Fundamental rights and Reservations

The mentioning of equal opportunities in employment and the reservations in the chapter of fundamental rights in the constitution of India created lot of confusions in judiciary, legislature and even for the executive wing. But still the opportunistic politics avoided the detailed discussion on the wish of the constitution regarding the reservations and the equal opportunities in education and employment.

Many believe that our constitution makers thought the reservations in negative sense. As there were lot of discriminations based on casts one born, they believed that it would be justified to extend the same for a period, not more than 10 years. Sardar Patel one of the chief architects of the Indian constitution said that "that the object of the House should be, as soon as possible and as rapidly as possible to drop these classifications and bring all to a level of equality"

The Indian constitution grants its citizens certain fundamental rights which are guaranteed by the constitution. Unlike any other legal rights, these fundamental rights are protected and enforced by the constitution. The fundamental rights can not be denied even by the government except in some special cases.

The constitution speaks of equal opportunities in employment and education to all the citizen of India without the discriminations on any ground. The related articles of the constitution read as follow which are self explanatory:

Article 16(1): There shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to employment or appointment to any office under the state

Article 16(2) No citizen shall on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place of birth, resident or any of them be ineligible for or discriminated against in any respect of any employment or office under the State.

Article 15(1): "The state shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth, or any of them"

Article 29[2]: No citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution maintained by the State or receiving aid out of the State funds on ground only of religion, race, caste, language, or any of them.

In all these articles, the makers of our constitution speak about the equal opportunities and eradicating the discrimination on various grounds. The equal opportunities can be brought by increasing the competitiveness of the underprivileged citizens. Reservations in jobs will not create equal opportunities according to many scholars. Reservations are meant for the outcomes in employment opportunities, and not for the opportunities. Equal opportunities can be provided only through quality primary and secondary education which may also include special coaching and adequate assistance for any inadequately represented population groups.

There is a post reserved for some ‘community’ where there no candidate from that community applied. These seats were kept as backlogs though there the availability of suitable candidate is present from some other community. Don’t you think the employment opportunity is denied just because the second person is not from that reserved community? Isn’t it discrimination on the grounds of whatever mentioned in the constitution?

The wish of the constitution in bringing about the reservation has a wide meaning. In India we have seen a lot of discriminations on various grounds. There was lot of evil practices in our society. That too, we Indians have treated some people from particular communities as untouchable and saw as non human beings. There was a great inequality in our society. To support such people and give some opportunities for them and to bring them to the front row, the constitution wished for reservation. It also tells the reservation will not be against the fundamental rights mentioned above. The article about the reservations is as follow:

Article 16(4) "Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any provision for the reservation of posts in favour of any backward class of citizens, which in the opinion of state is not adequately represented in the services under the state"

The reservations in present scenario are not able to fulfill the wish of the constitution. A candidate from a reserved class becomes an MLA from a reserved assembly seat. Once he becomes an MLA his status got rises and enjoys every benefit an MLA from other forward communities enjoys. His cast does not matter for making money or bar him from using powers!! But his cast tag will continue with him. He expires and his son who have enjoyed every benefit that a non backward citizen enjoys, has enough money dominates the backward people of his own community and makes lobby, gets elected and enjoys all the benefits that has to be given to backward people though he is not backward now only for the reason he had born in that class. The other people of his own community will stay in the same situation even after 50 years from now making our politicians to think the same kind of reservation to be continued.

Now our judiciary has to interpret the constitution regarding the opportunities, backward class of people and reservations as it did interpret some of the fundamental rights in 1970s .

Introduction Matters...

You might have seen different people introducing their relatives or people they knew in different ways. For example one of my senior officials introduced his wife as ‘she is my wife’. It was just like telling, this much is enough for you guys, get lost! At the same time he took much time is introducing his next door girl, who is an engineering student, who got placed in TCS. We were eager to know her name; we know how to now other stuffs, but he did tell it at all.

One of my friend told that her father always introduced her as ‘she is my daughter, studying in USA’. These words are most important for him. She also tells he always introduced her mother in a single sentence ‘she is my wife, a government teacher’. He has a government teacher as a wife!

