No , its not a trip to some fantastic place or a farway island or anything remotely resembling such stuff. The journey was essentially a simple one deviod of any gr8 incidents and was a simple auto trip from my house in B'lore to the Private Bus terminus. But it showed/highlighted the biggest flaw in me : I postpone things till last minute and dont do any planning. I was supposed to catch a bus @ 9 (as per ticket) and go home for looong weekend. But here i was watchin some interesting stuff on TV , discussing some nonsense which i dont even recall now with my roommate till 8:15 , then i went and packed my bags for the journey home and at 8:30 i step out of my house. Then slowly i open the ticket and lookep up the time and instead of the normal 10:00 , Departure time : 9:00 PM was staring at me ! and here i was just stepping out of my home at 8:30 , the place was 8km away and with Bangalore traffic it could take a real long time !
Luck seemed to be on my side as i spied on an auto as soon as i stepped into the street (normal days it cud take anythin b/w 10-15 to get an auto) and the guy agreed to come to the busstand. He was a middle aged guy and immediately started conversation with me in Kannada , my Kannda vocab being very very limited and the guy speaking nonstop , i stopped pretending to listen after a while and just supplied the "Yeah , Yeah" , occasionally to give him an impressiont that he had a compassionate audience willing to listen to his crubs against govt , fellow motorists and a few others whom i cudnt make out!
After a while I felt it wud be prudent to request him to go quicker as time was running out for me. "No way" repsonded the guy , "its impossible to make it by 9" he told me (in Kannda ofcourse) , he gave some explaintaion for it , which unfortunately i cudnt understand but got the bit about 4 signals standing in between me and my bus @ 9 .
My hopes slowly began to drain out of my as i started cursing myself for being so careless and irresponsible (i stop here as i the person all this being directed to is me) and swore that i will keep this a lesson and will defintely blog it as lesson to remember for myself . by now i was sure that i wud miss the bus ...
Then i started reminiscing about all the close shaves with buses and trains i have had , invariably something will happen which will delay me while i was in college and i wud be running and just ctaching the bus /train when it was moving most of the times ! Though always i wud promise myself that this kind of thing wil never happen. then one day i missed a train and after that i always used to be on the platform 30 min before ! i had been kinda following that for last 3-4 yrs but of late my old self had been resurfacing , and here i was sweatin , worried and tensed waiting for green light to flash at the first signal , with 3 more ahead...
Then suddenly it happened , things started swinging my way the autowala started driving fast (somewhat fast) and suddenly lady luck seemed to be firmly on my side as we somehow cleared all the signals without spending anytime waiting at 9:00 sharp i was at the bus terminus and cud see the my Bus still parked.
With an immense sign of relief and after thanking all the Gods i cud remember at that instant and the auto guy also for his part, i collected my luggage and glanced at the meter which stood at Rs 45.50
Feelin kinda happy at having made it inspite of not so fast auto ride , i gave the auto walla 50 bucks. "70 Rs" he announced , i was clearly shocked , "for what?" i asked , "Bhaiyya , meter is only 45 ".
The explaination he gave was a real gem
point 1:
"If not for me , you wud have missed the bus and wud have lost a lot of money, so i saved you money rite , cant u give extra"
Point 2:
"i drove fast for u" , i refuted that (cudnt control my laughter !) then he bettered that explaination with this one :
"But I helped you, I took the shortest route ,so that u cud reach faster and on time"
Now this really was startling ,the guy had admitted that he had planned to swindle me by taking a longer route and hence earn more money but now has not done it and was demanding money for being good !
Amazing logic... havent heard such a shocker for while , imagine a robber goin to a bank and negotiating for a few lakhs which he had planned to steal , but saved effort for everyone concerned by not doin it really ! ok im streching it too far , but this seemed a bit similar to that. Along with things like be responsible ,punctual , plan in advace , added 'avoid autos' also in things to remember for future !
ofcourse i dint pay him anything extra , but this trend of auto drivers demanding more than meter was not unusual , i guess i have enuf of such incidents for a seperate blog.
Now coming back to my original story , I rushed to the ticket counter and flashed my ticket , guy had a look at it and calmly announced "the bus is 10, there is a sofa here ,you can sit and wait here" !!!
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Reserve or Deserve ?
Since its the hottest topic now with online petitions , sms polls and ppl on newschannels , sundry experts n just about everyone having their own expert view about it , So as a probable affected party ( thanks to my seemingly infinte attempts bell the CAT) i thought i'll also chip in with my 2 cents on reservation tangle .
