26/11 one year later

Today marks the anniversary of the most barbaric activity in the history of the city of Mumbai. It’s been exactly one year today, yet all the images are still vividly fresh in my mind as if it had happened just yesterday. Probably the sole reason why I was deeply disturbed by this incident is that the entire activity happened just five to ten minutes away my house with curfews being put regularly and rumors causing unnecessary panic. I still remember, I was studying when I received a call from my brother at about 9:50 p.m. about some attack on CST, so I switched on the T.V and what followed was 60 hours of complete shock, anger, and trauma.

Now that one year is past and if we look back past one year many changes were made in the combat system of Mumbai Police. New modern arms and ammunition were supplied to the Mumbai police, Mumbai got its own NSG force. Much of the credit goes to the policies implemented by our home minister Mr. P. Chidambaram. But whatever has been done and is being done sufficient to keep the terrorist away. If we take a look at past one year, not a single terrorist attack happened, no SIMI , no LeT, wait a minute, doesn’t that sound fishy? Are we really safer now? Well that’s anybody’s guess. I personally think that whatever happened in Mumbai last year was more of our fault that that of the government. We as a citizen of Mumbai have a very important responsibility as well as duty to be vigilant and each time any such attack happens we fail to deliver our responsibility.

People say the Mumbaikars are resilient, but is that truly the case? I don’t think so, ask yourself. We are resilient by force since we have no choice but to get up and move out because no one is going to come to your house and feed your family when such attacks happen. Today I saw people all over India lighting candles, symbolizing peace but is that truly making any difference. Rather why don’t we sent a strong message among the people to be alert citizens so that god forbids, if any such attack is imminent it can be avoided. After all we have to be the change to see the change. On this first anniversary of the 26/11 attack, I appeal to all mumbaikars, from fishermen to businessmen, from laborers to managers, from collage students to senior citizens to take a pledge. Lets pledge today to be more vigilant, Lets pledge today to be better citizens

Questions I want to ask Dr. Manmohan Singh on this Children’s day - 14th Nov., 2009

“First of all I congratulate you for your second term at the office after winning the recent loksabha elections. Not many prime ministers in the past have had such success and you have just added in the list of those people.

I have two questions for you. I would like to elaborate on each question as I put forward these two questions. Firstly why are quotas for economically backward class still into existence? Let’s consider this situation. We call them economically backward because they are economically not capable as compared to other people in the society.Economy-> (implies) Money i.e. they don’t have enough funds for educating their children. Here we must remember they are economically backward and not intellectually backward. So having known this why are students which are less deserving in this category given opportunities than those who are much more deserving. Is this contributing to the development of India? Do pampering students of this category and giving them admissions in reputed institutions which most of them eventually end up being not so successful as others, contributing to the progress of India , in fact we are hindering the progress by not giving opportunities to the deserving students who might turn it into something one might not even think of. Lets consider a solution to this, lets remove all the Quotas and have an open category for all students irrespective of their background and offer a 100% tuition waiver to those students who belong to economically backward class(all of them SC,OBC etc.).Now here we have another question where will the government bring this much funds who is already in fiscal deficit. What if each student pay 10-15% more on their fees which will eventually contribute to the fees of these economically backward students. I am sure that any middle class family will be ready to spend a little more if their son is getting something deserving and grand which will create an excellent carrier for him in 3-4 years. Don’t you think that with right people getting the right opportunities, India will progress more rapidly than what it is doing today. After all any definition of democracy includes, equality and freedom and each child deserve equal opportunities.

The second question I want to ask you today is why more and more students resorting to studying abroad? Even this question is somehow related to the previous issue; in fact it is the repercussion of the above discussed issue. When a student plans for his graduation or post graduation he thinks about opportunities, with India having quota system he is further discouraged and starts thinking about abroad studies where their talents are cherished in true sense. No parent in India like sending their child abroad with a burdon of huge loan and with a worry that the child might get racially assaulted. Today we are celebrating children’s day, children’s, that we say are the future of our country, But are they the future of our country in true sense if more and more students go abroad and become NRI’s? Do teachers spend so much of time and energy just to see that their students become big tomorrow and contribute to the development of other countries and not India? To say this in other words, we are teaching students today so that they take US, UK further ahead of India. Doesn’t that sound absurd?

Mr. Prime Minister, you have been there for last five years and even though you have faced the criticism initially, you have proved time to time how strong you are especially after the nuke deal. I think with you as a Prime Minister we can feel confident, a little more optimistic. Today on the eve of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s birth anniversary, I appeal to you to have a vision, a vision to have equal opportunities for all, a vision to increase the educational standard and develop more and more quality institutions to cater to the needs of increasing students, a vision something similar to what Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had when he started IIT’s because of which India has some stand in the field of technology and eventually a vision to reduce the number of NRI’s. This change won’t happen in one day or one month or one year, it will happen gradually over a period of 20-30 years, but will happen as long as we believe in this vision. I always remember you and most of the people in India do for what you did in 1991, let’s have this change today so that our children will remember you for 2009-10 as well.

Thank you.”