The Gorvernment of India, has tabled a bill, introducing the world of reservations intothe private colleges in India. Expectedly, they have left out the 'private minority' institutions out of the purview of this bill. Quite some time back, they also tried to initiate a reservation bill among private industries. All this while, the gorvernment alsoseemed to tread a path whuch said they will not distinguish, that everyone is equal and that they are 'secular'.

Reservations, now has become a political tool used by the state and central gorvernment toconsolidate their vote bank rather than use the policy judiciously for the wholesome develo-mpent of the people of the country.

One must agree that the introduction of reservations by the Nehru gorvernment was a positive step. During the pre-independence, the baboos and the brahmins, the forward caste had prospe-red a lot, and a gulf between them and the other people had to be bridged. But, even Nehru did not intend reservations to go on and on. Subsequent gorvernments has made this issue a sensitive one, a political one which influences the votes.

We,the people should realise that the 'backward classes' have been enjoying reservations forthe past 57 years, and if in these 57 years, they have been unable to bridge the gap betweenthem and the 'forward class', then it is only them to blame. Well, the so called 'forward c-lass' has been struggling with reservations for the past so many years and it is to theircredit that still FC people are in a position where the control most of India's economy.( I think only political power has eluded them...laloo and karunanidhi and babulal gaurs rulethe roost in this field)

On the point of reservation in private institutes, I was not surprised that the UPA announcedit. For a coalition, in which most parties have made the grade because of their vote banks in the BC and minority, this was an expected move. What more, the fact that minority institutionswere left out, conviced me that this whole exercise is to gain votes and not for the uplifmentof the B.C.'s (congress cannot afford to affront the muslims by imposing reservations in muslimrun colleges, because they are 'secular')Now, by closing the only avenue where students get education based on their competence, the gorvernment has decided that it will punish competence and shower incomptence with its goodies.

The gorvernment should also try to find out who will benifit from these reservations. It is notgoing to be the poor B.C. studnet, because even if he manages admission based on reservation,he will not be able to afford the high fees that these institutes charge. It is going to be a rich B.C. fathers son, having money to spend on bikes and latest mobile, for whom admission toa proffessional course is going to be forgone conclusion.

But, I do believe that India needs reservations, but it should be based on the economic condition of the people. The poor should benifit. Reservations should be there for rural students. It is a villager who is unable to afford tutions and coaching to get into an IIT,not a dalit in the village and not a dalit in a city.

All said, India's policies will not change overnight. Nor can one see this policy changing in the next 1000 years ( till vote banks remain, reservations will remain). What can be expected from the gorvernment is some riders in the existing reservation rules. Some of them that, I would like to see are

1. A rider which does not allow a person to use his B.C. status all his life. There are people who use it to get into a govt college for undergraduate, then for P.G and then use it to get a government job. The point, I am trying to make is, once a person using his class gets admitted to a instituiton, he is getting the same standard of education as the others. If he is unable to compete with the rest of his peers, it is his incompetence, and for future selections, the gorvernment can make sure that the competency is the basis for selection. From my personal experience, I can site a example of a fellow who got admission to IIT-Delhi for his undergraduate. Unable to compete in IIT-D with his peers, he decided that all his hard work in IIT-D will be so that he graduates from IIT-D. This student, then again flashes his B.C. card to get admission to a post graduate course at IIT-B, where again he finds it hard to compete with his peers. What this fellow has done is made sure that two more competent students do not get to study in IIT, because he is a B.C. Also, I am sure he will use his status to get a plum gorvernment job after he passes out of IIT-B. Thus, end result, the fellow is not using the edsucation he gained at these reputed institutes to get ahead in life, but a certificate he got by virtue of being born to B.C. parents.

