Over the past few months our region has been a witness to things that as citizen of this Free Liberal nation makes me hang my head in shame.

70 years since independence and preceded by the clarion call of Mahatma Gandhi against untouchability, we the citizens of India who in the comfort of our drawing rooms question the benefits of the reservation policy go on and practice the same the same old dead/inhuman customs on fellow citizens.

In one case the parents refused to send their wards to a government run Aanganwadi Centre just because the in charge was a Dalit. They didn’t want her to cook and touch their children and wanted her transferred to someplace else. This happens not in some village but in the urban, educated neighbourhood of Udaipur. What is the kind of example these parents are setting for their children? And they still speak out against reservations??

In another case an elected Sarpanch and his associates were not allowed to eat with the rest just because they were Dalits. This happened to an elected Panchayat Official, imagine what would be the treatment meted out to others untouched by such official post/ status??

We claim ourselves to be an educated, emancipated, free thinking society and this is how we treat the marginalised sections with not an iota of guilt or regret. The problem is in our mindset, in our social milieu that no education , money can ever replace.

When we speak out against reservations we get into the victim mood but this victimhood is far-far rem

oved from reality and the numbers are here to prove this imaginary loss:
• Inspite of 27 % OBC reservations their representation is a mere 12 % in Central and State Govt. Services and an abysmal 4 % in Class I Jobs.
• In more than 716 Universities and 38,056 Colleges there are a mere 7.2% Dalit Teachers and 2.12% ST Teachers.
• Out of the total 850 Judges in 21 High Courts of India there are only 24 ST/SC Judges.
• There is a vacancy of 68 % in the Teaching Staff of Central Universities in the SC Category.

We still want to talk against or even revisiting the Reservation Policy??

What about the treatment we mete out to them and till the time there is them and us and not us, all the above questions that are not even worth visiting.

And till that very time we should be ashamed, ashamed for failing our forefathers, ashamed for failing Gandhji , ashamed for failing our brothers and sisters……

Ashamed !!!