Baqwas Dutt

What's Barkha Dutt's idea of rebellion? Protesting Mandal recommendations in 1989. Standing up for the status quo is rebellion? And where did she learn her first lessons in rebellion? Under a 'bodhi tree' at St.Stephen's, Delhi. What's St.Stephen's? A place so exclusive it's reserved only for those who have 'been' the establishment for at least more than a couple of generations. Carpenters's sons like Jesus would never find a place there.
'Reservations have become a joke. We all know the statistics. More than 80 per cent of Dalit students never make it past Class X; more than 80 per cent of the reserved seats in vocational institutes remain unused; and in engineering colleges it’s even worse — more than 90 per cent of seats in the reserved category just lie empty.'
She's reeling out some handpicked stats used by the FICCI Secretary General on her programme oh-so-rebelliously titled 'We The People' on NDTV last Sunday. All numbers, you'll notice, are rounded off - gives you an idea about the kind of strictly cordoned off world she lives in. The stats? What does 'more than 90 percent of seats in the reserved category lie empty' mean?. She means reserved seats in engineering colleges. Where did Amit Mitra get this dubious figure? And I remember he wasn't talking of dalits alone when he quoted this figure. So much for the figures.
' What does this say? Two things. First, what’s the point of all these reservations if there aren’t enough qualified people to make use of them? But second, and more importantly, who should take responsibility for this gap between promise and possibility? Surely, this is the failure of governance, the failure of the State?'
That's exactly what some 'sane' objecting people like Ms.Dutt used to say in 1989. And were quite happy that the recommendations were stalled from implementation in the Central Services until 1994. And the prescription for the educational institutions was delayed until now. The State was okay in the last fifteen years, i guess. Of course they didn't speak about expanding the reach of schools in this period of 'sanity'. Nor about all the seats and jobs that the OBCs were excluded from. In the period between 1989 and now. Between 1947 and now.
'Left behind in the audience were mostly those who had opposed the quotas to begin with. It seemed to me that those who had walked out had displayed a siege mentality, a heightened sense of victimhood and bias, a feeling of not being heard even when everyone was listening to them on a readymade platform.'
This about the OBc students who left her programme midway. Ms.Dutt, the students left not because they felt besieged , but because they realized the moderator was taking sides. People who had obviously never given the idea of reservations any thought in their lives until then, were allowed to pontificate on how the hungry must be served 'dal, roti' and not 'caviar'. Kids who spouted illogical stuff about reservations creating caste were cheered on and the dissenters were abruptly cut off with a curt 'you've made your point'. If the programme were to be telecast again most viewers would notice how much time was given to people who opposed reservations. Chandrabhan Prasad's limited objections to blanket reservations for OBCs were interpreted as disagreement.
Ms.Dutt asks' Are we sure this is the India we want?'
You didn't find much wrong with it until yesterday- you mean you don't want an India in which OBCs occupy even token positions in the bastions of the elite?