Tuesday, April 25, 2006

The reservation debate

I _had_ to comment on this one, didn't I?
After this ridiculous coalition of lefties and wannabe-lefties known as the UPA has come into power, we've kept hearing about nothing but 'empowerment' of the so-called backward classes and the minorities. While one cannot be against that in principle, it is the implementation that is causing a lot of disconcertion amongst those who really want empowerment of all sections of society.

It is no one's case that the underprivileged sections of society must be given a chance to compete with the others. But who are the underprivileged? Son of a former railway minister, just because he is a Dalit? Son of a RBI governor, because he belongs to the scheduled castes? Or is it a poor Brahmin's son? Or the daughter of a poor Muslim?

Caste-based reservations haven't really led us anywhere. It is not that the politicians can't see it. But as Ayn Rand eloquently explains in her masterpieces, they are a bunch of second-handers who are out to destroy everything that the first-handers have created.

More on this later...just got back to blogging after a long hiatus.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Foot(firmly)-in-the-mouth disease

All my friends, particularly those that know me well, know that I suffer from one serious, but non-infectious disease. This is the "Foot-in-the-mouth" disease whose main symptom is the patient's unending urge to plant his/her foot (gulp) into his/her mouth.

Usually, symptoms of this disease manifest themselves during puberty, and while it affects both genders, the male of the species tends to succumb to this more frequently, and with greater intensity. Ofcourse, there is no cure for this disease and while the symptoms may be mitigated, they tend to relapse ever so often. And a miraculous thing about this disease is that its symptoms adhere to Modern Physics - they appear in both space and time, confirming to the eternal Space-Time Continuum. To elaborate, there are three major kinds of symptoms that have been observed. The first is "SITAAT" or Say Inappropriate Thing At Appropriate Time. The second, "SATAIT" or Say Appropriate Thing At Inappropriate Time, and the final one is "SITAIT" or Say Inappropriate Thing At Inappropriate Time. Ofcourse, there is also the rarely occurring DITAAT, DATAIT or DITAIT, with the D standing for "Do", but that is not significant to my discussion and so I'll let that rest.

However, I am not a registered medical practitioner, and with the licensing hawks around, I better take care about diagnosing medical problems on my blog. [Remember, my disclaimer does not still exempt me from any harm that may be caused to someone using information from my blog.] I'll just talk about my symptoms. I have a severe, relapsing case of FIM, known as the FFIM, or the Foot Firmly In the Mouth disease. It's symptoms are similar, but unlike the FIM, where the foot does get to go out of the mouth, when you have the FFIM, the foot just doesn't leave it. Ofcourse, it relapses quite regularly, is mostly harmless, and tends to attack particularly when I am conversing with an (unrelated) female of my species. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the disease immediately 'informs' me that it has set in, but only after the symptom has been broadcast to the entire planet (which according to the Stinky Foot theory of relativity, is at that instant of time constituted of the trigger and me and any others listening in to the conversation). For long, I've been looking for a cure for this disease, but it has eluded me. One way to mitigate the problem, has been to avoid the trigger, but in today's world, that is hardly feasible.

Diagnoses welcome.

(PS: In case you noticed, I did change my blog to add the disclaimer. So long, suckers!)