Thursday, May 18, 2006

Get Rid of the Reservations or I’ll Smack You With My Caliper!

Few news articles these days, whether in print or on the TV, are complete without a smattering of pictures depicting a rambunctious set of students protesting the reservation of seats in colleges and other institutions of higher education in the country. These students are invariably garbed in the laboratory coats that are the trademark of medical schools all over.

Far as I know (which isn’t much when you stop to think about it), these reservations relate to various different kinds of educational institutes. Why is it then, that I see only medical students taking to the streets in protest? Where are the engineers and suchlike?

Maybe it’s because most of these ‘students’ aren’t even students in the first place! They’re just people picked up by those wanting to organize a protest and paid a little for their troubles. And if you are going to get people to pose as students, what better way to display their identity than by dressing them in a lab coat and draping a stethoscope around their neck! Somehow it packs more of a punch than handing them a vernier caliper or a micrometer!

11 comments:

_dirtboy said...

Mebbe not calipers.. Wht abt drafters?they r visible enuf 4 the media.Plus we cud hand em drawin boards as shields.Or mebbe improvise n make an impact rebounding one.

In fact,i remembr, i had given tis same thing a thot long ago,as a kid(mebbe durin mandal1).n me thinks only med crowds r shown since med students r assumd by the masses 2 b only students who study.Stereotype?Me thinks not.

FifthBeatle said...

facesmasher - you were thinking about why only med students protest when you were a KID!?? gosh! i was thinking about how'd i'd buy more candy.. and stuff like tht..

_dirtboy said...

Well i was kinda the one who received a lot of flak coz i roamed on my first 2wheeler bike(wit supports)around wit a congress flag wen rajiv(my then fav politician) was killed(for good?).My age then.. Barely 4. Of course, now given a chance, i'll feed the first roadside cow i meet, my ballot

_dirtboy said...

Then how old was i?Mebbe i was 4 wen mandal occured.Or mebbe i was in the 4th grade wen he was killed.Dont remember which was when..But in case u dont believe me,ask my parents.They'll vouch for it.

_dirtboy said...

Hey i remembered... Twas 2nd grade.We were in udaipur, rajasthan then.Thats when rajiv was killed.

Siddhu said...

No comments on either the reservation thing, or the unbelievably ridiculous da Vinci code imbroglio. We may be offended in India, I'm off on the 19th to watch this movie with a Catholic in a country the official religion of which is Protestant Christianity. :P India is full of people wasting their time on non-issues. And yes I got the Pontius Pilate analogy - btw have you read the Asterix and the land of the Black Gold? - Pontius Pilate features there (and Druid dubbelosix says 'I wish he would stop washing his hands'! LOL)! Goddamn - that's a LONG comment! :P

And as for the flavour, I'd choose the one with the bigger tits. In either case.

PC said...

it's only the med students cos the stakes are more for them. if they give in to the proposed figures for reservation they'll be left with what say about 3 seats for a post grad course in a specialised stream in, say, AIIMS. Ditto for other such institutions. After 5 and a half years of digging books while they're students of MBBS, and knowing fully that the degree alone does not weigh enough, and then being told this is what the govt. has to offer to them... well i guess you should know why they take the roads, as the aspiring engineers sit in their homes and figure out how many hundreds of seats the reservation will leave them with.

_dirtboy said...

@Vision fella:interesting statistic. What you is almost True. But that will bring out another topic altogether. The lack of infrastructure. The lack of a national health scheme.The lack of social security. Darn,this country IS going,dammit, HAS already gone to dogs. Now the government is askin us to Quit India(if u wanna study)

Siddhu said...

Why do you think the catholic who'd watch it with you would be:

(a) a she

(b) willing to sleep with you after the movie

Lol...

FifthBeatle said...

visionunseen - good point.. havnt really thought much about the whole issue..

siddhu - because, with all due respect to you good-looking, charm-oozing guys out there, if i'm going to be watching the movie with anyone in my room i'd rather it be a girl.. and about the sleeping.. well, that's just my mojo at work ;)

Siddhu said...

LOL! Good point! :P Charm-oozing? moi? LOL