2. A rider which disallowes any person to use his B.C. status, if any of his/her parents have already used it. I think this follows simple logic. If a carpenter's son,as a B.C. gets an engineers degree and a good job, why should his son, an engineers son, who has access to good schools, coaching etc, be the benificiery of the same B.C. status. There are innumerable examples for this case. A friend of mine, got into IIT on a B.C. seat, his father is a leading doctor, his M.B.B.S also coming on a B.C. seat. Observe the serpentine queues to pick up Anna University forms and you will see a poor Upper caste boy, whose parents cannot afford a 500 rupee form standing in the queue, with all his hopes attached to how he will perform in TNPCEE, and a girl coming in a Cielo, buying a 250 rupee form, assured that she will get a seat in an engineering college.

All this reminds me of Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged'. It is very easy to imagine what will happen to India if the Forward castes just decide to go on a strike.

last sunday, i went to tirupati to meet lord balji.
In the long queue waiting for my appointment with the lord, i met this really perfect girl.

the whole story goes like this
waiting in the sitting room, i saw a really beautiful girl. By Beautiful, I mean the kind of females you see in movies and all. So, with nothing better to do ( i was all alone in the trip), i looked at a her for a couple of minutes, and then her husband ( thts wht i guess, ino one brings their gf to tirupati) came. This made this beautiful girl move from her seat, and then i saw her, seated in front of her, my perfect girl.
She was exactly the girl i have always seen in my dreams. I was just spellbound and i dont know for how long we were seated after i saw her.
But, then the gates were opened and a mad rush to the gates ensued. I got into the crowd and lost her. But sometime later, when the pushing and pulling came to an end, i was surprised to see her standing right next to me.
The next four hours that followed were like magic. But the shy fellow that i am, i could not strike a conversation with her, while making thousands of imaginary ones in my mind.
and, now, when i think about describing her, i am so short of words.

so there it is, i saw the one girl, who was till now anonymous, who i used to see in my dreams almost everynight inside a temple, something i never expected would happen, and now, i know that she exsists but i cannot find her, because i know nothin about her.

just yesterday, i read a blog on last days of college life. This blog really got me thinking about my college life during my undergraduation and the one now that i am having as a post-graduate.
I really mean when i say i am stuck in the middle, because for me, my second stint at college is not as 'fun' as the first one and i am missing the 'life' of an employed bachelor!

Few changes that i have seen in myself (and other grad students) is the greater maturity. For once, I never think of 'bunking' a class, and everyday i wake up at 7 in the morning to attend the first lecture wheras as an undergrad, 'bunking' was the only thing i did. i remember attending only one class in one whole week, the rest of the time spent chilling at the canteen. But somehow, at the grad level, something from inside me kicks me to the classes, tells me the onus is on learning and rewards come for hard work.

As an undergrad, 'making' friends was probably the easiest things to do. I still remember my first day few days in the hostel, i would just barge into any open room, strike up a conversation and make new friends ( it also helps if your senior wants you to give a list of all the students in the hostel or worse, ask about name, place , branch of any arbit batchmate), but now as a grad student, i have spent 6 months in the hostel, and i know only a few people by name and worse, even with those people, my only conversation seems to be Oh! you got the solution to that problem, i got stuck when..., i dont seem to know if my 'art' of being friendly is lost or it is just that way in grad school.

even i surprised myself, when while 'writing' this article in my mind, i said to myself, i am doing all the college work sincerely in grad school, really trying to understand the subject (and not merely trying to pass it) and really working hard.

finally, six months of grad school and i watched one movie in the theatre (that too after the exams got over) and watched loads of friends and seinfeld all alone in my room, to take breaks from studying. this was quite unlike me, i was there every friday at the theatre, used to watch whole movies when i used to study for a break.

at the same time, i seem to be missingg all the fun ( even though a whole week of torture comes with it) of a bachelor who earns 20k a month. From what my friends tell me, it is awesome!

i really do not know if this is what all grad students go through ( people in the US have a different experience, coz it is something totally different to stay ALL alone, cook for yourself blah blah..),

what i actually mean is that do we change so much that we stop caring about things we liked and loved a lot. This keeps happening though, i would have written a similar blog during transition from school to college, but then i kept my 'loves' with me, watching cricket and movies, reading a book a week etc etc.
now in grad school, i have finished 2 books in the whole semester.

