Reservations

Dr. Manmohan Singh is by far the most educated prime-minister India has seen. Browsing through his CV, I think, globally no other country’s primer will have educational background as good as Dr. Singh. In the past 2 years as PM, he has made our country proud. Probably he truly made “India shining” and redefined brand “India”. I am not sure if the credit for India’s economic prosperity should be give to the government or not, but as a prime minister he can always claim for the credit!

On policy fronts, I really appreciate his capabilities to project India as a mature and responsible nation. His approach to project India as a helping and elderly brother nation during Tsunami had a big impact, in the way international community looked at India. During those times India’s help to Sri-lanka and Maldives did not go un-noticed, also the decision of not accepting monetary-aid had strengthened India’s rising position in global-economy.

Again his ministerial capabilities surfaced when he pursued the might superpower Americans to think of changing their own legislation, so that India could get civilian nuclear energy. I am not sure if the nuclear deal with USA shall be sealed or not, but the hype around the deal has definitely worked as free publicity for India’s strengths and capabilities. I believe triggering the nuclear-deal with USA is this government’s biggest achievement.

In past two years Dr. Singh has very maturely acted as a prime minister. Even without clear majority in the parliament, he tactfully handled economic growth issues, sideling the annoying communist-left. To tell the truth, I am a pro-BJP person, but looking at government’s past two years performance had definitely changed my views on Congress and I started to like them. However recently, Dr. Singh’s comments for pushing reservations in Private Indian Inc. were absurd, and totally off-track from economic progress.

How could someone as learned as Dr. Singh profess about jobs given not on merit bases but on cast and economic conditions? I can understand its once again regional elections time, yet the statement is too big for consideration as just another election promise. It more or less defines the ideology Congress wants to adopt for securing there minority and illiterate vote bank.

It’s been more than 50 years we attained our Independence and I am depressed to learn that even educated ministers profess for reservations. I am not against up-bringing of the so called socially and economically backward class, but history’s a proof that favourism has never reaped any developing results. On the contrary it had negative impacts on development.

I believe if there needs to be reservation; it should only be at the kinder garden school, where at the first step of up-bringing, the kids are given an equal opportunity baseless of their family background. From there onwards it should be a merit based selection of candidates. If money is an issue, then government should come up with 0% interest loans for child care and education. There are many other ways of bring up a deprived community, but definitely the reservation of jobs in private sector is by far the most absurd policy any government can think off!

India is considered a major player in building the 21st Century, and whom does our government want to lead in this roll? The truly worthy people, or the under-performers who have secured highly responsible jobs, just because they were born in an environment with fewer facilities? It’s a question the government should ask themselves. What’s more important to them, some votes, or the future of the country and partly of the world?

Freedom of Speech

Scene:
Somewhere in North-east USA, around lunch time, three desi guys are sitting under an umbrella table outside a cafe. After four months of snow and winter finally Sun had shine and it's about 75 degrees Fahrenheitt. Lets call these three guys Siddharth (Sid), Anuj and Vivek (Vicky).

Sid: Yaar, tum done ke peeche teen phatake aa rahi hai.. Maa kasam who beechwali chapti to kamal hai!!! Yaar garmiyo me yeh goriya kya dikti hai! Lagtha hai kapde pahana bhool jati hai! hehehe..

(Anuj turning around to throw an empty soda bottle in dustbin and checking out the girls)

Anuj: Hai, abe chamdi to dekh....makhan hai makhan! Pata nahi muje kab milengi aise ladki.

The girls passed-by their table and Vicky checked them out from back...

Vicky: Loudly "Bhe*****" (No one in the surrounding area reacted to this hindi slang.) Kya figure hai!! Oye kudiye, jara hamari taraf to dhek....kasam se teri raate na savar du to mere naam Vicky nahi!!!!

The chicks had no clue about the guys checking them and passing comments on them, so they kept walking. And these guys laughed their hearts out.

Guys that's a perfect example of "Freedom of Speech" Knowing a native foreign language in US is by far the biggest asset. It gives the power to express, private stuff in public, without catching anyone's attention.

I sometimes feel what's in USA and should go back to India. But guys now it's really difficult to leave this wonderful gift back in USA and go home. On a down side when surrounded by Indian community it sometimes gets frustrating to control oneself from expressing the emotions in public!!

