Now Petrol also has a Caste in India

It is often said that castes are a reality in India. These are not some virtual tags or surnames which impact nothing but only the way you write names. Your caste (mostly, if you are a Hindu) may affect the way you will be treated by others. Your caste may decide whether you are eligible to marry a girl of your choice or not. By and large and socially, this happened to be the limit castes would have impacted you – to gain you first cut acceptance or respect by your fellow caste-members, or to decide your eligibility criteria during prospective marriages. But when politics entered it, it has spiraled into many more spheres. Today, governments in India give entries into schools and colleges; give jobs, promotions, bank loans, ration, and a hell lot of other things, depending on your caste. Though most political parties have employed this ‘divide and rule’ strategy, if there is one party which has been pioneer in inventing more ways to ‘legalize’ casteism (caste based discrimination), it is the Indian National Congress (INC).

Legend is that in villages you have caste based sources of drinking water. Depending on your caste, you may or may not be allowed to drink water at a particular pond. This has been the tradition, started decades or centuries ago, and now defunct in most villages by and large. But now our government headed by the Congress party has come up with inventing almost the same process by replicating it in the area of fuel refilling at gas stations (called ‘Petrol Pumps’ in India). Govt has decided to allocate petrol pumps based on castes of the applicants. And hence, for the first time in modern history, you will have choice to refill your vehicle at the castes you like. You can decide to boycott the petrol pumps with owners of some particular castes and may choose only your own co-caste owners’ pumps. Loving it?

You can read more about this news here:

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/27-pc-quota-in-petrol-pump-allocation-for-obcs-reddy/977397/

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-newdelhi/article3695129.ece

Without doubt, such decisions and schemes are taken in order to build and please caste-based vote banks. I strongly oppose all such ‘caste-based’ schemes existing and being introduced. Castes and religion can’t be the criteria based on which an allocation can be done. Poverty alleviation is a completely different agenda and not related to castes. If we make laws and boost our economy to grow at a high ratem poor and downtrodden people from all castes will be benefited. But obviously politicians don’t see it the same way and they have their vote banks and elections in mind while they take any decision. Hence national interests take a back-seat.

Now that petrol also has a ‘caste’ in India, aap kaun se caste ka petrol bharwate hain? Which caste does your petrol belong to?

Disclaimer: Views are personal and do not represent views of any person or organization associated with the author. This is a personal blog. Purpose of write-ups is not to hurt anyone’s sentiments.

OBC Quota in Higher Education increased by Delhi Govt

The way Indian politicians are using caste as a vote bank politics is really shameful. Instead of reducing caste-quota gradually, they are increasing it for political vote bank politics. Congress govts have been leaders in such divide-and-rule politics.

Now a new decision has been made in Delhi (where Congress party rules), to increase the caste quota limits:

Delhi government increases OBC quota for higher education to 27 per cent

27 Feb, 2012, 01.29PM IST, PTI

NEW DELHI: The Delhi government on Monday increased the reservation in higher education for OBCs to 27 per cent from the present 21 per cent. With this increase, the total reservation in higher education institutions for SCs, STs and OBCs will go up to 49.5 per cent. The decision to increase the OBC quota was taken at a meeting of the state Cabinet chaired by Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. News [Ref]

What bewilders me is that there is no proper study, no public debate, no time taken to understand the issue, but pure political opportunism. Whichever group of people (caste creates a group, giving them distinct identity) demands caste based reservations and does protests, will get it.

Also note that this increase in OBC quota has been done in “higher education”, while there has been no focus on primary education… Such caste-quota in higher education helps only rich and powerful OBC candidates get easy admissions in best colleges and universities. Our politicians will let the people below poverty line remain poor but will pamper the politically powerful richer classes within the communities, for political vote bank purpose…

Stop Minority (non-Hindu) Quota

This is a very good decision which has exposed Congress for it was indulging in such vote bank politics.

Next, we should repeal Minority Quota in all states, forever, because it is against the spirits of our constitution.

