Standing at the mouth of the Chasm.....

How the quota issue will end, we don’t know….this is a confrontation that can have many endings...probably we wont be able to do a France…there wont be a rollback and some compromise will be made (though I hope and wish fervently that I am wrong about the not rolling back)….but amid all the smoke and fire, I wonder how many of us, right now, see the long term effect of the fissure that has erupted in the society….

Caste as a form of identity is something that should and ought to dissolve as we progress….clinging on to man-made hierarchies constructed a couple of millennia ago makes no sense….and dissolving is exactly what is (was?) happening in the society….

Of course you can say that in villages in Haryana, the Khap (the village panchayat) takes ghastly measures (including declaring a couple as brother and sister for marrying in the same gotra) to deter inter-caste and intra-gotra marriages....true, except for me it shows the rebellion brewing and the fact that these kind of cases surface again and again shows that the rebellion is not going to die down in our villages and small town (which are supposedly the hotbed of orthodoxy)…..

Look at the urban scene, inter-caste marriage half a century earlier was virtually unheard of, and one generation ago, it was still frowned upon….some of my relatives even refused to attend my parents wedding because it was an inter-caste marriage on top of a love marriage…..

Today, the caste issue is undeniably a factor but it has been dislodged from its central position….independent men and women come together, work and fall in love and live together irrespective of caste and region (of course I am not talking about those people who have had stunted growth due to submission to their parent’s diktat)….we even see a general softening of the parent’s stand….considerations of caste has given way to consideration of economic issues (on which the future of their children really is based)….today, those relatives who refused to come to my parents wedding have their own children not only marrying outside their caste but outside their religion as well!!!! (talk of poetic justice:))…..

As people become more and more career minded and job oriented, caste considerations have started becoming a piece of furniture of our tradition, totally devoid of meaning and logic and sanity……

The first blow to this progress was dealt by the Mandal commission report being implemented in 1990…..suddenly for the first time, the caste became an inseparable part of our identity that asked to be reckoned with…..primarily, of course, because it became inextricably linked to our economic future…..our politicians suddenly thrust us with a reminder that our birth has something to do with what we make ourselves after all…..an evil hierarchy that was at last in the process of being erased became suddenly rigid and more entrenched…..because Brahmins had reserved all education for themselves two millennia ago, the ones who were oppressed were told that they will be given a chance to do the same and were told to be cheerful about it…..

Of course the imbalance in access needed to corrected but isn’t it the best way to give special attention to the deprived section and not only give them education but proper health, diet and shelter and then see to it that everybody is on a level playing field after a generation (other countries have shown that to be possible, in process is Venezuela for example, it just takes imagination)….its like walking on crutches and calling them wings…..and even if reservation is given, keep a small percentage of it (say 10%) and keep it for a generation alone, not ad-infinitum……but of course these are long term measures or unpopular ones and our political bosses seldom see beyond 5 years (in these times of coalition politics, even lesser than that)

classical vote bank democracy, if any….

The rupture had started to heal somewhat, even though when it came to government jobs and admissions to colleges, the caste identity became important once again and a subconscious loathing of the ‘privileged class’ (see how the meaning got inverted) always ran as an undercurrent….but the society had adjusted itself to the situation more or less and accepted it as a part of life….

What we are going through now might just spell the death knell to the fabric of society…..if this measure goes through, the “Us Vs Them” will become an irreparable tear….already we hear of verbal (how long before it becomes physical) abuse that is being thrown at SC/ST doctors by their colleagues…already we are hearing the “us and them” mantra percolating in our language….even the most level headed person could be heard abusing (in whatever measure and pitch) the ‘freeloaders’….I mean seriously half of anything reservation sounds damn ominous…..

Some people would dub this as the paranoia of the elite privileged class in society….they would call it an apartheid society except for the similarity (more or less) of our skin colour…..and of course they are wrong and if they think properly they are just harping on politically correct revolutionary sounding rhetoric that would lose its relevance if they let it…..

The reason for our (see the Us vs Them already percolating in our language?) paranoia is because we have seen in the last decade or so the manner in which merit in our colleges have been given short thrift because of caste considerations….the medical fraternity has been the hardest hit (perhaps the main reason why they are spearheading the agitation) with category doctors strutting around doing no work because they know that they can harass anybody just by complaining that they themselves have been harassed by the ‘upper caste people’ 9exceptions are there of course but they are just that, exceptions)….and its by personal experience that doctors try and see that these doctors do not get into emergency cases where they might put the patients life in danger, since the reservation starts right from admission to examination passing criteria……

I think that our very life being put in danger, sometime in the future due to the bungling of some doctor who didn’t have to study too much to pass his exams, is a just cause for paranoia…..

And of course we know that reservation in private sector would finish off our competency in various sectors overnight…..there is no point elaborating on it since it’s a nightmarish situation we can imagine so well…..

But more importantly, its the unseen damage that will remain with us for a long long time….the next time u hear that somebody is from SC/ST/OBC, it will be natural that they would be avoided….what will that lead to? Clanism obviously with both groups nurturing their own grievances with a middle path difficult to find….suddenly the caste factor would become a issue in marriages, perhaps even in everyday friendships (it is already an unseen factor after Mandal I that was being healed slowly )…..and the progress that is the natural course in society would become regressive….

Think for yourself in the scenario when half of everything is reserved for people who are getting it for free, even though they may have had all the opportunities and advantages that you had, sometimes even more….imagine how you would react when somebody is elated getting into something that you coveted but could not get through because you missed that high 92% by 0.5% and the other guy (gender neutral) gets it for 75% all because he was ‘lucky’ enough to be born into the ‘right’ family….will you ever go upto that person and offer your friendship? wont you feel the greatest hesitation and reluctance?…..and of the people who really need a break (justification for reservation), will he/she be ever accepted for the person that he is (even if they have merit) by their colleagues and their subordinates in the very competitive private sector once everyone gets to know that he got it for free (the extent to which the criteria bars are lowered, its almost free)….what about in IIMs and other universities....will the student fraternity be the same again with the huge psychological 50% being not theirs, on their minds?

Once you imagine that, you can understand how this issue becomes a matter of the very survival of the fraternity of our society…..that the Us vs Them will become a chasm that would be very difficult to breach.....it will be two countries living in one with the country claimed by each and belonging to neither.....

And why our politicians, this time, have really gone too far….