You only see what your eyes want to see

You only see what your eyes want to see...Madonna – from song Frozen.

Some of my friends support Modi all the way and some other see no virtue in any move that Modi makes. Some believe Kejriwal is the most honest person in the world and some believe exactly opposite of that. And they stick to that – against all odds, they are not even willing to consider new information if it is against their stand.

What is the thought process of a Bhakt.
Whats in your head... in your head... Zombie Zombie Zombie.. what's in your head ( Love that Cranberries song... good lyrics) 


Both Modi and Kejriwal had a very high decibel personality based campaign and had polarized the opinion about them. The opposition was shallow, and also had skeletons in their cupboards – and accordingly found it easy to attack personality rather than issues.
The trouble with personality based elections is that it results in binary supporters - either you trust/like someone or you don’t. There is no middle ground in a personality led election campaign.


But then the elections that brought these individuals to power are over. New information is available for both these politicians in terms of how they have behaved over last year or two.
Also why are their supporters/ detractors wearing their support/criticism on their sleeve all the time.
Why are these supporters using facebook / whatsapp to express their opinion all the time – and at times putting their personal / professional relationships at stake? Why are they so charged up and trying to convince others?


 This I believe is result of cognitive dissonance.
(Cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs.)

In order to minimize the discomfort, they try to deny any and every information that conflicts with their existing beliefs. They go out of their way- and start selling their own ideology / try to convert others. This reduces their dissonance.


People who believed Modi is evil / communal / feku ...are at a loss when they see something good attempted by him. A Modi hater will go out of way and use his/her personal reputation / relationships / friendships at stake - to prove Modi’s good activities are actually very bad. Doing this minimizes their dissonance. Infact if Modi was not doing good work, his detractors might have been less vocal about their opinions.


People who had a belief that Kejriwal is the most educated & honest person, find it very difficult to find fault with his policies / lack of actions now.


What can be done - well, there are tried and tested approaches to reduce cognitive dissonance- well that is a topic for a larger blog post....and frankly not my area of expertise.


In US, Trump also had a very similar personality focused high decibel campaign, and globally almost EVERYONE has a stand on Trump. If Trump starts doing something logical, he will face a lot of backlash / every good step will also be criticized.

NDLS - has missed the train

If someone has come to New Delhi after few years, he will be amazed to see the growth and development that has taken place.

Flyovers all over the place, Metro reaching out to most crowded bazaars in the heart of city as well as outskirts. Construction on metro is still going on at a frenetic pace to include more places in NCR. Excellent facilities at all the metro stations.

However untouched by this wave of development are the Railway stations of New Delhi.

You may choose to go to any station – New Delhi Railway station or Old Delhi or any other. all of them have are still not still in previous century.

This morning I discovered to my horror how difficult it is to move a physically challenged / sick passenger on wheel chair from platform no 2 platform no 1 at New Delhi Railway Station.

There is no proper cemented route for the wheel chair. The route which is used is made of bricks, and has a lot of pot holes. It crosses the railway track at unmanned level crossing, perfect recipe for an accident. It is of course uncovered, i.e. if it is raining you should be prepared to let your passenger drenched / and brave the pot holed brick laden route, which has a lot of goods carts (rushing for unloading their goods).

Top it all – wheel chairs are not in best shape, finding a wheel chair with both the guide wheels is a task in itself. Further the coolies are not interested unless you are willing to shell out at least six times the official tariff of Rs. 25.( that too only if it is not raining).

This is just one part of the story,

- There are not enough seats for you to wait at the platforms

- No clean toilets

- Very little parking space

- No proper drainage – little bit of rain and you have clogged roads

Passengers here are seen as botheration, not as customers who should be welcomed. Somehow you get a feeling that they think they are doing ehsaan (loosely translated – charity for you), and we the passengers are beggars and not customers. Passengers (beggars) can’t be choosers, jo mil raha hai le lo, haq se mat maango.

Rest of Delhi is much better, and of course you can’t compare it with its cousin Metro rail stations. Get into any metro station you will find the difference. For that matter you can’t compare it with stations at smaller cities either, where the number of passengers is much lesser and the load on infrastructure is much lesser.

