Thursday, 1 June 2006 - 11:24 AM

Firstly, I don't think caste, religion and social background should be considered to give a student a seat in any college. Merit and only merit should be considered in the application. It is definitely important to have diversity in a learning environment but not at the cost of a good student's seat. Students should be accepted in colleges only if they prove to be promising, based on their previous academic records and not because of their castes. It is understandable if a poor student is given priority but then again, even that student should show some promise and enthusiasm.

I'm sure reservation started out to help the backward castes progress...but now it's all about getting their votes. If the politicians act like they care for the poor and the minority by supporting the reservation system, they know they will get their votes. If the minorities are truly talented, then they will achieve their goals, without any special considerations. Basically, by discriminating people the govt is only creating more differences between people. Also, when a student looks at a minority in the campus he/she will just assume that the certain minority is there only because he/she was GIVEN the seat and not because he/she EARNED it.

If the government thinks that they are doing the backward caste a favor by accepting them, then what about the rich people who belong to the lower caste and the poor people who belong to the upper caste? I know I don’t have as much knowledge as the Indian residents, but the same system exists here in the US and is called the “Affirmative action” I see the same discrimination here and the funny part is…the many residents (Indian) who are against reservation in India…enjoy this system in the US as they are part of the minority.

Well…I just wrote out everything I could think of for now…maybe I’ll have more to add later…there’s just soo much to say about this!

Friday, 2 June 2006 - 8:47 AM

Yes, Kaavyaa, your comments are correct and they are theoretically sound.That is why there are no direct arguements against them. But the reality is that the backward in our country face terrible repression. If you go to the interiors in any district, you will come across examples of these atrocities: tribal girl paraded naked because she dared to approach the village well for water; tribal family massacred because their boy fell in love with an FC girl and the two eloped; land dispute leading to mass murder of an entire village; BC boy denied admission into village school; tension prevails in village as Universal Literacy Program workers are prevented from entering BC village by panchayat (of FC). It is not just that I have an exceptionally good memory; I have read these headlines so many times that I can reel them off from my memory.An uncle of mine, bred for the most part in the city, is a staunch believer in the supremacy of brahmins; he believes intelligence is the sole domain of brahmins, and he believes in maintaining the purity of the genes by preventing inter-caste marriages. The caste system is not a dying monster, and this is not its final shudder; it is very much alive, vibrant, and actively eating into our social fabric. If the system had any relevance in the past, it has none now; it is the sole reason for our backwardness, it is a pestilence, a symptom of our malady. I have personal examples of the fact that in any society intelligence has a bell-shaped distribution, a finding confirmed in innumerable studies. Not giving credence to these findings is a disgrace to society, an attempt to perpetuate a system which is inherently malignant and invidious. The FC in our society are actively interested in conitnuing this system, and the reasons are mostly about economics and power; by controlling entry into villages, access to water and other things, the FCs manage to keep a large part of the populace under subjugation. That is why, all talk of merit sounds hollow; when balanced and sensible people hear of all the atrocities and aggression perpetrated by some FCs on one side, they feel no sympathy for some other Fcs demanding equality and justice on the other side. That is the crux of the issue; everyone agrees that the meritorious should rise, but the question is who in reality is suppressing merit? There are gems lying in the backwaters of the hinterland, unable to see the light of day because of lack of opportunity and justice. Another reality is that all those FCs living in the villages and commiting these offences, are landed gentry not interested in the politics of the city; they are not interested in the fact that genuinely meritorious FC students are suffering the consequences of their actions. And a politician is not going to tell them that what they do is wrong, and that they should look upon the BC as brethren and give them equal opportunity, and all that crap. He is going to sit in his AC chambers in Delhi and tinker with numbers, and watch the population fight amongst itself. A politician is not a reformist by definition; he has learnt the art of taking advantage of any given situation, and once he has succeeded, he is only interested in maintaining status quo, because his policies will need to change with the desires of the people. As it exists, FCs (collectively) want the caste system to continue; Indians are not in the least bit egalitarian.What probably the government needs to do is send strong signals to the people that discrimination on the basis of caste will not be tolerated, and ensure that speedy justice is meted to anyone caught practising it. The bottom line in our country is that the legal system has totally failed, and this will remain an enduring legacy for all the generations to come. A society which fails to secure justice to all sections of society, is a failed society. Health or ill-health affects the individual, at the most the family, or by spreading to other people, may occasionally affect society in general. But every injustice done and allowed to persist without punishment, affects the entire society. In that sense, members of a society need a legal system even more than they need the health system, and here India has failed its countrymen.

