Any opposition to reservations is deemed a typi-cally smug middle-class reaction and conspiracy. In the same vein, all pro-reservation voices are dubbed populist and politically motivated. While the truth in these extreme categorisations cannot be denied altogether, yet such polarisations have vitiated the issue; Arjun Singh’s foolhardiness is matched only by the striking doctors’ callousness.
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It was a free-for-all in a very literal sense too. With both the prime protagonists of the recently concluded electoral battle in TN having very little to offer in terms of ideology or programmes, the polls witnessed a frantic bid to buy, or bribe, the voter at any cost …
The fight to finish is well and truly on. It is not just a contest between two egos or personalities or political parties or fronts, but much more than that: a no holds barred clash between two competing vested interests vying to gain absolute control over every spehere of life in the State.
There is only one tribe that is capable of giving even the politicos an inferiority complex in taking the people for a ride. For that matter, the unionised employees of PSUs and government can put even parasites to shame.
At the risk of sounding cynical, it must be said that with the people getting fooled by the slick, street-smart politicians round the year, there is nothing really sanctimonious about April 1, the official fools day. One often gets this self-deprecatory feeling that ours is a country of fools where fooling is a national habit and getting fooled a national weakness.
When profiting out of office is the national political credo, the hullabaloo and hair-splitting over an office of profit looks silly and superfluous. We may be a nation of thumb-suckers, but are we all so dumb as to believe that politicos do not profit out of office?
Today’s polls are a far cry from those halcyon days of the hustings when an election was one more festival in this land of many festivals. Yes, the charm may have gone, with the whole affair getting tame and colourless, thanks to an outfit called Election Commission run by serious looking and finicky gentle(?)men who live for the rule, by the rule and of the rule.
Muslims have a particular responsibility because these extremists are part of their community. We do not mind where people come from, as long as they become Australians. We went through a period in the 1980’s and ‘90s of sort saying, we can build a federation of cultures in this country.
Our masters of the past, the British, rarely fig ure in our mental frame, barring vis-a-vis cricket. Pakistan dominates our mind for all the wrong reasons, including cricket. George Bush too has said something about cricket in the context of India