Sucheta Dalal :Raising a voice against reservations.
Sucheta Dalal

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Raising a voice against reservations.  

May 20, 2006

 

This is a message from a medical student which is being put up on the website because I believe that reservations in India are not about upliftment of backward classes, but the cynical manipulation of politicians to create convenient vote banks. This website stands for meritocracy, transparency and openness.

-- Sucheta Dalal

 

Mail originally from Akshay Baheti, Final Year Medical Student at GS Medical College & KEM Hospital.

 

He was a part of the protest on May 13, 2006 that saw police brutality at its worst. Read on and let all your friends know the truth.

 

We Indians are basically a very decent, sober and non-violent lot. We don't expect too much, we don't demand too much, and we are quite adjusting in nature. We will bear the local train crowd, we will bear the dirty toilets and pot-holed roads, we will bear corrupt officials and incompetent governance, we are actually a dream public for any politician.

 

Whenever any injustice is done, we all feel very strongly against it. We will sit in our drawing rooms and discuss it threadbare with anyone and everyone. Nowadays, with the advent of sms es, its become even more convenient for us. We can message our protest and silence all scruples, feel that we have done our bit. But if someone is protesting against it in front of us, we wont join in; we are after all a non-violent and decent lot. Some of us become cynical over the years blame everything on the system and just live insulated lives; or just go abroad.

 

The injustice now becomes a law; it now slowly becomes a part of our lives. We get adjusted to it and learn to live with it. But the power-hungry politicians can never stop. So they decide to test our decency again. So they increase the injustice for their selfish political gains. Most of us go through the same routine again, more drawing-room discussions, more sms es and emails, more frustration, more blaming the system; and then will again get used to it. And the same cycle will repeat again and again. Till of course all limits are crossed, our limit of tolerance and decency is reached. When we realize that just how terrorists cannot be dealt with humane behaviour and tolerance, so also the politicians. That its time to shed off the garb of decency and non-violence (used to hide our basic laziness, indifference and cowardice) and take some action.

 

The Youth For Equality has decided. That the time is RIGHT NOW. That we cannot let the politicians make us scapegoats for their incompetence in improving the lot of the reserved category for the past 59 years. That its time to stop them from ruining our beautiful country anymore.

 

Its time for you to make your decision. Whether the time is now, or it is when 50% reservations will be implemented in jobs, or whether when they make reservations in education 70% (its there in Tamil Nadu already), or when they make it 100%. Or whether its time for you to shift abroad.

 

I faced the brutality of the police in front of the Governor's residence today as the whole nation watched. How the police mercilessly ran even after girls to beat them up. How one policeman beat us to the extent that he broke his lathi. I saw how the DCP lied without batting an eyelid that we peacefully protesting students were trying to get inside the Governor's house. If even this doesn't make your blood boil, then I don't know what will. If you still don't come out to support us, it is we and not the politicians who will lead this country to its ruin. Remember – Democracy is the best way of ensuring that the public gets exactly what it deserves.

 

Don't speak, don't even think, if you don't act.

-- Helen Keller

 

VOICE YOUR PROTEST AGAINST THE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED RESERVATION POLICY. JOIN YOUTH FOR EQUALITY.

Visit http://yfemumbai.blogspot.com/

 

 

 


-- Sucheta Dalal