the only thing that i have added to my hobbies ( for which i am finiding it difficult to spare time) is blogging!!

i dont know what to say...
our first semester results were declared today.
our insti has a rule that the CPI of post-doc students should not fall below 6 and if it does so, then that person has to discontinue the course.
so, none of us really thought that anyone will fall below 6 as most of the professors, are generally linient in their grading.
but today, in front of my eyes, two students got the death blow and I was caught in no mans land. You see, my grades turned out to be very impressive and turned out that my CPI was the highest in the class. So there I was, trying to sound sorry for them, wanting to help them out but uable to hide my bouyont feelings. I do not even want to write about how i behaved...but i think i can be excused.
coming back to the rule, on the journey back home in the train, i was just wondering what turn their life will take. surely, they cannot tell anyone that they came winners in the cut-throat competition to the IITs nor can they tell anyone that their performance was so pathetic that they had to expelled from the institution!!
There was this guy, D, who had taken a sabbatical from the college where he teaches so that he can finish his m.tech and go back and teach again. But today afternoon, all he could do was stare blankly at the wall, trying to figure out what can he do with his life, and to add to his woes, just in the begining of the semester, he became the father of a baby boy!!!
in that moment, all i could say was 'jo bhi hota hai, achacha ke liye hi hota hai', my stock dialogue for sticky situations

May GOD help them

a new game show has started on sun t.v. ( amazing how KBC always starts of a whole new host of game shows promising big money but without any quality)
anyway, the name of this show is thana vettai ( it means something to do with gold), in which the person who gives the correct answer gets gold coins (in varying numbers given by the equation: no of gold for correct ans = round number+1)...
but the real dampner in this show is the questions.....the type of questions asked would make derek o brien rethink his questions asked on bournvita quiz challenge....BQC will look like BBC university challenge compared to this.

taste this: in which country is hiroshima, the city where the atom bomb was dropped is located? and for this there was a hint provided: tokyo is the capital of this country. even more amazing: the participant could not answer

and you will not beieve that the question for a mega jackpot was who directed sholay?? (4 options were also provided)

Please all the people who matter in SUN TV, please do not insult the people watching the show, and come up with a better effort ( atleast put a selection procedure where you can ensure that people have heard about japan!!!)

oh yes, apart from the one hour comedy game show on TV, something interesting happened today...
i girl from my undergrad class called, though i do not even remember speakig to her in college

i seem to have forgotten my ID to orkut!!!!!

anyways...got hooked to a book called american childhood today

lately i seem to have got into an addiction which describes childhood.......and it is really awesome

firstly i just cannot stop rereading to kill a mocking bird......scout and jem so much remind me of my sister and myslef
and then i read a postillion stuck by a lightning......this book is by some actor but the way he has depicted his chidhood is just too good

i must say i was very surprised by the reaction to amitabh's illness. Scores of people performing yajnas and praying for the quick healing of big B. I was saying to a friend of mine, so many people fall ill everyday.....but today suddenly watchin the news, something changed in my mind!!... i realized that people are not only praying for him but it is a tribute to the tremendous achievements of the man. He is successful in capturing the imagination of the whole nation, and in some way or the other is an inspiration for hundreds of youngsters....i want to be like the bigB....i mean not only to reach colossoal status in films, but he can be an inspiration to anyone to fight their way to the top in their field, redisocver themselves etc.
Probably, i was most moved by a group of coolies from punjab. they are collecting money from their daily wages so that they can feed the poor and the needy after the superstar recovers and all this because he had acted as a coolie in one of his films!!!!!

among other things, even india has started to name her cycolnes.....there was one 'pyar' meaning destruction in burmese and the next one threatening the india-sl match is called baaz!!
interesting names

and personally, after three days of searching through my new locality, i found a second hand book vendor and to my surprise he lends the books for a small deposit also....my holidays have suddenly become doubly interesting...

i just finished reading a book by dahl......truly brilliant........