‘Affirmative’? yes, but not enough ‘action’.

Hi,

Below is a post I wrote on reservation for the ‘Youth Forum of SASTRA‘ blog.

Read on…

‘Bhrat Ratna’ B.R.Ambedkar did not anticipate reservation to become this big a debate, in my opinion.

We all know his oft repeated rags to riches tale. Bright, lower caste student becomes a barrister , fights for the so called ‘un-touch-able-s’ and participates in the freedom movement, goes on to chair the Constitution Drafting Committee, becomes the first ever law minister of Independent India and does all this while he opposes Gandhi and the India National Congress.

The Indian constitution proclaims proudly that all citizens have the right to speech, the right to protest peacefully, the right to say anything against anyone. I don’t think these are guaranteed anymore. Forget politics, try cursing at Rajinikanth in a movie theater- I won’t be surprised if you have a broken nose after that.

So in a country where the universal laws of the constitution are itself not properly implemented, an affirmative action policy going wrong is expected.

In which-ever country reservation exists (most countries call it affirmative action), it exists as a means for a minority people to come up socially. Reservation in India however, helps the majority of the population. In fact right now, near about 70% of the population of Tamil Nadu is eligible for reservation under some category or the other.

Enough of blasting away against this policy, lets look at it from a different perspective.

Reservation was supposed to be a policy that would allow “historically backward communities” to come up. In fact reservation does not work properly (like many of the government’s noble schemes), because it is not advertised well. The people who require it most, don’t even know that it exists and, the people who know that they are eligible for it, probably do not require it at all. So anyone who says caste politics is the only reason for reservation’s existence today, is clearly not looking at the full picture.

Now setting a time limit for reservation, to act on its own and bring people up?

1. It didn’t work before
2. The idea is very passive.

In fact reservation itself is very passive policy.

The creamy layer policy looks like it is our best solution, but tell me, in a country which has a per capita lesser than the annual consumption of colas in the U.S, how do you define a creamy layer. Moreover, if people can get their caste status changed, naturally they’d find means to evade income tax, which is the main factor in calculating the ‘creamy layer’.

My point of view for a long time has been this: reservation will never work on its own, it needs another policy or action to be successfully implemented. So how do we resolve this?

Government funded universities/colleges, is my reply.

Queer? Well here is the situation today. The money that the government allots to these universities is from the tax we pay. What happens to it? It goes to work in I.T or goes abroad – ‘thank you tax payers’.

Instead what should we do. We should mobilize the students. If students from every university there is in India, would contribute (say during their course of study) to the development of villages or towns, and spread the message that eduction is the most efficient means to climb up the social ladder – viola we have a solution.

Not just government funded institutes, even private institutes should adopt this plan.

SASTRA has a set-up similar to this, so do a few other colleges. We’ve all heard about it. And what are the NSS, NCC for ?

The problem with the existing plans is, they are sporadic efforts, inconsistent and even if consistent, small scale.

I would suggest large scale implementation, every student should contribute to the development of at least one socially backward child.

Reservation should be locale dependent. If you’ve lived in a village or a town all you life, you should be given first preference for reservation.

I know my idea is a bit rough and needs to be contemplated upon. At least that is a start. Instead of saying I’ll give you so many seats, the government should say I’ll help you so much, and reserve a few seats too.

Reduce reservation, increase out reach and active propagation. That’s my idea.

Your welcome to disagree or build upon this idea. After all what are youth forums for?

Cheers
Kaber

P.S: More articles by Kaber Vasuki here.

Strolling into the Sun

Hi,

This is a more recent song of mine. Check it out

The lyrics are:

You are looking at the sun through polarized lenses
You think you know what’s going on
You’re trying something no one has dreamed of,
Your walking all the way in to the sun

You don’t want to listen to anybody
Because you think that you are on your own
But you wouldn’t have reached so far today,
If you had been walking on your own

But someday you will be king,
Some day you’ll have your throne,
And till that day finally comes,
We’ll all stroll with you into the sun

Its okay if you cant make it on your own
Its okay if you fall at times
Its okay if you cant ask for help
Cause we’ll just walk behind

You are waving at a crowd in your head
You are forgetting that we are around
You are shy cause we have helped you so many times
But soon your time to help will come

But someday you will be king,
Some day you’ll have your throne,
And till that day finally comes,
We’ll all stroll with you into the sun

Cheers,

Kaber

P.S: You will love these songs.

