a second. What happened to the land reforms, abolition of zamindari system and land ceiling? Had these measures been avidly implemented, there would have not been a need to name these sections of the society in a manner as retrogressive as ‘backward classes’, in a manner which shouts blind childish venom. What scares me is that children are not behind this. The venom is not innocent but unwavering in its intensity.
Coming back to NDTV, I couldn’t catch the whole show because the screen kept saying ‘3641 MHz’ but what I do know is that the section representing ‘backward classes’
Stormed out of the studio during one of the commercial breaks. So ingrained in us is the historical absurdity of an ‘us versus them’ feeling, so artificially strokes are the ‘rivalries’ by the media and purile politicians, that sometimes we forget the very idea of democracy and equality. I am against the reservation because I feel it will lend ‘credibility’ to the appalling process of self alienation (eg. Hindutva) that some politicians have started propagating. Moreover, the drop out rated of reserved SC-ST candidates is shocking in higher education-around 97%. I think we should empower these students by giving them basic education so that they become capable of entering these institutions on basis of merit rather than caste certificates. Flagging of fees can also prove to be an effective method.
Evidently, politicians don’t read Ayn Rand. Plato and Aristotle seem a million light years away.