SOMEWHERE I BELONG.......!!!!!!! but where????

there comes a time in one's life , when you begin to question the purpose of your existence....you begin to hunt for your 'calling'....and the quest for someplace you belong becomes a necessity for inner satisfaction.... you are inflicted with the dreadful thing they call 'self doubt'..... its the most difficult phase of ones life.....

lately i have been questioning things around me....trying to figure out whether i am treading the 'right ' path...whether i am really heading towards my calling......

till some time back , i was almost certain about what i want to do in life...i was sure of the goals i wanted to achieve...but now in retrospect i am not sure if i was right!!!

i have had varying dreams at different points of my life.... at the age of 5 or 6 , i wanted to be a police officer, inspired by a television serial which featured the life story of a women IPS officer... the uniform, the power, and the aura surrounding a lady cop enamored me to a great extent.....

i have always been an avid television fan....
this notion is confirmed by the fact that a serial on the lives of custom officers filled me with the desire to be a custom officer some day!!! i was i guess 8 or 9 yrs old at that time....all this may seem quite funny now..but it was a serious business for a kid aged 8, whose first brush with a lot of things new was because of the television!!!

then at one point of my life i wanted to be a classical dancer.... but a month of training in odissi and the grueling experience washed away all my romantic notions...phew!! dancing is a tough business...you cannot start dancing the way professionals do right in the first class.... there is more to it than meets the eyes!!!! the realization was tough to accept...but lazy as i am resigned to my fate...or laziness..and gave up dancing:(

by the time i reached the 9th std...i almost figured out, what i wanted to do in life......

IAS...yes nothing more and nothing less....

the urge to join the services was so intense in me that i remember spending my vacations , mugging up various GK books...reading up my NCERT books with a scrutinizing eye...not missing a single detail.... watching all the possible news related programmes aired on TV ( hail the cable tv boom!!) ....reading up all the newspapers my dad subscribed to.... in other words , i was totally dedicated to the fulfilment of my dream!!!!!

i wanted to be called an IAS officer....i loved the work profile offered to an IAS officer.... the ability to influence the lives of people.... the varying challenges...all this might appear cliched...but reality is reality....no other service can offer a more multifaceted work profile as that offered by the IAS...

meeting lady officers would fill me with excitement...it used to be a motivational factor for me....

IAS was the only dream which shaped my decision to opt for humanities at the plus 2 level...

but...DELHI changed my dreams...it influenced my thinking...my views on career choice...

politicisation of bureaucracy has always been a reality...but delhi being the mecca of power enjoys a lion's share of this facet...or ill..

political connection and its impact in shaping the career of a bureaucrat was a shocking revelation...

these things and more forced me to alter my thoughts... should i study hard to get into the services and end up serving the interests of petty politicians, who are no more than jokers to me...if the prerequisite of enjoying a good career profile is the latter..then no..i dont want to get into the services....

the power and the respect enjoyed by an IAS officer in a small town is phenomenal...in Delhi on the contrary...an IAS officer is nothing if he or she does not enjoy the blessings of the politicians in power.... ' quid pro quo' is the reality of survival in the pond for any fish....and survival of the fittest is the rule of the day....
bureaucracy is rather dirty..right at the top...

i gave up!!!!

it was actually giving up..surrendering even before a fight....
oh! what a loser i am..

Somedays back , on a trip to mussorie, i stayed at a guest house...located inside Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration....the place where bureaucrats receive training before formally joining the services...
the anxiety and things that i felt on entering into the premises are ineffable....i had a weird feeling...

i was already miserable...and by the time i entered into the mess for dinner...my state became worse...the mess was full of IAS probationers having dinner....

' what am i doing here'.....'what a loser i am'.....' i dont deserve to dine here unless i become one of them'.....

i was full of thoughts like these and more throughout the dinner.....it was nightmarish...

it is only when i went back to my room, did i become normal again....my friends who had accompanied me to the trip found my behaviour rather strange..and couldnt understand the of emotional dillema i was going thru....the flux of emotions haunting me at that moment....

IAS was my childhood dream...and i had given it up..even before a try....

This experience has forced me to think again... about my calling...about where i want to see myself some 5 years from now....

I am hunting for answere..and some peace of mind....

heres hoping..that i get both soon......soon enough!!!

reservations...against reservation..

some odd ten years back..i remember my dad looking at me with a grim face...he mentioned, how in the years to come if i decide to write the civil services exam...i will have to work thrice as hard as him..not because the nature and the magnitude of competition facing me would be worse , but because of my caste....i would be eligible to compete for the 50.5% seats left after the requisite reservation quotas were filled!!!

these were the days of MANDAL commision...

i was very young at that time , to understand the implications of this policy..... but when i finally understood , what such a step by the government meant..and the various socio-economic dimensions of the debate..i was disgusted...thoroughly disgusted......

The first question that came to my mind is- why do the backward castes need governmwnt support???

....the obvious ansewer lies in the various manifestations of the caste system, deeply ingrained in the indian society...an integral part of the hindu social formation..casteism found ways to penetrate into other religions practiced in the indian mainland...the hindu social order ranked sudras as the lowest of the low...left to perform menial chores..which were looked down upon by the society...they were taught to obey the orders of the higher caste man...were taught to think of themselves as sevants of the latter...penence shall be their's only on serving the brahamanas and other higher castes....so the entire system entrenched in the sudras a feeling of servility...devoid them of any self respect that they should have possessed...the conspiracy is evident in the dictats of the vedas...mythological stories...in all hindu rituals...and so on and so forth....
..the roots of casteism so strong that even today we hear of caste wars in Haryana, Bihar, tamil nadu....and other parts of the nation....the superiority complex is till date ingrained deeply into the psyche of upper class people..whether or not they accept it publically....a simple example is the furore created in any supposedly 'broadminded' family on marriages outside caste.. not to mention marriage btw higher caste and a lowere cast....

..discrimination is a social reality....we cannot abstract from it....it would imply running away from truth.......

but is reservation in institutions of higher education the answer to all the ills???

... a lower caste child...who is discriminated against...whose family does not have adequate means to send him to a proper school, buy him books....who has faced hardships...would get into IIT's and IIMs with reservation???

the catch here is the word..'deprivation'....

..the probability of a poor..low caste child to complete school education is very low...now if this child has not been able to finish school in the light of deprivation...how on earth will he qualify to appear in these competitive exams????

..the need of the hour is improving access to primary and secondary education for those children who face deprivations...

the case of a backward caste child being beaten up black and blue in a primary school in Tamil nadu for drinking water from the jar kept for upper caste students provides a burning example of government's failure to address isues at the grass root level...

if the SC/ST/OBC cannot compete because of societal pressures , then the need of the hour is not reservation...but affirmative action....the government should adopt Amartya Sen's 'capability approach' for correcting the abberation that has diluted the unity of indian society....
the backward castes should be equipped with the capability to compete....with the ability to excel...all this can be ensured by provision of free books...through special coaching centres for them to train them for all kinds of competitive exam.....

This will be a step in the direction of restoring their self confidence....

these steps will adress the ral problem...will target the people who are really affected...

else the real beneficiaries will be Laloo's children...sharad yadav's relatives..and you know what i mean...

long term or short term .....reservation is not even a solution...it is futher aggravating the problem.....it is creating more divisions to correct divisions......

The success of Indian democracy lies in equal opportunity to all....but not equal opportunity to those who are 'more equal' than others...........