I visited some local banks with one of my colleague. He always introduced me as ‘he is our new officer’. I had to loose other identity to make other person comfortable. They are not interested in knowing my name or my hobby or my graduation. They need the information that I am an officer, so I need to loose other identities.

My uncle is a contractor. An engineer matters more for him. So he always introduced me to his friends as an engineer. He never bothered to tell my name too. I also experienced good times when I was introduced by my friends to their friends as ‘this is my friend, Akshay’. They created closeness and other information flew easily and I got few friends.

I was meeting my colleague’s husband first time. She introduced me to her husband just by pointing me ‘Akshay...’. That means he knows me. What he knows! What he does not know!? It created a tension during the first meet. Finally he told they both read my blogs! Then we talked for hours.

I was talking to a lady who got changed her name after marriage. I asked her how you felt when you got changed your name not for your wish! She told she felt like she lost her identity. We are always identified by our name. We feel special when some one calls us by name. Similarly give them their own identity.

Introduction takes different formats according to the situations and people who is getting introduced, to whom and who is the middle person.

A trip to Tuljapur

Tuljpur is a hill city located near Sholapur which is home to the Goddess Bhavani. It is 45 km away from Solapur. One can reach Solapur easily by bus or train. From Solapur there are plenty of buses to Tuljapur and also private passenger vehicle whom you can trust upon. Tulja Bhavani temple is placed on the slopes of the Sahayadri range. The temple has much attraction to pilgrims of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka as this Goddess is the deity of many people. It gained much fame as Tulja Bhavani is the family deity of Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.

History: The history records of Bhavani temple exists from 12^th century. During Maratha regime the temple rose to prominence. It is said that Shivaji used to take blessing of this Deity of Bhavani for success in his military campaigns. In this legendary it is also mentioned that mother Tulja Bhavani presented Shivaji with the Bhavani Sword that made him invincible king of the era. It is popularly known as Bhavani Talwar, presently it is in London museum.

The Temple: The temple has a great entrance called Raje Shahaji Mahadwar. You can take your belongings into this entrance and have to keep bangs, camera and even mobiles in the cloak room. Walk downstairs at the right of the entrance where you can find Gomukh Tirth, ground water which is continuously flowing from the hillside. From there we should walk to the security check which might make you irritated. The temple has tight security, where you will find the security personal and the CC camera every corner of the temple. There will be two queues each for Mukha Darshan and Dharma Darshan. If you stand in Dharma Darshan you will end up in watching the idol of Goddess Bhavani in closed range of about 12 feet. But in Mukha Darshan you can walk in lesser crowd to see the Goddess idol from double the distance of Dharma Darshan. But in latter you will be having much time to sit there and enjoy watching the poojas. Just behind the main temple there is a round black stone which is believed to be fortune telling. You can touch it using both hands and it will more either left, right of stand stable and the fortunes are negative, positive and cant be known as of now respectively.

When to visit: On special occasions like Navratras, Lalita Panchami, Makara Sankranti and Rathasaptami, thousands of devotees flock the temple and hence it will be crowded. During April and May the mercury level will be very high, better to avoid summer months to visit the temple. I went on the day of Makara Sankranti and was much crowded but the temperature was at 33 C in afternoon.

The environment: The temple is clean and well maintained. Outside the temple does not have much difference from any other pilgrimage places, though comparatively good. The people inside and outside the temple are cooperative. They won’t put three ‘namas’ like Pandarapur to exploit money, the priests won’t do some useless pooja for you to ask you money.

This is one of the very few temples which I thought of visiting again.

K9 Web Protection to Control Internet Activity

I switched on my laptop to pay my credit card bill. The firefox opened saved tabs of my last internet session- gmail, facebok and twitter. The new internet session started. Twitter and the tweets that contained tiny links made me landed up in various sites and pages. Then facebook, many friends, many activites, a number of photos took much of my time. Then chatting with friends in gtalk made it 12.30 in the night. I had forgotten why I was online. I remembered I had to pay the bill when I received reminder message from my old bank. Then I thought of having some kind of controlling software in my laptop to control my internet activity. Now I have k9 web protection software which is a good parental lock kind of system which gives you full control to your activities on the web.

