Sunday, June 29, 2014

Pulling up the dead bodies – The reservation politics of Maharashtra

Wine’s value will increase when it becomes older. However, the same is not true for tactics and strategies. One need to upgrade and refine the strategies every now and then to keep pace with external competition, otherwise it will become obsolete. Congress forgot this principle.

The Grand Old Party often relied on minority appeasement and meaningless offers, when nothing else works. New India need something more meaningful than hollow promises. It’s not without a reason that the party lost recent general elections.

Instead of learning lessons from the debacle, Congress again fell back to old strategies in Maharashtra in the wake of coming assembly elections. Otherwise what was need to give reservation, that too such a high percentage - 16% - to Marathas and another 5% to Muslims? Taking the total percentage of reservation to 73!!!

Government knew very well that Supreme Court capped the reservations at 50%. It means court will reject this new order, in case someone challenged it there. If SC quashed this order then Marathas and Muslims will become unhappy. If it went through, then OBCs will become unhappy. OBCs are already claiming that only 32% of Maharashtra population is Maratha’s and they are going to get 16%; while OBCs even after having 50% (by the way this is stat only, it’s not necessary that all of them are actually backward other than the community name in various certificates) of population are getting only 19% reservation!!!

In a country which boast that her citizens are getting equal opportunity seldom live upto reputation, considering the fact that many states already crossed or on the verge of crossing 50% cap (for e.g. in Tamilnadu total reservation is 69%). Time already passed for the political parties and administration to take a serious look in to this issue. Probably even B.R Ambedkar never imagined that from the entire constitution this one piece can live this much long and all political parties will religiously agree on that.

Better be late than never. Congress, even if you don’t have any problem in seeing your party’s growing irrelevance, we Indians would like to see you play a meaningful role in opposition rather than pumping out waste.


Sajeev

Friday, June 20, 2014

Facebook post is enough to create riots in India?

In this new world people often express emotions more in Facebook than in real world. It doesn’t matter whether you know the guy staying in the next apartment or say good morning to a person you meet on the way to office. What matters is increasing the number of friends and likes.

Now anyone having a compatible device and an internet connection can create an account and post whatever he/she wants. There is absolutely nothing that stops him/her from doing it (unless the state implements a firewall more efficient than Chinese one). Basically it’s beyond the control of any government or any court. By the time someone brings a court order to take down one post, that guy may create another anonymous account and post something else. You know this is the situation and the person sitting next to you may also know this is the situation. Problem is action is seldom governed by reasoning.

Look at the situation in Pune. As per newspaper reports “morphed images of (former) Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray and Maratha warrior king Shivaji surfaced on facebook and then on Whatsup. The reference to the two personalities was insulting.” – The Hindu (June 19, Page 11)

However this was enough to create tensions in one of India’s major city – Pune, which aspired to become the Detroit of India. In the following events one guy was killed as well.
Now think about the situation again. Posting something somewhere by someone is enough to create a riot like situation in a major Indian city. Remember, we are not talking about any remote villages but about metros and tier two cities. If this is the case, then why our enemies need guns and rockets to fight against us? They simply need to post 10 messages every day.

Sajeev.
 

Culture of quality should start from home – Mango and Calcium Carbide


A glass of mango juice - one of my fav's
I was eating some raw banana while reading The Hindu in the night. Suddenly my attention went to a news article - “Kerala Government may ban mangos from neighboring states”. The reason for such a possibility is given as the wide spread use of calcium carbide for ripening.

Now here in Bangalore, one kilo of mango will cost around 40-70. For premium verities one has to shell out more money. Most often I bought and ate it in raw form, in addition to that mango juices, which we drink in raw form.

As a user don’t we have the right to get good food from market? Farmers most often complain about losses they are suffering and demand government support; middle men often complain about the transportation cost; so on and so forth? But don’t they also have the responsibility of giving good product to customers?

As per DNA news report,

1. Use of carbide for mango ripening is banned.
2. It is used in gas welding as an intermediate.
3. It degrades nutrition value of the fruit.
4. Consumption of fruit ripened using carbide can cause diarrhoea, mouth ulcers, dizziness and even cancer in the long run.

We should not wake up only when our export items are denied entry in US or European ports. Assuring quality starts right from home.

Sajeev.

Monday, June 2, 2014

Tay Thi – Graduate of the Year

This world is full of inspiring stories; about people born in absolute poverty and reached high levels in life with hard work and determination. Tay Thi from Vietnam is one such girl, who fought everyday of her life to get education.

“Three times Tay Thi has fainted while here at college, training to become an English teacher, because she starved herself to afford tuition. But she had the strength to persist and soon will become the first person in her village to graduate from college, and she embodies such grit and selflessness that, to me, she’s the world’s college graduate of the year”

You can read her story in Kristof’s NYT column – Graduate of the Year

Sajeev.