Reservations

Kudos to Ratan Tata for speaking about his reservations against reservations in the premier institutes in India. Hope the other industrialists too speak up. We should request them to come together and serve as an example of how not reservation is the solution, instead it how we teach our children to respect everybody else without any bias for or against based on his/her religion, caste, gender, education.

It is high time we had a social revolution. We have not understood Mahatma Gandhi's attempt at starting this revolution. By being with Harijans and other so called "low caste" people Gandhi wanted to set an example that be at peace with everybody, but we seem take perverse pride in misinterpreting it as shun the so called "high caste" and align with the "low caste".

We never reasoned if we should have the differentiation based on religion, caste, sect etc in the constitution. We do not seem to have thougth about the implications that legalising religion, caste and sect will have on the people of this land. We have to first remove these distinctions from the Constitution.

The next step should be to educate the people (read children) to respect everybody and not teach them about distinctions between caste and religions. We should teach them the common brotherhood underlined in every religion and how.

For this we need a set of dedicated teachers without bias. This may be difficult to find, but it needs to be done.

Unless this change comes about no amount of reservation or positive action as it is politely called will have any impact on the living conditions of the "socially backward".