Now I have allowed the social networks not more than one hour a day. No browsing allowed after 11PM to 7AM in the morning. By default it will not allow any porn or adult site until unless you put the administrative password to change the settings. There are number of website categories which you can block all the time or restrict the usage. You can allow facebook like social networks for just one hour or even just fifteen minutes. Emails, humors/jokes, trading anything can be given controlled access. Anyone who has feelings of some kind of websites wasting his/her time can have great advantage using this software.

The K9 protection has a wonderful database that during my test it never slipped out of protection. The most advantageous matter is K9 home edition is free of cost and anybody can use it in there system after getting free license which will be sent to your mail ID.

If you have children using internet at your house, I strongly recommend this software. Because according to the data provided in the K9 website-

• 1 in 4 youth have unwanted exposure to inappropriate pictures each year
• Nine of 10 kids aged 8-16 have viewed pornography on the Internet, often in the process of doing homework.
• One in five children ages 10-17 have received a sexual solicitation over the Internet
• 74 percent of commercial pornography sites display free porn images on the homepage and are linked through some other sites.
• Cyber-sex reinforces and normalizes sexual disorders.

At the time of writing this 2,262,007 homes are protected including mine.

Download the free Parental lock, porn filter software from http://www1.k9webprotection.com/

No more numbers please!!

My daily life with numbers starts with my logging into the bank’s core banking solution software. Just entering of my employee ID does not matter more. As the sun of the day gets older and older the dealing with the numbers associated with us gets more difficult.

Somebody comes and asks me what my contact number is. I do not want everybody to have my mobile number. So have to search for what my office land line number is? Out of many landlines, through which I can be reached? Till today I do not know! I could be the same case for many of you!

Chat from the HR department asks me to give my PAN card number. Permanent Account Number is just number you must remember as soon as you start earning!

And my mother calls me to recharge her Dish TV viewing card. Dish TV toll free is saved in my mobile and I call them. IVR asks me to enter lengthy VC number. You can not remember such an idiotic number. If I do not remember it is also OK with the mobile number I have registered. But I do not remember which mobile number I have given for them out of my three mobile phone numbers.

Then I prefer recharging online. It asks some log in ID, it is there in my gmail, search for it and enter to login. Easy job! Later it asks for my credit card number. Again 16 digits, CVV number is of three digits, and a VBV password. All are numbers!

I often forget to recharge my prepaid mobile until it gets completely used. If it is online recharge, again you should remember your debit card or credit card number or for internet banking you should remember your log in number different for different banks. And they also ask you to not to write it down!!

The SMS from BSNL reminds- your bPhone is due for payment for bill number so and so. I need to remember another user number or customer number and some passwords that must be changed in every 90 days. When the online transactions are not successful, you need to call the customer care of the bank or the mobile service provider! You have to tell him at least 10 digit account number, transaction number, mobile number, SIM number, mobile handset number, EMI number…… whatever the number he might ask for! You might be having account with five banks, then you brain will be full of useless numbers

To see the present portfolio of my very small investments in shares I have to again remember two different numbers. Log in ID and log in pin. It’s good now, only two number. Otherwise, remembering DPN id, client ID and the phone number of the stock broker was more troublesome.

When the result of my exam declared, I need to enter my enrollment number. I don’t remember my IGNOU MBA roll number. Whenever the result comes, I need to find my hall ticket of ID card.

Voting is your right and duty. For this simple reason you should get your some random numbered voting card and also serial number in that voting booth.

Breaking traffic signal is my bad habit. Police asks for vehicle number along with the driving license.

Another thing is these numbers might be of no important for you. You might have used your vehicle number once in six months. But second person, who is asking for such numbers expect you to compulsorily remember these numbers. Otherwise all these people will suspect you. Policeman may start interrogating you whose vehicle is it? Bank people may start thinking you might not be the true owner of the card.

Is it possible to have minimal number of numbers for all these?

How can you expect a person to remember such a huge number of numbers