Lunch time discussions...

Yet another day, Yet another discussion, completely pointless. Thats what lunch time discussions are all about. They have to be completely pointless, else there is no point in having them. The point of discussion would be just about anything, from the latest ITEM in office to F1 to politics and policies to sport to state of the nation.

F1 is one sport that sets my heart racing. I have not found this sort of adrenaline rush in any other sport. Football is a close second. Cricket is miles behind when it comes to exciting the viewer. Its a dull, drab affair for close to a third of a day (sometime for 5 days too, when its played in white uniform). But none to rival F1. I got caught on to the F1 bug while in the late teens, I remember watching it since when i was in my 11th std, when Mika Hakkinen lifted the title twice in succession. I used to love the duels between Micheal Schumacher a.k.a MS and Mika. And when my close group in college had a couple of race enthusiasts, i used to love the discussions that we used to have. Each of us were loyal to our teams and drivers. We used to go and occupy the front seats of the hostel common room and the tv remote well in advance on raceday, only out of fear that we'd miss our fortnightly affair with F1, just because someone is watching an idiotic bhojpuri film on Zee cinema (The most crappiest channel. Sometimes i wonder, how they managed to lay their hands on so much of crap, mind you they have got exclusive rights to it.). Recently, we heard of field trials being conducted to build a F1 arena, (I prefer to call it an arena, where gladiatorial battles are fought) and even the best known racetrack designer Herman Tilke came down for an aerial survey. Chances are that I might soon, if not in 2009, at least by 2012, (You know better the state of infrastructure projects in India) get the chance of seeing an F1 race in my own country.

India functions by its own set of rules, though. Here you have to pull the right set of cords to get the government machinery to throw its weight behind you. And governments do not trod on uncharted territory. As a rule of the thumb, the first thing a government does on coming to power is cancelling all the contracts signed by the previous government in the previous year. Another must-do (at least in Tamilnadu) is a mass movement and transfer of officials, bringing in trusted aides closer to them and posting the unwanted (read Fair and Just) officials to posts where there is not much scope of them creating any obstacle. It would willingly delay necessary reform decisions for the fear of losing out its popularity. On the contrary it would introduce more idiotic and insensible decisions which would benefit a minority population to gain extra mileage. One such decision is the allocation of quotas to backward classes in Higher education. Marginalized within his party and largely ignored on the national political scene, this act is master stroke by our Indian HRD minister to get himself into the center-stage. And he has done damn good at that. Instead of accepting the responsibility that nothing is being done at the grassroots level, they are hiding their disability and incompetent attitude behind the wall of reservations, and in turn get elevated to demi-god status. Darnnn, these ministers...

What started off as another lunch time discussion about F1 and 2007 season review amongst us, soon went along these lines. We discussed reservations in detail and we discussed F1 too. The next logical things was to take it a step further and put both of them together. We discussed 'What If'. We discussed the implications of putting the sinister plans of our minister into an enterprise driven sport like F1. Scary thought, huh? might be a reality too, if these dogs continue in office further. To top it off, once in a while would come along some underdog - largely ignored till now, trying to create name and space or himself on the national scene - who declare themselves the sole guardians of their community and region's faith and vehemently stand up for their cause, with scarce regard to nationalism and humanity. What if we had a concept of 15% SC, 7.5% ST, 27.5% BC, and x% communal quota, for all the jobs that are created out of this F1 venture? What if say out of the 2 driver positions one had to necessarily be reserved? And what if the position goes unfilled? I have personally come across cases in higher education during counseling, the seat reserved for a person from a certain community and left unfilled is not allocated to anyone else at the end of the day. It goes vacant. Even grave situations would be where, say, the position for the person who refuels the car goes vacant, or the one who works on the tires. And if the positions had to be filled, would the entry criteria for both remain same? History suggests otherwise though. Thank god, there is private enterprise in this country. Yet another day, Yet another discussion, completely pointless...but refreshing. Thats what lunch time discussions are all about...