Gloom

hi,

I’ve been posting my old poems, so I thought I should post my old songs too.. Here is my earliest attempt at Rockstar-dom

The lyrics are:

Fire flies, falling skies,
In your eyes I see gloom,

Simple lies, it began,
Like all good things it went too soon,

Tears pour, still I ignore,
Searching for a flowery bloom,

Gloom, Gloom.

Hmmm, a very juvenile effort in my opinion.

Cheers,
Kaber

P.S: You will like these songs too.

First Love

Hi,

This is another poem of mine, which I don’t like now. I think I grew out of it, but another friend of mine asked me to put this up, so here:

First Love

Maybe it was meant to be this way,

Maybe we can change it if we try,

The future is to you and me,

Like I was-

Life is pregnant, it is the child.

Maybe history will remember,

Maybe that will be too late,

Maybe we will be for ever,

Locked inside the gate-

But remember.

My shoulders wait for you to lean on,

My ears are there to listen.

My eyes to behold the beauty you hold,

My heart for you will glisten-

With love.

Make a wish, tell it to me,

I‘ll grant you not one,

Even more than three.

Share with me, and go on-

About yourself.

If it were not for you,

Since birth and now,

Not for you and

All that love-

I wouldn’t be here.

Oh mother can you hear me?

Should I be louder.

Should I come closer

Should I bother-

You with my woes.

Oh mother can you hear me?

I cry with you,

I pray for you,

I care; I do-

Every moment now.

And I know a time will never come,

Where you and me alone shall be,

Like we were in those ten months,

Alone just you and me.

I cry for that and I say,

Where ever I go which ever place,

I’ll think of you all the while,

Even if I can’t,

I‘ll always be your child.

Cheers
Kaber

P.S: If you like this poem you will also like these

What the Shadow Casts

Hi,

Here is another poem that I wrote at about the same time as “Rose tinted spectacles“. This is my first poem which I constructed around a definite theme, but my writing is a bit rough in this too. Check it out yourself.

What the Shadow Casts

The shadow hides, he is petrified
His Life depends on where he will run,

The shadow grows and becomes smaller still
All this time, he has escaped the sun.

He has no form, no love, no life,
All he has are his shadow friends,

And he loses him self,
When he is with them.

He is afraid of the light,
Which is the Sun’s clone.

The shadow reminds me of someone
And in vain I try to find him

The light is my friend and so the mirror is too,
They show me who…

Are we all not like the shadow
Aren’t we all afraid somehow

Afraid of those we hate,
And always seeking love

Our minds we think, are wide and free,
In fact they are allies of greed and jealousy.

We blame the world and all we see,
We even call the shadow a fool,

Maybe,Oh Maybe,
That is what our shadows call us too.

Cheers,
Kaber

P.S: If you like this poem, you must take a look at these

Rose tinted spectacles

Hi,

I wrote this poem about a year back, and I am not really proud of it , but my friend really loved it. In fact he says I have never written anything better . Judge for yourself.

Rose tinted Spectacles

In a soup, you try to swim and a whirlpool is pulling you in;

You are troubled to hilt, but you don’t cry, because till the end you will try.

A love, a song, your only child, all you have, leave it a while;

If it comes back, take it in, or it’s just the soup, and one more swim.

Nothing came, nothing will go, and even the Gita declares so;

What is not yours might just be; life is always a corner to another street.

What you want, you might not need, though success is the good product of greed,

You fear that you may not be right, but heros fight despite fright.

A long time, you do not have, for the flying years are rather scarce;

Tasks you do, if you don’t like, are to be buried and forgotten in the night.

