On Racism

The whole country (read media) is screaming and protesting the alleged racist treatment that was meted out to Shilpa Shetty. The governments have joined the cacophony: Prime Minister Blair said 'it can't be condoned' and our own I&B ministry is making noises over the whole thing. I find it funny, for we as a people are probably the biggest racists in this world and we find remarks like 'Indian' 'dog' as racist. Forget foreigners, our own people practice blatant racism against their own people:

1) In Goa, during the x-mas season, if you are an Indian no shack owner will welcome you. Even the cleaning boys treat you like dirt. I thought that the shack I went to was an exception. I was wrong. Wherever I went, the white skin got attention and service where as we were treated like we were refugees. In Palolem, we were asked to pay up in advance for our beers. When asked why the waiter said 'people run away.' I was disgusted when I discovered that he did not demand advance payment from the white masters.

2) In Tamilnadu, they hate the Hindi language. it is not taught in schools.

3) In Assam you could get killed for speaking in Hindi, thanks to ULFA.

4) In Karnataka they started a 3-week moratorium against 'other' language movies (including English.)

5) In Gujarat the state sponsored the slaughter of muslims a few years back.

We are the biggest racists in the world and we have no fcuking right to complain against racism. Let's learn how to treat people of our own country with respect before we blame the westerners and their culture.

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Requiem

The death of merit. The obliteration of the soul of this country's youth. The initiation of catastrophe. Welcome to the beginning of the end. No where in the history of our country has truth been murdered so methodically and brutally, the fair and just were trampled over, and the deserving were crushed to submission, like today. Each one of you will remember how this country's destruction began. Today as we speak the honorable HRD Minister, in his implacable and idiotic stance, has destroyed any hope for the youth of this country. Joining him in this dance of death is our honorable Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Meira Kumar: she says that the private sector has a couple of years to ring in death knell and make the process of wreckage complete.
The government as a whole has reiterated their affinity to this utter disaster by refusing to discuss the quota issue. We are done, if we do go through with the suggested quota policy. The one-eyed men will rule this country of the blind, while those that see will sail to foreign shores or simply quit. We will miss you. We are sorry. God help us.

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Moral Policing May Strike Bangalore University

"Bangalore University Syndicate is considering segregated seating for male and female students, and may even be prescribed a dress code." [Link]
IMHO they should ban co-education. Send them girls to a girls college. That kind of segregation will ensure their protection. Actually they should ban education for either boys or girls. That will simplify a lot of things. I mean if they don't meet at school they can never meet right? Yeah, right.
Where are we headed man?

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The boon bane of quota

Read on NDTV about Yashpal Jaware's achievement. He is from Nandurbar in Maharashtra: One of the poorest districts, which is notorious for malnutrition deaths.
What most fail to see it that at the end of it all, it is the individual's desire, passion, and industry that count. Take a look what he lists when he talks about his obstacles:

1) Cycling 15 KM a day to the nearest science college.
2) Studying: Power cuts ensured that he couldn't study in the night.
3) Coping with English.

He scored 85% in his CET. I am sure that Yashpal would have made it even without quota. What we need to do though is make sure that the Yashpals of this country have easier access to schools and colleges. How will that happen? Only when the government allows the private sector to set up schools, moderate and police the competition thereof. We also need to minimize power cuts. Again, we have to resort to privatization there.
I empathize with his English language problem. I couldn't frame two sentences when I was in school. Such is the situation in small towns and villages. Also, if you talk in English you will be mocked at. That happens even in Chennai!
A feasible way out is to bring Internet to the schools in villages. Train them in computers and let them explore... I don't know I am just thinking aloud. Or, maybe give them self-help books for free so that they can train themselves in the basics of the language.

That said, isn't it obvious that the real benefit of quota goes to the urban, well-off 'backward-on-paper' students? And, that as long as the government's involvement is minimal, we will do just fine?

