Let’s make India better!

I am totally against reservation. I reprimand and hate people who like to create a case for reservation for selfish gains. Reservation has not done any good to any strata of Indian society. Its been there for 60 years and only people who have benefited from it our crooked politicians! They have abused this word for their petty gains multiple times. I believe in equality. Be it any person of the society. I just approve of scholorships and that too for the economically underprivileged. Democracy and law must treat everyone else as equals.

There is seemingly other side which is going wrong. One student at AIIMS topped the class and he should have been given a chance to choose whatever position he wanted. It seems, the position went to the second ranker who was a general category student. This is equally “wrong”! How can anyone do this to a deserving candidate? This will make things worse.

Rajasthan just had a fresh case of casualties under the name of reservation. Gurjars (a tribe in India), wants to be included in the scheduled tribe category so that they can harness the fruits of reservation. They did not talk about better education, better hospitals but reservation. Why? Because one of the politicians lured them into it to get the votes.  So why government is not doing it? It seems there is a bigger tribe called “Meenas” who are under the ST category. If government includes Gurjars there too, it will decrease Meenas chances to get the reservation benefit. I just hope that this issue bring up the problems with reservation and some one will think about the alternative solutions. Well, I can just “hope” right now and I am sure nothing will change so soon.

So whats the solution?

Only solution for a person to get a secure job and long lasting prosperity is education. Education will give every person  awareness, knowledge, self esteem and ideas to make his/her life better. Government must spend the required money on setting up educational insitutions where in education till 9th standard must be totally free. Anyone and everyone can come and attend the classes. I totally believe that increasing the schools and judicial courts/judges by 10 times will have a much more positive impact to our country than any other measure. Some NGOs like Akansha are doing a terrific job at it. We need to have many more such organizations and help our country to do away with these evil practices of reservation and the likes of it.

The unconventional head of state Dr APL Abdul Kalam once again sowed the seed of a important political debate - The need for two party system.

We have been having these coalition governments since 1989. Political parties supporting from outside, inside, under, over and what not. Politicians get sold and bought to be in power. Some one said, “Democracy is like the art of running a circus from a monkey cage”. In India, it is almost like running the mafia. UPA government supporting the Mayawati BSP government when even the ideologies (apparently political parties are supposed to have one!) do not match! All vote politics and nothing else.

A system of two parties will at least decrease all these selling and buying of netas. I am not saying it will totally eliminate it, but I am sure it will decrease it. Keep more rules like a neta can not have criminal charges, can not stand for election if he has changed a political party in last one year and it will make it even better. Two parties system also separates one party from the other in terms of ideologies and voters clearly know what one party stands for.  It is not panacea for all the problems. USA has two parties and an ass like George Bush got elected the second time. But it is better than what we have in India. I hope some one takes it seriously and works on it.

A country that has 1 billion population, 26 crore people living under poverty line, not enough potable drinking water for everyone, basic infrastructure problems of roads, power and education, so many court cases in backlogs.. what is the most important thing that we really need? I would think moral policing. Don’t agree with me? At least our government does! Government really needs to make sure what we are viewing on the television, if I am close to my spouse in the public and if I am dancing in the pub after 11PM!!! This is the MOST IMPORTANT thing that needs to be addressed. If Richard Gere, the guy who comes to India to help the country fight against AIDS and other issues, how dare he kissed Shilpa Shetty? (Though she does all “moral” things at screen with our supposedly “patriotic” heroes but thats besides the point) Now this is a BIGG problem! We need to get our guards up and fight against it. What crap!

I heard a even more surprising story yesterday. Google employees in Bombay were attacked by Shiv Sena supporters because there was some raunchy content on Orkut! They beat up the security guards and by mistake beaten up the Yahoo employees thinking they were working for Google. It sounds funny but is this kind of crap we want to live with? Police coming in the Chennai pubs and beating people? Schools and colleges defining the dress code? Bangalore pubs getting closed at 11PM? Government banning AXN and FTV? Is it democracy or autocracy? Just give us a working infrastructure, environment to live a comfortable life and leave the moral policing on us. We know best what is good for us.

Richard, Google, We are ashamed and embarrassed for what happened. Please be assured that common man is with you. Our intellect and reasoning is still intact. We just do not know how these clowns and corrupt politicians get elected and make fun of our democratic system. It will take time but we will figure it out.

Talking about Orkut, it seems two girls in Brazil were on Orkut and they made friends with a complete stranger. One of the girls agreed to meet with him and got raped. When the other girl was asked questions about this online behavior, she said, “The risk of getting raped is far far lesser than passing your life without getting noticed!”. Again, can we blame Orkut for it? It will be like Burkhas are safer for women and it will save them evil men. I do not think that rape rate in Burkha countries is lesser than non-burkha countries. The only way to deal with it is by empowering women, creating a safer environment, better law enforcement and a better community. Anyway, this does ask for a separate debate and I will reserve it for another posting.

Update : Arun gave me some interesting links on the same topic. Vir Sanghvi wrote an article on moral policing in Hindustan Times.

Pratap Mehta wrote on Indian Express.