the new approach to reservations

How do you feel when you go into a restaurant and find that a table is marked reserved? The manager informs you that that table is booked in advance by someone who is intelligent enough to call on time, before you walked in…

Now consider the situation where the manager informs you that the table is reserved for a particular caste who may or may not come and who may or may not be able to pay for what they are eating and they may actually dirty up the entire place before leaving such that the restaurant’s other customers may feel disgusted to eat there… and that you will have to wait till some of the other limited tables get free…

Why do we need reservations? Are these helping the backward castes in any way? If your aim is to only get them jobs and not bother whether they get a good education or not, why bother with the process at all… I feel there are better ways to counter the problem of uplifting the economic status of these backward classes…

1) the government could levy a tax or collect some fund (similar to the tsunami/earthquake relief) and just distribute it among the people who are registered as the backward people so that they don’t have to work…
2) break India into two countries, one called backward India and the other called OC India. This way there would be no problem and in fact the reservation would now actually jump to equal 50-50 share
3) better still would be to recruit all these backward people into the middle management positions in IT companies so that they don’t have to do any work and they would get all the facilities and good salaries anyway…
4) another way would be to issue backward class certificates to OC candidates who pass a minimum level of negative IQ test so that they can be eligible for these kind of reservation policies.
5) Go on a mass conversion crusade like the Christians and Buddhists and convert everyone to backward castes
6) Send these people on high paying jobs to hostile/competitive countries so that we can encourage mediocrity in those countries and emerge as better outsourcing hub due to relative grading
7) Special homes like blind schools, schools for the mentally challenged and deaf and dumb schools can be created for training these classes of people so that they do not get shunned by society… in these schools we can teach them how being below the mediocrity line will help them rise above the poverty line

And so on… if I can think of these many wonderful ideas for the upliftment of the backward classed, a think tank of eminent personalities drawn from different walks of life like lakshmi mittal, azim premji, narayanamurthy, Abdul kalam, greg chappel, and many more industrialists and leading money makers and social workers whose priority should be on how to start businesses with “people who won’t change in a land of opportunities” rather than tap the enormous intellectual potential based on merit…

Imagine what would happen if the reservation quota was encouraged in say the Indian cricket team… 5 out of the 11 players would be from backward castes and handicapped players… if the Indian team currently considered to be the fittest and stongest team can lose against teams like the windies, we will certainly win with this new reserved team…

driving through the journey of life

on the roads of Chennai, hot, dusty and stuck in slower than a snail's pace traffic... i was tired of criticising the system that so efficiently clogged up the arteries of one of the country's metros and biggest business cities... tired of complaining that the bloody government should stop scheming ways to counter the opposition's scheming ways... so i tried getting philosophical - actually got lost in some thoughts...

how many common things between life and the journey that i am taking now... and how many parallels between me and the others on the road with me... everybody has a destination to drive to - an objective to aim for... everybody has their own means according to their economic condition, their jobs, their mindsets, their karma... how many obstacles to reach your destination... how do the others block your path - some mindlessly, some intentionally causing you the frustration over your inability to achieve your aim within your time contraint... you constantly look at your watch, mainly because you have nothing else to do other than fume afterwards...

some take a different route to their destination hoping that it would take them wherever they want to be faster... a risk worth taking while most others would stay rooted to the one dimensional right-royal-routine-route... who is right you never know, unless you can compare the parameters of evaluation throughout the journeys of the risk takers and non-risk takers... there is nothing to do in the coagulated traffic but wait... wait until an opportunity presents itself in front you, opening a gap to move on and move quickly enough so that somebody else does not seize your chance... but even while waiting, there is a lot to do... look around and the world presents you with sights that are really worth seeing... be it on the gearless scooters around you or in the great machines in the SUVs, or the surroundings that you have so painstakingly reached - beauty is everywhere in the etes of the beholder, along with all the smoke and dust... now that there are lots of mobile phones with mp3 players and/or fm radios... listen to music and relax... as their is no point shouting or getting irritated, why not appear cool and be the envy of others... there is never any use in getting tensed or frustrated... in times like this why not plan for something...

the honking indicates i should move on... stopping and day dreaming is allowed, as long as it does not affect the flow of others... an irritated glance showing only pity at what the impatient fellow has missed all along, i move the few millimeters that have been granted by the people who are way up front and moved on...