You are uncertain. Very uncertain! About your hard-earned job! You are one in a group of thousand-odd people agitating for a cause, against the government. You are slightly afraid too. No, the water cannons are not the source of your trepidation, nor are the lathi blows, but more than anything, it is the fear of what would happen to your job, your uncertain career. After all, you have spent a lot in completing a medical course, and burnt barrels of midnight oil in cramming up the portions for your medical exams, and the last thing you want to do is, to lose your job, that too because of a cause other than bad performance or lack of integrity.
But you have to do it. Because you are sensitive to the policies of the government, you are mindful of the fact that what is decided in the hallowed halls of the Parliament today, will have a bearing on your life, somehow, in the future. Because you know how tough it is to get a medical seat, and you have probably seen your close friend miss the grade by tenths of a mark. And you don't want good students to give way to anyone who might be ten marks behind and still make it to the top medical colleges in India... ahead of them.
Let me now introduce you. You are a medical student/practitioner in India and you are struggling in the battle against reservation in medical colleges in the largest democracy in the world. You know that the gavel is falling relentlessly on the table and that you have to act now to prevent it from hammering upon the vestiges of credibility that the medical institutions in India still have. You want to stop the powers that run the country from taking a populistic, vote-garnering decision, that is aimed at covering up its failures in structuring primary education in the country.
Your lot - the medical fraternity that is - is divided into three, the ones that agitate against the injustice, the ones that are content with their positions and remain passive, and the ones that dont like it, but like their job too much that they cant risk it to act against the decision. You sided with the first. Though you have a lot of people around you, you are under a lot of pressure to earn and finance your sister's marriage expenses, to repay the credit on the house so on.
But you are a man of the soil. You are selfless, fearless, and stand by your convictions. And you want to protect the future of the Indian medical system. You know that if you give an inch, the government will take a mile. You know that the more you cower, the more you silently witness whats happening around you, the deeper into the quagmire of bad Indian government policies you sink into and that one fine day, you wont even know what happened, but you will be grappling to stay afloat.
So you get up, ignoring your back ache from yesterday's agitation on the roads of the capital, brush aside your parents' hands that try to prevent you from going out again today, charge towards the Supreme court mindless of the barricades and the countless policemen waiting, licking their lips. You have anger in your face, you have disregard for everything that supports the government's decision, you utter a huge cry against the government, and are the first one to break the barricades that day. The blows rain on you, the water from the cannons pounds your face, and on the others' too. You fight, this is going to be one long struggle, but it has to be done, and you are the hero!
PS: The article was inspired by this news piece in the IE.
2 comments:
another blog...which make one's blood boil...makes everyone...
a man of action...keep up the GR8 work....
Equality can never be achieved through creating differential treatment. In that we are regressing. Well written.
But do protests or litigations achieve against political forces? History would suggest not. The root of the problem needs to change, as does the dynamic force of the country. The need is ethical leaders, not politicians. Untill that changes, millions will suffer and not much will change.
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