Quota System -- An extract...

AIIMS campus, 9 pm, Barkha Dutt interviewing students,. Protestors, fasting Laying across the lawns, been hungry for over 200 hours now, more than 100 have been hospitalized. Air smelling of sweat, smelling of injustice, smelling of revolution. Strong words like civil war, mutiny cross my mind. Also some words that don’t leave my subconscious are quota and Mandal.
“Quota” the word has many implications, but here it mainly refers to the reservations of seats in professional colleges for sc st obc classes.
Food for thought: at the national post graduate level examinations, upto 30% seats are reserved. In states like Tamil nadu and Madhya Pradesh there is an upto 68 percent reservation. And according to the F.I.C.C.I nearly 80 per cent of Dalit students never make it past Class X; more than 80 per cent of the reserved seats in vocational institutes remain unused; and in engineering colleges more than 90 per cent of seats in the reserved category just lie empty. These are just figures, even otherwise quota people on a whole mostly under perform in professional colleges.
If I ask my self a question as to whom all a quota must include, immediately mind springs in the answer “ underprivileged”, those who want to be somebody, bring them to an equal level with the acceptable norms and giving them the free reign to fight in the open competitions. Now when a person is a full fledged doctor, does he still needs a quota to move ahead in life, to get a post graduate seat? Do we need that quality of surgeons?
The way I think if u need to uplift a person u support him with his primary education, give him books, give him teachers, clothes, the environment, knowledge and empower them in the process to compete head to head with the “privileged” folks, and he then gets where he should be. Won’t it be cruel to be a sharma, poor and unfortunately not be a “sc st or obc?” Where does that guy go? Because he’s got no quota to go to, and he in real time might need help! How is our state justifying his reason?
Are all obc/ sc / st, poor? Do all of them need to be lifted? I’m asking this, cause im curious, are all other guys, Brahmins, jains, etc essentially rich? They don’t need any help? No upliftment?? Shouldn’t there be ways to uplift economically deprived than to uplift a whole chunk of vote bank?? Helping people who cant afford, uplifting people from backwards area, igniting their dreams, and getting then to a common pedestal and then letting them compete… isn’t that what our logical aim should be?
The priorities are all set wrong, the methods seemingly adapted by our ‘leaders’ are thru shortcuts, than to work hard. Increase a quota and Win a vote bank. It’s a guaranteed, “never fails u method” to poll success. I mean seriously, Mr. Singh Keep a 5 seat quota for digamber jains in aiims, and I swear ill vote for u the rest of my life.
Now all of us know that some of the most backwards part of our country that needs to be worked upon, got no primary education, got no primary health, got no infrastructure. murdeThe infant girl is still murdered, people are still dying of polio, measles still lingers around, iodine defeciency needs aren’t met but yes they think that by increasing a seat for a 27 year old doctor, is gonna help all this. His becoming a super specialist is gonna help them dude and not focusing on primary health care, which in all aspects is severely lacking in our nation.
Arjun Singh, look at the guy, look at him in a pic, he’s gone senile. Man don’t we need someone younger more sensible to take decisions for us? Someone who walks our walk? Someone more in tide with time? Some one taking more deliberated ‘right’ decisions?It’s like he’s the old wise man of the party playing the ruse in time. Playing the right cards to win the game. Now where is the young congress, where is Mr. Rahul Gandhi? Priyanka? More sensible Sonia Gandhi? Where is our president Abdul Kalam? Ignited minds? And moreover the universal penchant existing among political parties is understandable. Who would raise a voice and take the risk of loosing a vote bank.
There are strikes all over the country, rang de basanti or rage against the machine,who so ever has been the influence should be applauded. There is a reason for which they all have come together. Daily we read about doctors getting thrashed. Ill-treated. Delhi, Mumbai and now Amritsar. Who is suffering? The common man. The common man in us, doctors, and the common man, in patients who queue up right from 5 am at aiims fighting for a number, only to witness empty opd’s thanks to the strike.
His highness the “non smoker” health minister had a solution today. He warned that If the senior residents don’t get back to their job he will recruit doctors from outside and sack them and have been served notices to vacate their hostels.. This seemingly has become a favorite form of threat. Couple of years back when doctors went on strike in Madhya Pradesh against the 65 percent quota in post graduate examinations; Digvijay Singh did the same thing. Even Last year also Mumbai doctors where threatened that their registrations will be revoked. Now, who are these guys, how qualified or what privilege do they have to have a right over our hard work anyways? We work so hard to get where we get. The average amount of time an average student (non quota and not brilliant), has to put in his post graduate preparation is about 2 years. 2 years of studying every day, night, 2 years of not earning. 2 years of looking upto your parents for funding.2 years of anxiety, 2 years of patience. U won’t ever know if u haven’t been there, because it’s frustrating, its killing, its choking, but we have to do it, cause that exactly what competition is all about. And what’s the climax of it all, 2 years of ur hard work? it often times does give u a rank in post graduate examinations, but it might turn out that u’ve either missed on a seat, or u cant get a pg seat of ur choice, because there are 30 to 68 percent reservations. And there might be some other guy who is not as highly ranked as u, but he gets the seat you should have got, why because he was born underprivileged. Ironic.
The gist of it all is, unsubstantiated, illogical decisions have been ruling our country forever. It’s time folks stop playing Gandhi and let him rest, seriously the sc st card is over used now, and approach people of our country from a more mature point of view. Understand the new India and its pulse and then govern it, rather then being stuck in time, and playing the same games all over again.” Push a quota get a vote” rather than “deserving a vote”.
Whatever is the outcome of the whole episode, we feel good that a voice was raised, right noises were made. Doctors from aiims are going door to door in Delhi, addressing the cause. Prayer meetings and all, ala “rdb”, are happening.The grand march which brought together nearly 8000 of 'us' has generated a fabulous responses, from all over the country,as witnessed on news channels.IItians, J.N.U students are all waking up and how !!I.I.Tians are proving their point by cleaning the streets.. It’s pushing us together; youth for equality is for real and dude its working too, at least momentarily. We shouldn’t be divided at this juncture; we shouldn’t see in anyone a sc or st, who snatched our right from us tomorrow, without fighting for it equally. People live their professions, only the deserving should be given the chance. Think, if there was a quota for me in publishing and if I were to write daily columns, man people would stop reading!! And we are talking about real time human lives out here.
Things just keep on going in a circle, they happen and they die, These guys(politicians) did it before; they are doing it now, Mandal happened before, it’s happening now, There was a revolution then, there is a revolution now, Nothing happened then,............. Hope the sentence gets completed in a different tone and color. 50%of 100 or 50% pf a 1000, still is a 50%,its still a slap on ur face.Increasing the number of seats and pumping in 8500 crores at post graduate level without consolidating basic education is baseless.I hope right steps are taken this time around, towards a logical system, and not Blindfold, dogmatic, impetuous decisions aimed selfishly at nothing but the elections. Its time to change, its time to take a stand.The writing on the wall hasnt been clearer. i hope we dont give up.

