RESERVATION
It is a well known fact that the Government of India ‘reserves’ seats for those sections of people it considers backward in the fields of education and government services. Talks of reservation in the private sector haven’t really taken off as yet.
I, an S.T from Mizoram, am in the reserved category myself and find every need for such a reservation. Unlike a confident Mizo civil service aspirant I ran into who told me that she felt she had no need for reservation, I genuinely feel that the Government hasn’t erred in this department. (By the way, Miss.confident could not make the cut for the prelims we appeared together for).
Here, I would like to clear the air about the meaning of ‘S.T’s. It stands for ‘Scheduled Tribe’. Any group of people that the Government of India, chooses to club in this category are known as ‘Scheduled Tribes’. The President of India then issues this in writing in the Gazette of India and henceforth that particular community is known as a ‘Scheduled Tribe’. No particular reasons have been given for clubbing any particular group under this category, but, most of these groups lag behind in terms of development.
As anyone can tell you, the ratio of S.T civil servants is abysmally low for the All India Services – around 2%. Only the I.A.S, the I.P.S and the I.F.S (Forest) constitute the All India Services. And most of the S.Ts in India come not from the Northeast, but from central India – predominantly M.P. The Northeast S.Ts in fact account only for a small percentage of the overall S.T population in India. As for Mizos, in our entire 60 odd years of existence, we have produced only 3 I.A.S women to date :
Pi. Boichhinpuii of the 1970 something batch. After a 30 year hiatus!
Dr. Christina Zothanpari Chawngthu of the 2000 batch
Ms.Saidingpuii Chhakchhuak of the 2007 batch, after a 7 year gap.
That would be an average of 1 lady I.A.S officer every 30 years! Translation- An entire state in all its existence has produced only 3 lady I.A.S officers to date. That’s pathetic at best.
Why then, do people protest so much against reservation?
When the very Government that has been freely and fairly elected by the people of India chooses in all its wisdom to aid those societies that lag behind in development, why do the very people who elect them protest?!
The amount of neglect that the S.Ts have suffered for decades, translated into underdeveloped societies and conditions of living, is unfair by any standards. For instance, my mother never tired of telling me and anyone she came across about how my father never even knew what classes his children were in even, though he is educated. This would be unthinkable to an average mainstream Indian, since most of them are fifth (or so) generation educated. Realising this, the Government has decided to aid such communities by encouraging their participation in the decision making process of the country, by giving them reservations.
It is a well known fact that the Britishers who ruled India for 200 years deliberately kept the tribal areas isolated because of their explosive potential in a national movement -Dr.S.D.Sharma. This was amply proved by the tribal revolts such as the Santhal revolt or the Munda rebellions. While these revolts were ruthlessly crushed by the British, they taught the country about guts and about the very possibility of a revolt against the biggest world power of the time – the British empire. The tribals showed heart wrenching bravery and unity in the face of the most modern weapons of war that were ruthlessly used against them, never knowing when they were defeated and won the admiration of even the very people they revolted against - the British.
Reservation by the way, for instance, in the Central Services is no cake walk. You still need to make it on your own and get good marks on your own. While it is not yet known for certain, the cut offs only in the Civil.Service.Mains exams are said to be reduced by a few marks for S.T candidates. Frankly, at that stage it hardly matters; in the sense that the amount to be studied is so voluminous that the amount you have to study to get 10 marks more or less hardly makes a difference.
Why do people with no reservation grudge us this small respite? As the Supreme Court has ruled - living is not just about being alive. The right to live “with dignity” is as important as the right to live; for a life lived without dignity has no meaning at all. Thus when our right to reservation is mocked at or begrudged, a part of the essence of reservation is lost. On the other hand, this very reaction justifies the act of reservation. Here, I would like to state loudly and clearly that reservation is not something I’m begging for, it’s my Right. So stop treating it as a dole out or as some kind of charity that you are handing out to us. Because it’s not. It’s my legal and dignified Right. I’m not begging you for it and I don’t need your permission for it.
