Unicorn

Noun: unicorn 'yooni'korn An imaginary creature represented as a white horse with a long horn growing from its forehead. Though the popular image of the unicorn is that of a white horse differing only in the horn, the traditional unicorn has a billy-goat beard, a lion's tail, and cloven hoofs, which distinguish him from a horse. Interestingly, these modifications make the horned ungulate more realistic, since only cloven-hoofed animals have horns.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Blaming our leaders of the past


Time and again I have heard it - They don't appreciate Gandhi, They call Nehru a gigolo, They say Godse had done a great job, They blame Ambedkar for the prevalent "reservation" system in the country and what not -they blame all the national leaders of the past for the situation at present ... I am talking about my generation. We live in different times and those men were in a different time. Among all my friends and acquaintances a staggeringly high percentage believe that Gandhi was unfair and ineffective. They say his system was flawed and that if he hadn't been there we would have been free about 20 years earlier to 1947! There are some who say Nehru is responsible for the sorry state of affairs in the country. I have seen many people abuse Ambedkar and blaming him for the "reservation" system. What did Ambedkar do? He introduced reservations way back in 1950 and then gave the government a time span of 10 years to bring the backward classes on par with the rest of the society - What did the government do? They have kept on increasing the time span and post poned the removal of reservations to help sustain their vote banks. They all strived for the good of the nation in their own way - The leaders had clashes of ideologies like every body else in this world (Don't you have those petty differences in your office/college among peers?) I don't think there is any dark side ... If there is then everybody has one - Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Jinnah everyone has one - they were different times ... Way back in 1940s and 50s could anyone of us imagine the scope and effort involving in running an entire nation? Think about this - A year before I joined my organization it was taken over by a competitor and it took them a whole year and a half before the entire transistion was finished - we are talking here of an entity that housed about 5000 poeple - In the wake of 1947 we were a 30 crore nation! Mistakes are bound to happen because nobody ever had a problem to solve of that magnitude. We keep abusing the leaders of yesteryears for our misfortune today - but there is no one else to blame for the current ills that afflict the Indian society but us!