Also read:
Imagine no reservations by Atanu Dey
Reservations benefit the upper castes by Anand

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Quota any day, to keep the doctor away

What happened in Mumbai is a crying shame. Beating up life-saving doctors with whole world watching sends the wrong signal to the world. What were the Mumbai cops thinking? That they could hammer doctors into submission? Almost every medico-legal case requires the attestation of a government doctor. I have heard of stories about how an intern made an ASP wait for four hours just because the cop tried to bully the intern. Suicide, drunken driving, murder... Just about every freaking case requires the doctor's signature; the cops can't work without the docs. Now that they have lathi charged peaceful protesters as the shocked nation watched, the cops can expect the shit to hit the fan when they go stand outside the doctor's office for a signature. I assure you that the Mumbai cops are going to suffer for a long time to come. Just WTF were they thinking? Mumbai cops have made life difficult for every cop in the country. Amid all this chaos, CNN-IBN pops the question 'right to dignity' or 'right to life.' You have the right to shut the hell up Rajdeep. I am amazed at how you can plumb to such depths just to get some more eye balls and a little boost to your channel's ratings. If you are so worried about your life, you ought to ensure that the life-saving doctors are treated with respect that they so deserve. And, stop creating quota doctors. What the news channels are missing is this big point: where the f**k do you stop the quota? I can live with reservations at school and college level but at the PG or doctorate level?

approximately 30-40 in AIIMS, PGI, JIPMER, 2000 in the All-India entrance and by some extrapolation about another 4000 seats in state medical colleges. A grand total of 6500, give or take. Number of medical graduates coming out every year? Easily around 30,000. Do the math - excluding the ones that go abroad (they can't get to the UK anymore, that's a different story), get married, do MBAs or medical transcription and the ones that get post grad, there's a pool of about 15,000 doctors ADDED to the ones that write the entrance exams.
And the government wants to halve the number of seats available on the general merit list. And it wants the section of society most affected by it to sit around quietly on their lathi-charged behinds. [via quietly Amused]

As this country dies a painful death, thanks to Arjun Singh, the docs are going to fly away from this meaningless system and you and I will end up with a quota doctor who can't tell the scalpel from the scalp. If Arjun Singh falls sick will he go consult a quota doc. Like hell he will. And oh if you were wondering why Arjun Singh won't talk or budge... Simple. The journalists leave the place before Singh opens his mouth. He takes forty hours to say 'Quo...' Anoher ten to finish it with 'ta'. He doesn't budge because he can't walk. I propose that even politicians should be asked to buzz off and retire as soon as they cross 60. I mean, what the heck... have you seen Vajpayee talk? Poor man, makes Prabu Deva look like an amateur; with all that shaking of the head and knees. Such is life. We are governed by leaders who consider standing up an achievement and they decide the fate of this country's youth.
Update:The Prime minister has set up a committee to look into the quota turmoil. And guess who is in it? The Superman Arjun Singh himself!
And, check this out:

Five Hundred doctors in three government hospitals � Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College and Safdarjung Hospital are likely to face termination of service.
200 senior resident doctors of AIIMS have been given termination notices.
Nearly 70 doctors have rejoined duty at Safdarjung Hospital, while 81 have resumed work at RML.[via NDTV]

I implore the doctors to get the f**k out of this place. If you can't make it to USA or UK. Don't worry, the middle-east is a great place, at least to make some real good money. My friend Vasu will not miss you, after all each one of you, according to him, is an 'RDB' type and you are a rich ass punk with two cars. Could someone introduce him to reality, he's never been acquainted with it. WHY? Why don't these pro-quota people see it: it is like cutting the branch you are sitting on! As David Ogilvy would have put it, we are all set to become a country of dwarfs. Let me clarify one more time before Vasu pounces on me foaming at his mouth. I am not against reservations. But I am against reservations at the PG level, in important domains like public health care, and I am against unreasonable quota systems (the numbers I mean like 69%) that encourage brain-drain. We wronged the backward classes in the past but two wrongs do not make it right. Arjun Singh is doing it to further his political motives. He does not give a toad's ass about you, me, or the backward classes.

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We are killing our doctors

Hundreds of medical students protested against the Congress-led UPA government proposed move to reserve seats in elite institutions saying the proposal, if implemented, would create "quota doctors" which would have "disastrous" consequences. [Via Rediff]

The police fired teargas shells and used water cannons on hundreds of medical students protesting against quotas in the centre of the capital. [Via NDTV]
Of course, when a politician is ill, he will seek the services of a phirang doc or the NRI doc. Great leaders and mass murderers like Modi, in fact, request phirang docs to go check on their colleagues. Will Arjun Singh go to a 'quota doctor' even for something as minor as a cold? But he will decide that the poor of this country who go to the government hospitals will have to consult a 'quota doc' roughly 28% of the time. God save you. If you are a medico, get the hint bud. Get the f*** out of this place. This place is not for you. And, Rajesh, think hard why I am worried about docs in india before you comment. Nalla yosi!

