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Perspective
Seize the Opportunity
by
J. Ajithkumar
Life is a
voyage and we come face to face with our destiny at least a few times
during its course. This is true for individuals and even for nations.
Liberated India had a few such occasions during the last 60 years. In
1947, we had the best opportunity to start on a clean slate with genuine
secularism, essential socialism and progressive nationalism. But we
missed the bus completely and boarded the wrong ones of
pseudo-secularism, non-alignment and what not. Then we had another
opportunity during 1980s when a government came to power with two-third
majority in parliament and a youthful leader at the very top. We goofed
again with retrograde legislations and blundering peace accords.
The price
we paid for all those blunders have been heavy so far. If only we had
utilised those historic opportunities properly, India would have been
among the top five nations in every sense by now.
After a long gap, the year 2007 looks promising for the Indian nation
with several historic opportunities once again. At least three unrelated
developments in the last few weeks have sounded the bugle for the
leaders to wake up. Two of them have come from the court rooms in India
and another interesting one has come from the cricket fields of distant
lands. But those who sound the bugle are not the ones who can fight and
win the battle. It is up to the leaders and laymen to act and convert
the opportunity into victories. And that is not an easy task. Leaders
must demonstrate vision and their political platforms must provide
adequate political and legislative momentum for taking tough but correct
decisions. If we need to reverse our direction in certain wrong
‘comforts’ we are used to, it should be done with full understanding.
Decisions must be taken after as much consultation as possible but once
taken it must be enforced with force if needed. A little pain now will
only lead us to prosperity and happiness in the days to come.
Reservation and Minorities
It is quite common in democracies to find the Parliament and Executive
getting restless over the impediments put up by Judiciary during their
sincere attempts to accelerate progress and development through
unconventional (and often unconstitutional) fast tracks. But we in India
have witnessed exactly the opposite in the last few weeks. Indian
judiciary has offered historic opportunities for the nation to change
for the better in two very important aspects of our social regime viz.
reservations and minorities. While Supreme Court stayed the
controversial 27% OBC reservations bill, Allahabad High Court has
observed that any religious community with more than 18% of the
population cannot be considered as a religious minority. Both are
extremely controversial subjects in India and most of the real
intellectuals keep away from it for fear of getting branded. But it is
high time the patriotic Indians from all sections of our society got
together and used this opportunity for building a better Bharat by 2025
AD.
Those who are used to the convenience of irrational and illegitimate
reservation policies so far are the real trouble makers. Their nuisance
is compounded further by the proponents of vote-bank politics found in
all mainstream political parties. It is a totally distorted notion that
is spread by ‘reservation-maniacs’ that all those who are criticising
the current reservation policies are dead against social justice and
reservations. It is hard to imagine any Indian who has no sympathies for
the socially and economically backward classes. We have suffered and
struggled so much under foreign occupation and various forms of internal
discrimination that reserving a part of our limited resources to the
deserving few has become part of our culture itself. But is it rational
for reservation to be eternal and unconditional? Shouldn’t there be a
clear time frame to uplift all those who are currently backward? An all
powerful commission (preferably apolitical) must go into all aspects of
backwardness and put together a plan for time-bound reservations. It
should be a comprehensive one-time reservation policy and all forms of
caste and religious reservations must come to a complete full stop
within a time frame. Thereafter all reservations must be based only on
economic criterion.
The question of minorities is even more intriguing in India. While we
are treating all religions as equal, as it should be, we are treating
those who are following different religions differently. Some are
majority and some as minorities. In twenty first century it is
ridiculous for a secular state to treat its citizens differently on the
basis of religion and caste. The concepts of secularism and minorities,
now in use in India, are its Western versions and definitely not
applicable for a country like India where followers of all types of
religions and cults co-exist. Number of followers of various religions
is ever varying and there are millions of people who are comfortable
with multiple beliefs or beliefs of their own. Without going into the
logic and wisdom of the Allahabad High Court, any rational and secular
citizen of the country will hail the judgement. We can only hope that a
majority of such people will also succeed in doing away with the
concepts of majority-minority and caste reservations in our country
forever.
Healthier Games
India’s well ‘deserved’ loss in the World Cup is yet another meaningful
opportunity for the nation. Cricket of today is no more a game. It is an
industry or a business with all its unethical undercurrents and
manipulations unbefitting a sport. The alleged murder of a coach
symbolises the sad state of this game more than anything else. Killing a
teacher for failing in examination highlights the immoral depth to which
a set of students can fall into. Millions of man-hours are wasted every
day on cricketing industry and millions of black money is also generated
by the mafia. The very nature of one-day cricket is such that there is
absolutely no weightage for the health and stamina of players. All that
matters is luck, manipulation and weather. A simple comparison of the
competitive parameters of the players in games like cricket, football
and hockey is enough to rule out cricket as a healthy game for a healthy
nation. Cricket can never return to its ‘test’ days and the politicians
will never get out of the lucrative cricketing grounds. It is time we
abandoned this game and returned to hockey and football. Again the
government can do this easily if the leaders have the will and society
can pitch in with encouragement at homes.
Most of such debates aimed at strengthening our nation end up
diffidently under long shadows cast by the calibre and integrity of
politicians who lead us. One of liberated India’s biggest problems is
the proliferation of career politicians. While it is true that no
democracy can thrive without the tribe of politicians, it is equally
true that we can avoid (or discourage) the growth of those who consider
politics as a means of living. It is time that we got over the sight of
handicapped political leeches (living on public money) deciding the fate
of a youthful and vibrant democratic nation of more than one billion. As
our founding fathers envisaged, the nation should be ruled by the
elected youthful leaders in the more representative lower house and not
the nominated oldies in the upper house. True democracy is all about
representation and only those who can get elected on the strength of a
transparent manifesto should govern and decide our destiny. Historic
opportunities come rarely and there is no excuse for those who miss it
for any reason.
April
21, 2007
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