November 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Some of my favourites………………
The politics of interpreting History:
If you plunder from West to East, you are great like Alexander
If you do the same from East to West, you are a Barbarian like Genghis Khan!
According to Aerodynamic laws, the bumble bee cannot fly
Its body weight is not in the right proportion to its wing span
Ignoring these laws, the bee flies anyway
So you are married?
Congratulations! Don’t do it again!
A journalist had asked the Texan, U.S President George Bush jr, if he knew who the President of Chechnya was.
He replied – “ I don’t – do you?”!!
WHY MY MAID TALKS AND TALKS AND TALKS………
Well, I don’t actually have a maid, but you get the drift…. I’ve always been intrigued and often annoyed by the fact that maids and their male counterparts talk and talk. This dangerous Chinese whisper habit which often assumes malignant proportions makes one appear prejudiced for or against a number of issues that could have been harmlessly set off by an innocuous comment or better still, a habit you practice or even better, your very life style.
Sample this – before I knew what hit me, I was branded a Brahmin hater, simply because I told an old maid that I eat chicken often. It may seem perplexing to those of us who are not in the loop of things, but veteran house-wives and other such dragon ladies simply smirk at my discomfiture – “juvenile novice”! Surprisingly enough, they don’t seem to be having the same problems. An agile combination of bribe and tough love seems to do the trick for them. For those of us who are yet to get our degrees in this new management program, we continue to be looked at askance by a virulently malicious social system which has clubbed me an ignominious pariah.
What then makes these illiterate ladies pathological ‘talkers’?? I realized that my poor sisters live an insecure life compounded by the fact that they have no access to legitimate information. This is even more pertinent when they have to walk into a number of absolute stranger’s houses to do intimate family work – cleaning personal effects, running the heart of the house – the kitchen (sink), and even procuring vegetables.
How do they know who will do a Shiney Ahuja on them? How do they know whether I will pay them or not? How do they know if I will work them to the bone or not? How do they know if I will beat them or not?? If they were you and me, they would use a combination of commonsense honed by years and years of education and the confidence that what the law promised them and all other Indian citizens will hold them in good stead. We just know that 2 and 2 will be 4.
Cut to the maid. She can’t read – so no matter what the papers say about Shiney Ahuja, she will only know about it when her friends tell her about it. So if she doesn’t gossip, she will never hear about it. Thus talking and gossiping are her lifelines to survival. Since she has no idea what the Indian law has in store for her and lacks a lot of commonsense, she depends on the ‘intelligence’ provided by her neighbours, family and friends. This, they get through the all vital ‘talk’ and ‘gossip’. Thus, a maid who doesn’t talk or gossip is not a maid! The only problem of course is in the quality of this ‘information’. Along with the important news that could save her from a Shiney Ahuja, she also gathers a lot of Chinese whisper style improbable news which she would automatically reject had she been literate. But she isn’t.
We all know that maids and their ilk are the lowest social group of people. But I have seen that people who are from lower class backgrounds also tend to talk a lot. Why does this happen then? Clerks, babus and others talk a lot too. Why? Though there exists a definite distinction from the maids who gossip, this class of chatterati are not much different. Their reasons though are very different. They talk a lot because, though literate, they have low social standing. Their words and actions carry no weight. The only way they can gain attention is by talking. So they talk. Besides, since they are nobodies, so to speak, or rather unknowns, they have nothing to lose. It’s not as if folks would say the son of so and so is saying so and so. It’s simply a case of ‘a’ someone said a something. The sense of worth inherent to a person from a certain social standing is missing. The sense of I, son of so and so, from the family of so and so can’t do it, or the “we are not like that” simply doesn’t exist for them. It is not below their dignity to talk. The stiff upper lip can’t prevail when the upper lip is so wobbly! The decades of upbringing that naturally ingrains a sense of self worth is conspicuous by its absence.
This then, is the linguistic thread that runs through us; that says so much about who you are and more importantly, who you’re not.
