This said, How is Mayavathi going to help the poor and oppressed. All she will do is build statues of Ambedkar and Phule and provide the illusion to the millions of the poor people she is one among them (she has declared her assets at 52 crores). It is Orwell’s animal farm all over again. You talk as if the poor will come to power if they vote for one of their caste. How does mayavathi represent the poor in any way other than belonging to some specific caste. She was a government servant in urban delhi before coming to politics. The politicians form a class of their own. The pro poor policies get diluted if you bring the caste factor in. As there are yuppies from all the backward, scheduled and castes they will eat the cake and thats what has happened in caste politics throughout. This is proven in Tamil nadu in the cesspool of dravidian politics, in Bihar, in UP… The need of the time is to think about development and not just think of caste. Hindol Sengupta atleast is honest. We need progressive leaders with progressive symbolism. Whats wrong with that unless you are so fixated on poverty. YOu claim middle class is worried about its own survival, which class isn’t worried about that?
People who think politicians from BSP represent the poor are living in a fool’s paradise.

Do yuppies have an answer to the problem. The reason few bunch of politicians are able to control a billion people’s destiny.

Look at the irony, the number of people who wanted mayawati to come to power were only 13% of the total eligible electorate in UP…..due to the dont touch me attitude of Yuppies and similar kin n kith…. who dont vote… mayawati gets to power..
For a smart lady like mayawati( i take the liberty to say so) its no problem to influence 13% of the total population when 50% of that was dalit voters.

But the question is, will reverse casteism solve the issue? For “yuppies” like me who don’t care about caste (which if you ask me is better in the long run for eliminating caste, or at least its ill effects), it only makes us more caste conscious — or, as in the current Gujjar protests in Rajasthan, even wish we weren’t one. Maybe then we could take the civil service exam 7 times instead of 3, or get our daddies to obtain an SC/ST/OBC certificate to get into an institution we weren’t otherwise smart enough to qualify by means of en entrance exam.

My father studied in a state where STs and OBCs constitute, I believe, 40% of the population. I’ve been told stories of those guys going out to watch movies while the regular students spent whole nights studying, of them barely passing – and still ending up with government jobs! But everyone must be equal. After all, maybe my ancestors had enough privileges in the past – its payback time, yuppies!

Of course, the media guys know more. I don’t really like going to villages to shoot pictures of poor children and emaciated people. But when I do look at them, and realize that us being born into what we are is purely a matter of chance (and not karma as my ancestor yuppies probably believed), I wish our country were a bit richer. Is reverse casteism going to achieve that? I do not know. It’ll be quite sad if it ends up pulling us back to where we started from though.

However, I have a pretty low opinion of some of the commentors here – they don’t seem to have understood your point. Hindol was honest, and he openly (out of naivety, perhaps) admitted things which a large part of the middle class knows but won’t admit. Instead, some try to just poke fun at it or be contemptuous as if he is an aberration. He is not, and he speaks for a substantial bunch of people, and that opinion, right or not, should be treated at face value.

There are more such biases. A Mayavati makes a large part of my Malayalee community (irrespective of caste) cringe. So does a Mulayam. I am sure many cringe at an Advani, or a Sonia. There is nothing to poke fun about there, and I mean this for your readers, not you.

For my class of people, however much a Lalu or Mayavati betters the lot of many, remain people who can ‘lower’ our quality of life and level of political discourse. As a class which has no voting power to keep them out, as political underdogs as the lower castes and the poor take over more political power, I believe those fears need to be addressed. You and blogs like yours can go a long way in doing that – something a Mayavati or Mulayam is hardly interested in.

Hindol mentioned another example – which you haven’t mentioned here. He spoke against the arrest of Chandramohan, while his cameraperson said no one insults his gods. He is afraid of a takeover by the illiberal. Legitimate fear?

gayi vo baat ki, ho guftagu to kyoNkar ho,
kahe se kuchh na hua, phir kaho to kyoNkar ho.

ulajhte ho tum, agar dekhte ho aaina,
jo tum se shehr meiN hoN ek do to kyoNkar ho.

jise naseeb ho roz-e-siyaah mera sa,
vo shaks din na kahe raat ko to kyoNkar ho.

Am writing this quick comment just to tell you that I am a no- class “neo-literate, village-bred, government school-raised middle aged” person and still staunch anti-reservationist. Please don’t generalize! I know many “MEMCRY” who are staunch reservationist and reaping the fruits of reservations for generations.

Again, Sengupta’s article is a sick one, but why bring reservation and all to criticize it!Whom are you fighting here?

I blogged about it too some time back. You can read it here if you so wish:http://smokeringsofmamind.blogspot.com/2007/05/much-mangled-media.html

T.O.