Too tough to smile……….

I had a discussion with my friend about the smiling factor. He was asking me why does it happen in India that a person whom you know by face, whom you would have seen regularly at workplace, gym or some where else and both of you know each other by face never smiles seeing you. He recalls when he was in UK, he used to exchange smiles even with the strangers. Then how come in India, a person who knows you feels so much anxious to exchange smile. I could not answer that time and after a lot of contemplation I am writing this blog.

I believe every country has a particular way of living in society and every society has its own positive and negative points. India is a big country with a great population where people have a lot of worries .Every where everyone is fighting to win every moment in this race of life, and this feeling of insecurity takes away the feel for human values and principles. For example in a common Indian market, how many people care to be in queue? Leave alone smiling to strangers, people sometimes ignore the known ones. Although we are taught from childhood to respect elders and say “Namaste Uncle/Aunti”, what is our reaction when we see an old person is standing in a crowd to snatch his/her share.

US, UK and other countries are very less populated and have a good infrastructure. People have better facilities and they enjoy even waiting for the bus or the traffic single to become green as it is comfortable for them. People greeting with smiles to each other is very normal there.

Smiling is a nature’s gift to human being but in India smiling at opposite sex person means you are hitting on her/him. Moreover if a male does this on a public place like a bus stop, the very next day you can see his photo in news paper getting a nice mass beating. If a girl smiles at you, people start talking about her character. What a fun when we are misunderstanding the gift of nature.

We talk about passing smile seeing some stranger in India but when a stranger asking for help after an accident, how many hearts melt. Everyone knows the consequences of involving in strange person’s matters. My point here is the value of human emotion, life and morals is relatively lower in India. When there is a single bus coming and people have to rush to take seat, who cares to smile to a stranger or ask someone to catch the bus who is in his/her world. Even our life is not affected by the bomb blasts and people trade on the same spot to earn a livelihood on the very next day. When Indians/Asians go to UK or US or any other country, they try to find out some one whom they can recognize. There only they realize the importance of people with whom they can talk and walk. After all man is a social animal and to be in society one has to create some space and the ways can be to smile seeing a stranger or help some one from the same origin. Since in India, people have already a big society/friend circle/family to share everything, everyone feels very strange to see some one stranger smiling at us. All in all we take every human for granted and ignore them. We hate to be in crowd even when we are a part of it be in market or traffic.

Reservation - what are we looking for ....

Supreme Court has given its verdict and there will be 27% reservation for the OBC category people in post graduate courses also. So again a big chaos, students lamenting for the decision and again this result will be accepted by the public.
I started feeling the heat of reservation policy for the first time when I appeared in engineering entrance test. Then I thought that this policy is totally wrong and should be abolished in order to provide a fair chance to everyone. Even Ambadkar ji(the father of Indian constitution and reservation policy ) asked to follow this policy only for 50 yeas and said if there will be any need, this should be extended. I know that no political party in India has so much of guts that it can pull out this policy as people from backward castes are a big part of vote bank.
In my college time, I saw many people from multiple backgrounds. I realized that still people are there who needs reservation. There were some of my batch mates who could have never made to any college if there wouldn’t have been any reservation policy. Some were so poor that they were not able to pay the initial fee and one of my friends’ father helped them. For the first time I saw people like that and realized the importance of bringing these people forward to match the pace of the society.
Then I met some of the people coming from OBC/SC/ST category, who were somewhat different from the above mentioned students. New castes were included in this category that year only. Some of those guys were from very good family as their family earning was 5-6 times the Indian average salary. There was no need at all for a reservation for them to survive in the highly competitive Indian society, especially when education comes into the picture.
Now Supreme Court says that it will check the creamy layer to come under the reservation category in OBC criteria. I say, why not only these criteria should be applied for all the reservations. How can one differentiate a poor general category student and a poor OBC category student? If someone is poor, then he is poor. There is no question of his belonging to some or the other caste or religion. If people need help to come out of their isolated world then there is no question on caste basis.
I accept that the situation was quite grim when India got independence. All better places including temples and religious places were prohibited for the lower classes. But today the condition is improving. It will still take some more time to bring all the people at the same stage but why should we keep on increasing the distance between these casts by bringing the reservation policy.
I suggest the reservation policy to be modified in two ways.

The reservation policy should be applied to poor people only. It should take care of all the backward casts specially in order to bring them at the same level as other casts.
Reservation should be provided once in a life time only. I strongly believe that a person needs a platform or launch pad once in a life time and after that success depends upon the performance of the person. Right now a person is benefitted at various levels like engineering entrance, then government jobs, then promotion and other things. . Providing a quota to candidate for the whole life time makes the person handicapped in terms of performance and he/she looks upon to the authority for going ahead in life at every turn.

The basic point is to create some unanimity in society regarding the castes. Politicians are taking full advantage of people’s ignorance, avoiding attitude, illiteracy and lack of positive attitude to dig the ground deeper. One can see why still the Indian politics is so much affected by the castes factor.
Government really needs to address these issues as soon as possible. Implementing these suggestions is a herculean task and one party which will implement this policy will face some serious consequences but still some sacrifices are needed to change the direction of wind.