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The Price of Your Life

One of the leading national news channels is doing a special report on medical negligence this week. I�m not surprised that there was the need.
Reservations and �payment seats� rule medical education in the country. Probably reservations for the weaker sections of the society in undergraduation make sense. But what sense does it make to hold reservations at the post-graduation level? Don�t you think that at some level merit should be the sole basis for selection, especially in an essential service like healthcare? [Read more]

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Doctor, doctor

You probably didn�t hear about it. The explanation is very simple. It has nothing to do with the IIMs or the IITs. It is about the fate of the thousands of doctors of this country. The All India Post-graduate Medical Entrance exam was held on January 8, 2006. Over 57,000 students appeared and over 4,000 qualified the exam. The results were announced some where in early February. One of my friends got rank 8! On 1 March, however, we were shell-shocked when we heard that the counseling scheduled for 3 March was postponed and the entrance results were withheld. The honorable health minister Dr.Anbumani  Ramadoss woke up suddenly and ordered a CBI enquiry into reported malpractices from Chennai centers. Some 37 of the top 100 ranks were from the same center in Chennai. One might wonder �why did they announce the results in the first place?� The same thing happened in 2002. The organizers should have studied the results before they had released them. But no, they were too busy making policies of such great importance like, um, ban on on-screen smoking. The entrance is one of the toughest. Doctors take off a year to prepare for this exam. One of the reasons is that this exam does not have reservation quota. The other PG entrance exams like AIIMS have quotas. Why should we have reservations at the PG level? God only knows. Will you go to a doctor if you discovered he got his PG seat using the reservation quota? The hell you will. Anyway, we don't know what this means. Will they have a re-exam and tax thousands of hard-working doctors to punish a bunch of losers? Or will they say 'no discrepancies were found' and get on with it? We don't know.
The aspirants are devastated and haven't a clue what turn their life will take next, thanks to our sensitive and intelligent health minister.

What is the big deal did you say? Doctors in our country struggle a lot. They start earning money�whatever little that is� in their late 20s. By that time, their software engineer siblings, cousins, and friends would have bought an apartment, a car, and what not. I know that we can�t compare professions. Don't tell me about Oranges and Apples cowboy.

Why do we screw our doctors? Their profession is life-saving right? Even our movies show doctors as evil, corrupt individuals who have no social responsibility. So, when they go on strike, we dish out harsh punishment. We sack them. When the bus drivers, phone department employees, or the electricity department employees go on strike, we bear with them. In most cases we give in to their demands. But not to doctors. They go on strike, they are fired. What kind of an unfair system is this? One that hurts its most valuable member.

The on-going strike by resident doctors in Maharashtra is a result of years of government apathy. Before we dig deeper let me tell you how resident doctors in government colleges work. They work 18 hours shifts. They have no facilities. Their hostels are so dirty, quite a few of them sleep in the wards. And, they get paid peanuts. Don�t think that the Maharashtra doctors are on a strike because of all that. They merely want security. This time a patient�s daughter slapped a resident. All he did was that he sought permission for some post-mortem related thing. It is ironic that the life saving professional has to go through all this nonsense and be socially responsible too.

A citizen's group has filed a petition against the Maharashtra doctor's strike in the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court. The petition says that doctors in government medical colleges and hospitals have no right to go on strike, and demands compensation for patients who have suffered. [Via NDTV]

How many of these citizens visit only the government hospitals for treatment? Who are they kidding? We can�t even hold a fair entrance examination. We don�t even offer them basic amenities. We let people manhandle doctors. And now, we want them to shut up about their problems too. When they go to America, we call them traitors. We are such losers, it is not even funny. Why do we expect others to be self-righteous when most of us individuals (even the software guys from Bangalore) won�t even follow simple traffic rules? At times, at the risk of causing injury or even death to our fellow motorists? But each one of us gushed and went into a tizzy of manufactured patriotism about that loser movie RDB? Now, if you really want to make a difference start with the traffic rules. Stop honking you retard. And get a real bike. Lose that Pulsar.
So, doc, I am okay if you go to USA or UK, become super-rich, and be happy.

Anyway, one may think that life is easier for Indian doctors in the USA. It was. But not any more. Check this out . In UK, it has become worse:
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/timeshift/raj-int.shtml  and http://www.aippg.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27399

So there you have it. The Indian doctor is screwed in his/her own country and in the rest of the world too. If we don�t start respecting these life-saving professionals and make some drastic changes in medical education policies, we will be at the receiving end very soon. Think about it.

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