For me the move to reserve close to 50% of seats in central univs n IITs n IIMs looks like an election eve 'bramastra' which annihilates all oppostion , but unlike normal promises, the ones we are pretty much used to and are conveniently forgotten and confined to bin after the elections are over, this seems to be more real n different and a dangerous and potent ace from HRD minister and by all means looks like 'Mandal Returns' a dreaded sequel to the original which created such a huge turmoil and though was hailed as a tool of social re-engineering which was designed to uplift a lot of careers but ultimately helped only some politicians uplift their political careers ! This along with the 'reservation in private sector' talk which has been going on for quite some time seems a lot more real suddenly and once they get converted to reality will surely alter the entire education and job scene.
We have been seeing a lot of online petitions , opinion polls , sms polls and interviews of common ppl from all over country and expert views and all seem to be agast and the general opinion would seem to suggest that there is a huge groundswell against such a move.
But how wrong we are ! the fact is that vast majority of the ppl who are voicing their concern onand lamenting the fact that merit is losing out to othe considerations are the ones who are affected by these. so there reaction is but natural.
Also the truth is that though India seems to be shining with Sensex zooming every other day and sectors like IT , manuacturing etc. gettin better n better by day the effect has made a lot of us pretty well to do. But the no:of ppl reping the rewards of this growth is far lesser
the downtrodden masses continue to remain so , education has not reached everyone
so the obivious step should be to ensure proper school education for the backward communties.
But thats real hard to implement and doesnt create headlines like throwing open half of the seats of India's most prestigious institutes like IITs n IIMs to backward communties.
But will they really benefit from these freebies is a really debatable. With someone pointing out what will happen if the companies which come for recruitment insist on knowing if you are a merit candidate or reservation guy , So the Question "Reserve or Deserve" in effect nullifies whatever the quota law was supposed to achieve for the ppl from backward communities!
Some ppl have hit back at such arguements saying give em a chance and see. Yes its true n sad that due to caste system lots of ppl had to suffer and remain outside the realm of development simply because of their birth. Its imperative that such discrimination has to be stopped and such ppl given chances and their fair share under the sun , but this certainly is not the way. Education from Primary onwards , spl coaching for less privileged and limited time bound resevations seem to be better soln to me esp in the light of statisctics like 50% of SC?ST students dont study beyond age of 10. So it is not rocket science to figure out where the system is going wrong , provding good infrascture and good teachers to Govt schools looks like the obvious soln.Im sure if we do a proper impartial analysis of this we can come up with many such initiatives which will benefit everyone instead of just accelerating brain drain by driving so called 'elite' students to foreign universites.
By this move only thing they will achieve is more divisionof society based on caste instead of eliminating caste system coz caste instead of losing its relevance as it rightly should these days have become passports to a secure future. There is always the danger of backlash from forward community students denied a fair chance in their own country and the rich might go abroad or use money power to get ahead but what about the poor they will simply fall behind jus like the backward communities did in previous centuries. Soon we may face a scenario where there will be need to provide reservations for forward community ! In short we are just repeating the mistakes of past and will be entering a vicious cycle.During a deabate on TV a few weeks back when ppl where fighting on merits of reservation , one of the panelists an IIM-A alumnus pointed out that we are still fighting over inc our share in the cake , when we should actually be looking at increasing the size of the cake !!!
I have seen many ppl in my student life who have got their seat in college because of reservations , but still did study hard (much harder than me i believe ! ) and put there best effort to make sure they succeded in life making using of the oppurtunity , but there were lots of others who never made that effort secure with the knowledge that their community ppl need only the barest min marks and govt jobs are always within reach as the competetion from their own communties is lot lesser. There were others who were from well off familes (the so called creamy layer), but still used reservation , when there were poor students from upper/not so backward castes who inspite of scoring marks were not able to secure admissions.
That looks like reverse discrimination to me . To stop an inequality you create another !
After 50 years of it not achieveing the desired result , ppl (politicians) are still clamouring for reservations and another surprising and heartening fact is the increasing no: of ppl who though coming under reservation , prefering not to take it and get their seats by merit. I was glad to have a few friends like that who refused crutches called 'reservation' and preferred to stand on their legs and fight with the rest. Gradually as more and more ppl get empowered , soon in not so distant past we will be hopefully be rid of quota system.