Looks like the railway stations in Delhi are still saddled in previous century, late 90s.

Clearly New Delhi Railway station has missed the train – the development train.

Fixing the wrong problem

I am surprised at the lack of clarity on part of Government of India on the reservation issue.

The problem here is not that historically some castes had been given a raw deal, that is a fact.
Problem that they are supposed to solve is to ensure that individuals of free India do not get punished or promoted because of their caste.

What was the stated objective of doing all this reservation - Equality of status and oppertunities for all Indians.

What are they aiming at, to achieve the stated objective : reserving oppertunities for certain castes.

Can we achieve EQUALITY OF STATUS & OPPERTUNITY for ALL INDIANS thru Caste based reservations ?

For that matter can we achieve equality through reservations?
All Individuals are equal, as long as you have no reservations.
There has to be some way of identifying who should get that reserved seat , and the guy who gets it is NOT EQUAL TO EVERY INDIAN (otherwise you cant identify him).

Mundane example :
A long queue in front of the railway reservation (ironically) counter.
Here the merit is - first come first serve.
No reservations ( ;-) ) for reservation. ie issual of ticket is not based on caste creed colur.
As all people are identified as Indians.
Unless you put in a criteria that sets some people apart, you would not be able to give them special status.

Assume you have been standing in such a queue for last six hours and suddenly an officail in black coat comes out and announces that all people in blue shirts ( or shades of it) will get a preferance and will have a separate queue.
He eloborates the reason for it is that till last week there was a different guy at the ticket issual counter who had a partisan view towards the people in blue shirts. That guy used to send the guys in blue shirts to the back of the queue once they had reached the counter. This guy in black coat wants to avenge for the mistakes of his predecessor, and ofcourse establish equality through this.
What will be your reaction?
Caste is to our society , what a the colur of shirt is to the queue.
The people who had suffered three months or three years back, are not there in the queue, but the people with similar colur of shirt ( or the caste) are there now.
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Now lets talk about something else. About the strategy or the method itself (assuming that the aim was right, is the strategy to reach that aim correct?)

Why are they reserving seats for various scheduled castes and scheduled tribes ( and the list has been growing) .

Why not create reservations one homogeneous block of reservation for all who need reservation as per their logic.
Everyone knows it will not work.
Lets drill down, Why is it a problem?

Stated reason : This will not provide equality for all. (taking from the above example, there are people with royal blue and some with sky blue coloured shirt)
We will not say it is vote bank, and agree to their logic momentarily.

So you identify subgroups. ( Scheduled caste & Scheduled Tribe -two groups)
Does it serve the purpose?
No. ( example : sky blue complete shirt or sky blue collors only)

So you identify sub sub groups ( break homogeneous scheduled caste group into sub groups)

Does it serve the purpose
No. They still want more divisions.
(Same tribe in UP might be more oppressed and in larger number than say in Kerala, you actually need more divisions , as you cant achieve your stated objective)

Where can it actually stop ?
Ofcourse at the individual level - from where you cant break it into any smaller group.

So can you reserve seats for everyone, whose great grand parents were at a disadvantage?
Is this method/strategy implementable fully ? Can you reserve seats for every SC/ST?
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Assuming this process is a time taking one ( as we and our parents have seen it evolve) , let us look at the impact on the society at large ( or the queue discused in our example.)

Those who have merit but are aware that they may loose because of this system will look for places to study / settle where such system is not in place ( natural , if you were in the queue mentioned in the example , you might quit the queue and look for alternate means of travel) .

People will give up faith in the system, and try to break the system. Some youth will get into revolt mode, or worse resort to unlawful methods to success. (if you had a set of like minded individuals in the queue who had no strain of blue/or were in favour of justice , you might try to throw this new guy at reservation counter out of office. OR worse just board the train without ticket and evade / fight the ticket checker)

What do we need?
More oppertunities. And ofcourse Equality. You cant undo what happend pre-independence. Post independence it is goverment's job to ensure that there is no racial discrimination.

The revolution will happen once we have more oppertunities than the people to avail them.
More options for reaching out to where they want to go.

Government needs to focus on creating new oppertunities. And they better do it fast.