EC halts minorities sub-quota in five poll-bound States

The Election Commission on Wednesday ordered the Union Ministry of Personnel not to give effect to the December 22, 2011 office memorandum, providing a 4.5 per cent sub-quota for minorities within the 27 per cent reservation for the Other Backward Classes in Central government jobs and educational institutions, in the five poll-bound States.

The direction will be applicable until after the completion of the Assembly election process in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur.

The EC took into account the fact that the decision on sub-quota was announced by the Centre on December 22, before the model code came into force, i.e. on December 24, when the poll schedule was announced.

The EC said it was brought to its notice that the order had been issued in violation of the model code, and that it took the decision to ensure a free and fair poll.

Sources in the EC drew attention to the Sections in the model code relating to parties, candidates and the State/Central governments. Para 1(3): There shall be no appeal to caste or communal feelings for securing votes.

Many parties, particularly the BJP, had strongly opposed the Cabinet decision and said the announcement was made as an inducement to Muslims, who are in sizable numbers in Uttar Pradesh.

Minority Quota

Our Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh said the following:

He warned that “no entity should be created inconsistent with our Constitutional framework and charged with onerous executive responsibilities without any accountability… Let us not create something that will destroy all that we cherish…all in the name of combating corruption. Let us remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

https://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Lokpal-Bill-UPA-wins-one-loses-one/892877/ 

But this leaf from his speech was on his opposition of bringing CBI under Lokpal…

If you read his statements again, thinking about the communal (Muslim) reservations inside Lokpal, you would agree that on the same grounds, communal quota should have never been passed by the parliament.

Indian constitution doesn’t allow reservations on the basis of one’s faith. But our government has not only decided to make 50% quota for some castes and for minority religions, they have also announced 4.5% reservations for minorities (Muslims and Christians), on the basis of their faith! In my opinion, this is completely against our constitution, and all of us should oppose this. So far I see only BJP has been opposing this, but I think the responsibility is on each one of us.

Say no to communal politics in the name of Lokpal! Say no to minority quota!

Gender Biased Media

A few years ago, I got too infuriated with the Times of India (TOI), due to the way it handled a news report. Some policemen had misbehaved with some women-protesters in Punjab, and the newspaper chose to show the face of the woman being harassed, her horrified friend’s face, but the camera angle made sure that policeman’s face would remain unclear and unidentified. It happened in both the two pictures it printed while reporting the news. That was a wretched show of journalism and my dislike of TOI reached a pinnacle with that incident (but many more cases had to follow).
 

Now a day, especially when I am in office, I browse through news.google.com to keep track of the latest happenings around the world. With time I started getting surprised as to why even Google News props up images of women in unrelated news, at the slightest opportunity. One day I just scrolled down the page and found that pictures of women were dominating the news page unnecessarily and almost unjustifiably. Since news hosted on google news is coming from various sources, and each source has multiple images on it, google news should have some logic to select which image to prop up on its main page. Was there a gender bias even in this expectedly gender-neutral programming?
 

I look at this page which is from any normal day.
 

With the news item titled “OBC admission: Supreme Court upholds HC order”, there are lady students featured alongside. So if the media has to post a picture of some students, it will be girl-students in most cases.

Second item is on rains and calamities. News titled “Heavy rains in UP, Bengal, Meghalaya; 12 dead” Here too, we can see a group of five women joining their umbrellas and captured in the camera. So if some people die out of heavy rains, our newspapers will show the pictures of some women commuters walking or suffering in the rains.

This kind of gender bias in the media is disappointing, and even offensive in a way. Such a practice keeps positioning women as an object and material, whose bodies would be for “display” to generate more eyeballs and raise some TRPs when it comes for the media. Advisers have historically used women (women’s beauty) to create a buzz around their products and services to an extent that we have stopped seeing any wrong in it. But it is surprising to me that even online portals running by unbiased search logic are selecting images of women only, for display.