doc where r u?

so its been sometime since i posted somethin.....and as u can sense the unstructured writing....the reason is that my body is really keepin well....now comin to the symptoms...

1. weekness + cold + headache on 12-05-06 ---- did not go to office

2. went to the doc on 13-05-06....a general physician who was not in the best of the moods.....diagnosed the simplest thing in the book - viral infection. Gave a paracetamol ( asked me to avoid antibiotics - quite a change from the docs back home----as they jump to antibiotics given a chance). Went to the eye doc for a check up to c if the headache was due to chaange in the power. Now the eye doc was a good guy. took his time. but told me no thats not the prob.

3. 14-05-06 - cold gone, but severe neck pain ( from lower head to both shoulders) - only in the night. couldnt move my head .

4. 15-05-06 - reached office early -- neck pain resumes in morning and is not going even as i post this in the night. Along with time the pain increases.

Now a google search on the above symptoms reveals scary things.......

Reserved

So u could ask me where the hell is the story. Well I have decided to put it on hold. The reason could be any of these -
I am too lazy to finish the crap.
I was too busy the last week and when i did decide to complete it I went thro thro the first part and thought "What the hell was I thinking when I wrote this!!"
Maybe I just wanted to remove all the frustration that I had on orkut (orkut is a big crap....believe me)
Maybe I felt all I talk about is love and relationships and decided to take a break.
Maybe I sound like a despo when I write such things.
Maybe things can really change drastically in a day.....

Now before I let my mind wander let me get back to the thing thats been nagging me for some time now.......

Reservations. I might be a bit late in talking about this topic. Maybe till now I had not formed an
opinion on the ongoing debate on the reservations in the central educational institutions. I know all the people who read my blog ( that statement might sound as if 500 people read it.....but its exactly 5) will say its a bad move. I would say this is because none of them fall into any of the reserved category. And if implemented it will only be a disadvantage to all of them. I too had the same opinion till something struck me.

How did I enter the most coveted course in the 3rd best engineering college in the state (people could argue its the second best ..... but whatever).
Quota. Yes I had used the rural quota to get in.

Though it might not be a reservation based on caste but it is a reservation per se. Let me try to analyse if this quota is something that did really serve its purpose. Why was such a quota instituted in the first place. And when is a place termed rural. Now if you have studied in a place for a minimum of 10 years where the population is less than 10000 (I am not sure of the number) then you are eligible for the rural quota. I think it was assumed that this would mean its a village. It would mean that the students from such places would not have got access to the quality of education and facilities that the students from cities get. They are not exposed to the intense competition that the students in cities face which actually brings out the best in students.

Let us take a student in a rural area who could be considered intelligent and diligent. Lets say he gets a rank of 250 in the cet. This person given the condusive competetive environment could have been pushed a bit harder to say a rank of 150. This is where the rural quota comes in and the student gets a seat in a college which a student from the city culd not have got with the same rank. So ideally the rural quota has served its purpose in this case.

Does that mean I support the concept of reservations. Yes I do. I surely support the concept. But its time we start evaluating the performance of the reservation system and look at ways in which we can reduce the percentage of reserved seats in institutions and not increase it. Today lets say 25% of the seats in higher educational intitutions are reserved then let us come up with a comprehensive plan to start reducing this percentage by a percent or two every year. So that we can arrive at a time in the future when there are no reservations. But on what basis are we reducing the percentage every year. This is by taking steps to provide basic education to the so called reserved classes so that we can also prepare them to face competetion at the higher education levels.