13/9/10
The politics of interpreting History:
If you plunder from West to East, you are great like Alexander
If you do the same from East to West, you are a Barbarian like Genghis Khan!
According to Aerodynamic laws, the bumble bee cannot fly
Its body weight is not in the right proportion to its wing span
Ignoring these laws, the bee flies anyway
So you are married?
Congratulations! Don’t do it again!
A journalist had asked the Texan, U.S President George Bush jr, if he knew who the President of Chechnya was.
He replied – “ I don’t – do you?”!!
WHY MY MAID TALKS AND TALKS AND TALKS………
Well, I don’t actually have a maid, but you get the drift…. I’ve always been intrigued and often annoyed by the fact that maids and their male counterparts talk and talk. This dangerous Chinese whisper habit which often assumes malignant proportions makes one appear prejudiced for or against a number of issues that could have been harmlessly set off by an innocuous comment or better still, a habit you practice or even better, your very life style.
Sample this – before I knew what hit me, I was branded a Brahmin hater, simply because I told an old maid that I eat chicken often. It may seem perplexing to those of us who are not in the loop of things, but veteran house-wives and other such dragon ladies simply smirk at my discomfiture – “juvenile novice”! Surprisingly enough, they don’t seem to be having the same problems. An agile combination of bribe and tough love seems to do the trick for them. For those of us who are yet to get our degrees in this new management program, we continue to be looked at askance by a virulently malicious social system which has clubbed me an ignominious pariah.
What then makes these illiterate ladies pathological ‘talkers’?? I realized that my poor sisters live an insecure life compounded by the fact that they have no access to legitimate information. This is even more pertinent when they have to walk into a number of absolute stranger’s houses to do intimate family work – cleaning personal effects, running the heart of the house – the kitchen (sink), and even procuring vegetables.
How do they know who will do a Shiney Ahuja on them? How do they know whether I will pay them or not? How do they know if I will work them to the bone or not? How do they know if I will beat them or not?? If they were you and me, they would use a combination of commonsense honed by years and years of education and the confidence that what the law promised them and all other Indian citizens will hold them in good stead. We just know that 2 and 2 will be 4.
Cut to the maid. She can’t read – so no matter what the papers say about Shiney Ahuja, she will only know about it when her friends tell her about it. So if she doesn’t gossip, she will never hear about it. Thus talking and gossiping are her lifelines to survival. Since she has no idea what the Indian law has in store for her and lacks a lot of commonsense, she depends on the ‘intelligence’ provided by her neighbours, family and friends. This, they get through the all vital ‘talk’ and ‘gossip’. Thus, a maid who doesn’t talk or gossip is not a maid! The only problem of course is in the quality of this ‘information’. Along with the important news that could save her from a Shiney Ahuja, she also gathers a lot of Chinese whisper style improbable news which she would automatically reject had she been literate. But she isn’t.
We all know that maids and their ilk are the lowest social group of people. But I have seen that people who are from lower class backgrounds also tend to talk a lot. Why does this happen then? Clerks, babus and others talk a lot too. Why? Though there exists a definite distinction from the maids who gossip, this class of chatterati are not much different. Their reasons though are very different. They talk a lot because, though literate, they have low social standing. Their words and actions carry no weight. The only way they can gain attention is by talking. So they talk. Besides, since they are nobodies, so to speak, or rather unknowns, they have nothing to lose. It’s not as if folks would say the son of so and so is saying so and so. It’s simply a case of ‘a’ someone said a something. The sense of worth inherent to a person from a certain social standing is missing. The sense of I, son of so and so, from the family of so and so can’t do it, or the “we are not like that” simply doesn’t exist for them. It is not below their dignity to talk. The stiff upper lip can’t prevail when the upper lip is so wobbly! The decades of upbringing that naturally ingrains a sense of self worth is conspicuous by its absence.
This then, is the linguistic thread that runs through us; that says so much about who you are and more importantly, who you’re not.
13/9/10
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