Other side of the Coin....

It's been seven days since the medical students went on a hunger strike in the national capital. But for a young student from one of the most backward districts in Maharashtra, the quota became a turning point in his life.Twenty-year-old Yashpal Jaware got to study medicine at the J J hospital in Mumbai because of the reservations for scheduled caste. He comes from Nandurbar, one of Maharashtra's poorest districts, which is notorious for malnutrition deaths.Against all oddsFor the son of a poor farmer from the Maharashtra caste, the odds were huge."The very first time I held a pen was in the fourth standard. Till then we wrote on a slate. I hardly learnt anything till the tenth standard, my mother said what's the point, there's never been any doctor in our community. Now I am the very first in my family to qualify," said Yashpal Jaware.After the tenth, he had to cycle 15 kilometres a day to get to the nearest science college, and even then, he could only study when he was done with farm chores.But the biggest hurdle were the power cuts at home."The biggest problem was that I couldn't study at night. There were power cuts. We only got power from 11 to 1," said Yashpal. Getting 85 per cent in his CET became the ticket to a quota seat. Coming to Mumbai meant a loan of Rs 50,000. Language barrierThe next big shock was coping with English. Yashpal is clear that quotas are the only leveller in an unequal society. "If the open category students study in convents and we study in primary schools in marathi or ashram shalas. How can we compete," he said But he says it's very unfair to say that those who get in through quotas sail through and graduate."Everyone has to get a minimum of 50 per cent to pass. It's not as if the reserved category students pass without studying and the open category fail," he added.As the anti-quota protests reach a near hysterical pitch, the other side of the story raises the question of whether the quotas and merit are polar opposites or can reservations help bring out the merit in those who didn't have much opportunity.

-------Extract From NDTV news-------

Evolution of GOD

Always thought of origin of God..Goddess…Supreme Power..Almighty ..Lord….whatever words possible…!

What could have made people believe in them…..?

People generally consider another person a God when one receives an incomparable help or just help at the needy time.

Few people have the natural tendency to be kind and provide helping hand always…
(don’t know how they manage..)When this tendency outgrows the rest..
people start considering him as totally a unique person…slowly moves to worshipping him…ages later the person becomes the ‘Lord’..
I often think Krishna, Jesus , Mary, Rama all fall in this category, who had given helping hand to needy at the moment of need…
If Gandhi was born a couple of centuries ago ..We would have considered him as God…instead of Father….his birth covered with myths.

Is this the only reason we believe in God?

Or we feel that there is something that is beyond our strength and imagination that makes the earth spinning and the galaxies evolve…
Ok..How cud have the galaxies evolved? What could have made them come into picture?
We say there is a force that keeps the galaxies together, planets around their star and moons around their planet. But from where is the force evolved?
Since this is going beyond imagination, this unimaginable thing we started calling as God?
So now why do we have different forms of God?
Particularly, the gender orientation.
Can’t we consider them as a supreme force that is beyond such discretion?
I am not an atheist, still why do we build so many temples?

I feel we have enough number of temples of all sizes and shapes shattered from platforms to house gates to mountains to plains to desert to inside water bodies..name a place ..U can find a sort of temple there…
We not only insult the deity but also the tradition of worship.
We see platform temples, the idol is placed on the floor, and hundreds of crows sit, all the traffic smoke and dust settle on the idol.
I have heard Cleanliness is next to Godliness, but God itself becomes unclean here.

Enough the topic has become totally incoherent….like my belief …..
Probably needs a clean-up..!