Saturday, May 13, 2006

Beat them, for we have no excuses !

If anyone saw the news channels today, it was a heart wrenching sight. Uniform-clad men were showering some 20-somethings with laathis (sticks). It looked like the kids had been reduced to nothing more than mere clothes and the cops looked like unrelenting washers trying to beat the dirt out of them. And I am not exaggerating.

On the other side of the story was helpless patients, some critical, stranded hopelessly outside hospitals because their would-be doctors were getting beaten by cops.

All this commotion, and all just because our government has decided to play a deaf and dumb. It has shunned away its responsibility to the people and its duty of being answerable to them. How can they sit quietly and allow this ruthless aggression at peaceful demonstrators is what I don’t understand.

The silence also conveys the fact that they have no answers, or rather no excuses. If the government was infact serious about the proposed reservations, then it has been shot in the leg by the very anti-reservation media and again in the groin by its very own knowledge commission voting against it and even going as far as asking to review the existing reservations!

But according to me it is not out of answers, it’s simply out of excuses ! That’s because I think the way the whole the reservation-game was played out makes it look like nothing but just a pre-election stunt. The clandestine remark made by Arjun Singh itself proves it. As he himself claims, it was merely ‘mentioned’ and not ‘stated’, that too just before the elections … perfect timing! After that it was very easy to play the ‘responsible but helpless’ government tied down by the EC.

Moreover, I think the whole review and the subsequent decision of the knowledge commission is just a part of the farce. After all, it makes it easier for the government to deny the increase moreso if its very own knowledge commission also denies it. Manmohan Singh’s apparent silence further goes on to verify the farce for otherwise, if he was concerned, he should have asked some questions or defended the reservations.

So the next question is to tell the nation why it is not possible to implement the proposed change (just to get additional votes) … or rather give an excuse for its pre-election, caste based - vote grabbing cheap tactics.

So in the meantime, while our doctors get beaten and water-cannoned on the streets, our government hunts for answers, or rather excuses.

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