If Atlas shrugged-like some proclaim, humans would have died-out, of shame;

Compassion is man’s strength, all the laws it does condense.

All along, I have tried to rhyme: it is fairly coarse, but I never lied.

Look at the world, look all you like, Rose tinted spectacles, covering your eyes.

Cheers,
Kaber

P.S: People who read this poem also read these

Olive Ridleys, Tata, and Ratan’s Turtles

This post is about the Olive Ridley Turtle – Dhrama Port construction issue.

“Its a bird, Its a plane..!” Chill guys, ‘Air Cars’ don’t fly.

Hi,

Road traffic world wide is responsible for almost half of our total CO2 emissions. That is the reason for many car manufacturers trying to build a cost efficient and eco-friendly car. Most of them have prototypes of furutistic cars (concept cars) that run on hydrogen, electricity, fuel cells or ethanol. Though a few manufacturers (read Japanese cars) have increased the efficiency of their engines for now, almost no company has released a green car for the market. Thats where Tata comes in. Read on…

Tata has recently signed a deal with a company called MDI (a company founded in Luxembourg, based in the south of France and with its Commercial Office in Barcelona ).

The deal says that Tata is going to mass produce a car that will run on compressed air.

Here is a picture that is moving from inbox, to inbox, world wide:

The car will be available in India by the end of next year, and will seat 6 people.

What really impressed me was that it could run 300km with out refills, and the engine oil is ‘vegetable oil’ (you don’t have to change it for at least 50,000 Km).

Compare the Onecat (that’s what they are calling it) to a Maruthi Suzuki 800, the most fuel economic car in India at the moment. The 800 gives you approximately 18 kilometres a litre, and you can go about 342 km on a full tank. How much do you pay for a full tank? The oil price will go up again before you can calculate that . Tata’s air car however can be refilled, they claim, for less that Rs.100. Now that is a good deal.

The exhaust from the air-car, will be cold air (0 to 15 degrees below zero).

What do we do with this cold air? Send it through the air conditioning system. Presto, we have a cool car. What’s more, the car is priced at Rs.3,50,000 approx, which roughly translates to a little more that $8000.

One point however: Tata will send in their Nano to crowd and pollute (the already dirty) streets of India, and then they’ll produce just 3000 air cars a year (as compensation?). Filthy hypocrites

Still they are the only company planning something on this scale, so, bravo!

Apparently, Tata going to introduce a bigger version of the car in the US in 2010 (10 people?) (I am happy because USA is the second largest CO2 emitting nation after China)

When Ratan Tata announced the Nano, I thought he was trying to do a ‘Henry’s Model T’ – and I thought it wasn’t going to work, but if the air car is successful, Tata Motors will go down in history as the car manufacturer who changed it all (along with MDI of course).

Guy Negre (MDI) is the engineer responsible for the development of the air car’s engine. I read a bit about how this engine works. The most obvious thing about it, is that the engine is not IC. It is a rotary type engine (found on certain Mazda sports cars). MDi’s engine is not one of a kind however. A zero pollution car manufacturer ‘e.Volution’ (based in France) is also marketing a similar car, intending to replace taxis in the highly polluted Mexico City. Back to the engine: The engine will probably use a triangular rotor, which is moved by air jets, to turn the wheels.

Hmmm. Although Mazda produces astounding speeds with a fuel version of the rotary, the MDI-Tata car cannot move at more that 105 km/hr.

One thing that struck me though, was this: where will people refill the car?

My idea?

Tata might set up refilling stations across the country, or make a deal with any one of the oil companies to distribute compressed air cylinders (made of carbon fibre, by the way) in already existing petrol stations.

If Tata decided to market this technology in a bigger way, we could be seeing air driven Land Rovers and Jaguars in the not-very-far-off future.

Hmmm, but all this is just speculation and what Tata will actually do is to be seen – soon.

Cheers,
Kaber

P.S: If you like this essay, read these too

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