Sunday, 11 June 2006 - 4:25 PM

I agree with what all you expressed… I never realized the gravity of the situation (the caste divide/bias) till I came down to Hyderabad! It was so different in Delhi, it was so different in Delhi, because we were kids, sheltered from all such stuff…
Its all an ego problem/greed, when one person thinks he's greater than another… such people try to take the help of scriptures to prove it… it happens everywhere, in one form or another… we can look back into history and see how England treated Roman Catholics, how colonizers decimated red Indians and Australian aborigines… every country has its problems, for our country, it’s the “caste system”…
we as individuals can also help bridge this caste divide, we are the ambassadors of our caste/society, we should try to project a positive picture by coming forward and empathizing with those who are downtrodden and helping them…
the way these politicians have polarized things, it appears as though FCs and BCs have set up two opposing teams, as though all FCs don’t like BCs progressing, as though all BCs are downtrodden/suffering…
People in villages don’t have access to equal rights, freedom, nothing… but that cant be solved by reservations only, they wont even have access to those reservations, reservations largely help only city bred people… very few villager BCs will actually benefit…
we should instead try to bring about some equitable distribution of resources, people should have access to basic things like water, food, medical care, legal advice, etc even in villages… first of all we have scarcity in rural areas, this is the main reason some bully takes over and doesn’t let others in… that bully can use caste system as a pretext to justify his action…
to change the attitude of those rural bullies (FCs in this case), we need to have firm laws and policing, we need to educate those bullies and teach them to empathize… like you said, our policing/judicial system fails somewhere along the way… its confined only to the urban areas…
merely reserving seats for those BCs wont help, we need to change societal outlook, which involves educating those mentally backward rural FCs… if an FC villager goes to the city and understands what democracy is, he will go back to his village and teach his blind elders how to behave right…
so it works both ways, we have to treat the visible symptoms as well as get rid of the disease causing germ! Those rural BCs who are ill-treated will continue to hate FCs even if they get reservations and come up… so some change needs to be brought about even in rural FCs because they are the disease causing germ here, laying the seed of hatred in BCs…
by the way, I don’t think its only the FCs who cling onto the caste system! Some city bred BCs too cling onto it greedily to get more free stuff! Recently, there was news from Luckow, BC union leaders don’t want brahmans to apply for sweeper jobs… this time they say, “its our fundamental right/duty to take up jobs as sweepers/gutter cleaners, we have been doing it for ages, how can you let brahmans apply for such jobs in the Municipal Corporation, brahmans aren’t supposed to touch filth, they should go study..”… !!!!!
I can see two sets of people clinging onto the caste system… one is the rural FCs who want to enjoy life in the village as feudal lords, ill-treating the downtrodden… the other group is some city bred BCs, who want to enjoy urban life in the name of their downtrodden rural cousins!
Stuck in the middle are economically backward FCs, rural BCs and bright BCs (they don’t like being labeled as reservation based people, they too will like their hard work appreciated).
how does it feel watching policemen spit tobacco on roads… such a policeman/lawyer also wont care to better the society… that’s how everyone is, we take our freedom for granted… and our indifference/apathy manifests in several forms, one of those is this caste problem…
I know so many FCs are against inter-caste marriages, my mom is one of them! : ) she wont like me marrying an non-brahman… but that doesn’t mean she looks down on lower castes… everything has its place, Gandhiji did a lot for harijans, but he didn’t advocate inter-caste marriages… we don’t necessarily need to eradicate castes, we can still live together as a society along with our different sub-castes/cultures… we only need to learn to respect others along with ourselves… the caste system didn’t mean to brand people big or small… European countries like England and France are proud of their different provincial cultures, they showcase their heritage through tourism… they have realized over time that their diversity can be put to good use…
First of all no one knows anything today about their own castes… am sure ancient Hindu scriptures wouldn’t have licensed ill-treatment… BCs should feel proud that they belong to so&so caste, they shouldn’t let someone come along and label them “backward”… now some of those BCs are starting to like being called “backward” forever, they prefer to remain that way…
merit students suffer in all this, I remember a friend of mine, she told someone that she's going to study in St.Anns, they retorted, “you’re a Christian, you’ll get reservation preference.”… she says all her capability has gone into the dustbin because of this.. wherever she goes, she's labeled…
Someone here in Nairobi told me, “India is full of reservations, perhaps you got into a good college because of that...”… I had no answer, how do I explain it all to a foreigner… : (
If we are really secular, we should forget castes and reserve seats for underprivileged people, and do something about the lawlessness.. because its this lawlessness that’s the root cause of all this problem…

Sunday, 25 June 2006 - 12:29 AM

Hi annayya how r u doing? I've been waiting for you to come up with another topic!