His grandmother Mrs. Indira Gandhi about 50 years ago famously coined the slogan “GARIBI HATAO!”— “Banish Poverty!”.
Now her grandson, Mr. Rahul Gandhi has coined another slogan which may well become equally famous : “”JITNI ABAADI UTNA HAQ” … i.e. “The greater the population, the greater the rights”.
Both slogans must be described as “sound and fury signifying nothing” but unmitigated disaster for the future of India, since both got coined and broadcasted in the country around election time for no purpose other than simply garnering votes —- They are not vision statements, far from it.
As an ordinary citizen, I cannot help noticing how in this heated national public discourse on Reservations , the word “merit” and “meritocracy” hardly gets a mention at all by pundits and intellectuals. The words “majoritarianism” and “social justice” get bandied about vociferously , but not even a whimper or a whisper about “intellectual capital” or “knowledge society”!
It is 75 years now since affirmative action was made the single most zealously advocated cornerstone of social justice policies in every sphere of our lives — education, employment, empowerment and entitlement. What has it all produced ? Has the reservation / quota policy produced real merit or excellence in any field of human endeavour? If not , why not ?
Why isn’t the public discourse conducted into such far more substantive questions while considering issues of further reservations and more and more societal engineering and tinkering …. all of which are only ripping through the social fabric of our country and tearing it apart more than ever before?
Reservation is nothing but plain band-aid; it’s not a curative for the social ills of our country. A bandaid may have been good for 75 years . Is it really chicken soup for the soul of this country in perpetuity?
How long will these so-called social justice policies trump merit or meritocracy?
How can a country whose people are being endlessly fattened upon a steroidal diet — an overweening sense of social entitlements based on the caste they belong to — ever go about succeeding in building real intellectual capital and become a real knowledge society in this new century?
The Constitution of India has a shining vision of a casteless society in this country. Is Reservation or Caste Quotas ever going to create a casteless society? That’s not a vision. It’s a pipe dream.
O tempora ! O mores ! What moronic leaders rule over us ordinary people in this country ! In a few decades ,I fear, there will be in this country just no place anywhere for meritocracy once it starts its slow descent into universal mediocracy.
Regards,
Sudarshan Madabushi
Well expressed and has raised many thought provoking questions? Only tine will tell the Answer,,😔😔😔