Why not reserve us all? Why not provide education, health, drinking water and electricity to all, regardless of caste and class? Why this game of dividing us all in an attempt to continue exploiting India? Why are we continuing to vote for those who have betrayed the Indian people by sheer neglect and by endless platitudes that never translate into action to change the abysmal reality?

Arjun Singh comes across on television as a smug, dictatorial individual who skirts the real issue because he is stuck in a time warp when politicians dictated the terms, disregarded the citizens? views and ignored all discourse and dissension. His monosyllabic answers to sharp questions, his inability to be transparent, his arrogance, his intellectual inadequacy, his rather witless retorts all make one terribly insecure in trusting a person like him to handle and determine the future of ?education?, and therefore the intellectual wherewithal of this great nation and culture. God help us and our progeny.

We need to have a young and agile mind at the helm of Singh?s critical ministry, someone who recognizes the abject failure of the last 58 years and who is impassioned enough to overhaul the corroded and decayed system and infuse it with a new and vibrant energy that will restore the values of learning, that will include all castes and creeds at the primary school level, that will cease to exploit the vulnerable by doling out lollipops. These old men and women, set on their immobile and comfortable pedestals, have failed us for decades. They refuse to let go. They are destructive because they have not a new idea in their heads. Parliament is united on this issue only because of the vote-bank, not because it wants to strive to improve the plight of the less privileged. India knows that well. India has suffered at the hands of such politicians. It is a selfish premise that the average leadership uses to veil its failures. It is a premise used, ruthlessly, to divide and rule.

Enough farce

A senior surgeon ? a man of impeccable credentials, both personal and professional ? told a story that is scary. A panel selecting surgeons for a large government hospital in the capital, was forced to fill the seat quota with a ?surgeon? who did not fulfil the medical criteria but was the right caste. He will be operating on the bodies of innocent, poor people who come to such hospitals, playing havoc with their lives. Maybe our ministers should be mandated by the Supreme Court ? since it is mandating our everyday lives ? to use such hospitals for their surgeries and put themselves at the mercy of incompetent practitioners who happen to be there because of their quota and not because of their excellence.

Charity begins at home. Will Arjun Singh, when he falls ill, get admitted to the general ward of Safdarjung hospital and be operated upon by a surgeon who has no competence? Did V.P. Singh go to such a hospital for his dialysis? Why were machines moved to his home? Why does the government have to pick the tabs for the personal medical care of these ?saviours? of the Indian people? Why are these so-called ?heroic? gentlemen, seen to be fighting for justice, the very people who break the norm when it comes to themselves and their families? The hypocrisy is despicable.

Enough of this farce. Our leaders need to step out of the rusted and crumbling paradigm that they live and operate within. The older amongst them must step aside and give way to a new generation, one that must determine its own future and not be exploited at the hands of a failed lot. Even Jawaharlal Nehru, having mooted the idea of reservations in the early stages, came to reject the idea as time rolled on. He realized it would become the easy option, one that would be misused. Commitment to change should be the challenge.