On other hand, people who do not understand our language are irritated, and what else can they do, they know no head or tail of what we are talking?

I was once at the receiving end of 'Freedom of speech'.

On a boring Sunday evening, my roommate and I went out for Chinese dinner. It's a well known fact that the lady at the Chinese restaurant takes order in English and then passes it to the open kitchen behind her in Chinese!
Unfortunately that day we two were the only customer in the restaurant and it seemed the chapti (Chinese lady) did not care much about us as her customer. The lady was pissed on the guy working in kitchen (probably her husband). So they started arguing in Chinese at top of their voices. My roommate and me did not understand a word of their conversation and they kept torching us with their language until we were done with our meal. It was so annoying that at one point we felt like leaving the restaurant without paying!!!

Thus expressing in native language in public could be fun for one but definitely annoying for the other. Having said that, does it mean we should leave our freedom of expression and talk in English in public? Or should we ignore what others feel and enjoy our freedom?

Nine point someone

Last weekend I was reading the novel "Five Point Someone" by Chetan Bhagat. The book is about 3 guys from IIT (Top league Engineering College in India) and their pranks at school. Reading through I remembered one of my own pranks. It’s not as funny as Chetan Bhagat's autobiographical story, but you guys will definitely enjoy it.

Ideally in GCET (my college) all labs close at 6 PM. I along with group of friends were in the college web-site development group, hence had some computer administrative rights as well as a key to the computer room to work late nights. More than work, the free internet attracted us at nights and certainly the air-conditioned room was like heaven in summers!

Coming back, my close friend Harry (I shall not refer real name) was a techno geek. Somehow browsing through the underground websites he found a software which tracks your key strokes and transforms them in a doc file. Hence to test the software Harry loaded it on couple of computers in the lab, including the lecture's computer in the side cabin. (Yes the foolish peon had given us keys to our lecturer's cabin!!). The software runs in background so no one could know about it. The next day Harry was overjoyed to find out our lecture's password. We all were thrilled as well as amazed at this finding!!!

Later on, it was Harry's birthday and the rest of us thought of giving him some unusual gift!! " The next mid-term's question paper” It was easy, we all knew the password. All we had to do was login using lecture's password and browse through his documents, which we easily did.

As a birthday gift Harry got the most unusual gift he could ever imagine in his life (Let me tell you no one of us saw the question paper until now). Late night after the 12' O Clock party Harry and I went to our usual hang out place. The Sardar Patel Memorial, about 5 km from our college. It's dark and peaceful out there with no one around …

Suddenly something happened and I felt, it’s wrong to steal the question paper and ever much worst to hack someone's password!!

As a good friend and philosopher I told Harry that we had done wrong, hence should not look at the question paper and also remove the software from all the computers. Harry always listened to me and somewhere his conscience also bit him so he tore off the question paper without looking at it and decided to remove the software from all computers( Mind you Harry had a Nine plus GPA and he was not a Five point someone!).

The following night five of us were there in the lab and Harry announced his intension which was graciously accepted by rest. So he opened lecture's cabin and started the network connection to log in to the system and then remove the software.

Unfortunately that day one of our senior professor was also working a night out in his own private cabin on the other side of the building. As bad things are destined to happen, He could see the lecturer’s computer up on his network and got suspicious, so he came running to our lab. The door was locked but prof also had a key! When our professor entered the room, he saw Harry standing in front of lecture's computer typing something. Hell broke out… and we were in big shit!!

Professor asked for our IDs and lab keys... and asked us to see him first thing in the morning. That night was terrible… and I really don't have words to describe how it felt…. But next morning Harry went to Professor’s cabin and made up a story that he was logging into the system to get some web-site related stuff which we could not get from our own computer. All techno theories which I did not understand at all. Somehow the professor knew Harry was making up all this but then the professor also liked Harry as he was a nine point someone and kind of a good guy by nature. So instead of suspending us he left us with just asking to write a written apology!!!

Wow… we all were out of this mess with minimal damage… really the nine point something GPA does count!!! Also, it was funny that we were not caught trying to steal but were caught trying to fix our mistake!!