Oops ! wrong place ... Im dreaming about Utopia !!!
For me the move to reserve close to 50% of seats in central univs n IITs n IIMs looks like an election eve 'bramastra' which annihilates all oppostion , but unlike normal promises, the ones we are pretty much used to and are conveniently forgotten and confined to bin after the elections are over, this seems to be more real n different and a dangerous and potent ace from HRD minister and by all means looks like 'Mandal Returns' a dreaded sequel to the original which created such a huge turmoil and though was hailed as a tool of social re-engineering which was designed to uplift a lot of careers but ultimately helped only some politicians uplift their political careers ! This along with the 'reservation in private sector' talk which has been going on for quite some time seems a lot more real suddenly and once they get converted to reality will surely alter the entire education and job scene.
We have been seeing a lot of online petitions , opinion polls , sms polls and interviews of common ppl from all over country and expert views and all seem to be agast and the general opinion would seem to suggest that there is a huge groundswell against such a move.
But how wrong we are ! the fact is that vast majority of the ppl who are voicing their concern onand lamenting the fact that merit is losing out to othe considerations are the ones who are affected by these. so there reaction is but natural.
Also the truth is that though India seems to be shining with Sensex zooming every other day and sectors like IT , manuacturing etc. gettin better n better by day the effect has made a lot of us pretty well to do. But the no:of ppl reping the rewards of this growth is far lesser
the downtrodden masses continue to remain so , education has not reached everyone
so the obivious step should be to ensure proper school education for the backward communties.
But thats real hard to implement and doesnt create headlines like throwing open half of the seats of India's most prestigious institutes like IITs n IIMs to backward communties.
But will they really benefit from these freebies is a really debatable. With someone pointing out what will happen if the companies which come for recruitment insist on knowing if you are a merit candidate or reservation guy , So the Question "Reserve or Deserve" in effect nullifies whatever the quota law was supposed to achieve for the ppl from backward communities!
Some ppl have hit back at such arguements saying give em a chance and see. Yes its true n sad that due to caste system lots of ppl had to suffer and remain outside the realm of development simply because of their birth. Its imperative that such discrimination has to be stopped and such ppl given chances and their fair share under the sun , but this certainly is not the way. Education from Primary onwards , spl coaching for less privileged and limited time bound resevations seem to be better soln to me esp in the light of statisctics like 50% of SC?ST students dont study beyond age of 10. So it is not rocket science to figure out where the system is going wrong , provding good infrascture and good teachers to Govt schools looks like the obvious soln.Im sure if we do a proper impartial analysis of this we can come up with many such initiatives which will benefit everyone instead of just accelerating brain drain by driving so called 'elite' students to foreign universites.
By this move only thing they will achieve is more divisionof society based on caste instead of eliminating caste system coz caste instead of losing its relevance as it rightly should these days have become passports to a secure future. There is always the danger of backlash from forward community students denied a fair chance in their own country and the rich might go abroad or use money power to get ahead but what about the poor they will simply fall behind jus like the backward communities did in previous centuries. Soon we may face a scenario where there will be need to provide reservations for forward community ! In short we are just repeating the mistakes of past and will be entering a vicious cycle.During a deabate on TV a few weeks back when ppl where fighting on merits of reservation , one of the panelists an IIM-A alumnus pointed out that we are still fighting over inc our share in the cake , when we should actually be looking at increasing the size of the cake !!!
I have seen many ppl in my student life who have got their seat in college because of reservations , but still did study hard (much harder than me i believe ! ) and put there best effort to make sure they succeded in life making using of the oppurtunity , but there were lots of others who never made that effort secure with the knowledge that their community ppl need only the barest min marks and govt jobs are always within reach as the competetion from their own communties is lot lesser. There were others who were from well off familes (the so called creamy layer), but still used reservation , when there were poor students from upper/not so backward castes who inspite of scoring marks were not able to secure admissions.
That looks like reverse discrimination to me . To stop an inequality you create another !
After 50 years of it not achieveing the desired result , ppl (politicians) are still clamouring for reservations and another surprising and heartening fact is the increasing no: of ppl who though coming under reservation , prefering not to take it and get their seats by merit. I was glad to have a few friends like that who refused crutches called 'reservation' and preferred to stand on their legs and fight with the rest. Gradually as more and more ppl get empowered , soon in not so distant past we will be hopefully be rid of quota system.
Oops ! wrong place ... Im dreaming about Utopia !!!
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