Rajasthan Gujjar Reservaion Issue

For a couple of days with the dinner I am listening to reporters giving details about the "Gujjar Andolan" in Dosa (Rajasthan). Those who don't know anything about this, let me give a brief background to this issue. Gujjar is a community in India especially in Rajasthan who have their leader Colonel Baisla who is ex-army man. In leadership of him they have started a movement in which they have removed the rail tracks destroying the rail transport passing from Rajasthan. Well, you should not conclude that I am an activist in the field of Reservation quotas just because my last post was somewhat related. Its merely a coincidence and this post is independent.

They did the same before a couple of years ago and they succeeded. Now when there is a hope of new government jobs, they want some benefits. I am wondering that our government will again surrender to these people? I still remember the statement of Supreme Court on the issue of reservation quota that People have started to fight to be called backward!

In my opinion this is not the civilized way of demanding. The rail network has collapsed. There is not at all rail commutation in western region. Trains are diverted and passengers as well as the local residents have to suffer. Who doesn't want benefits? When we talk about equality after 50 years (oops, 60) years of independence, let those people have chance who have merit and not caste advantages. I wondered what a young 25 years old General category unemployed guy who doesn't have these advantages and have high hopes for the jobs, will think of this country on hearing this news? Lets put general category aside, what if other castes take the example of this and start doing the same?

To be direct, its like a man-eater tiger. If a tiger tastes the blood of human then tiger is always looking for humans otherwise generally tigers get afraid of humans. So I hope this time Govt of India doesn't surrender and take some actions that there is no scope for this kind of movement in future.

Should the house accept 'Reservation Quotas'?

Around a week ago I visited session of one of the students club called 'Parliamentary Debate club'. Parliamentary debate is little bit different, it follows certain rules and a specific format. The topic was "This house will accept quotas". One group will defend it and other will oppose. Well this is a very common and controversial topic. We generally come across this topic every now and then, sometimes we speak and sometimes just leave it. One month back I was short listed for the GD round of placement process of Tata Technologies. There too the topic was 'Does reservation degrade the quality of education'. Though I cleared he round but was not that happy because non of us actually could found a solution to the problem. One thing that emerged out of discussion was we should reconsider the criteria of reservation like it should not be caste based but is should be economical condition based or so.

Similar case I saw again in the debate of this club that whenever we are asked what should be done with this quota thing at that time we spontaneously react and then refrain. Like it starts with one boolean query that quotas should be there or not just 0 or 1. Then we realize it is not a problem of Digital logic but its one of fuzzy logic where you can have intermediate values between 0 and 1. Because if there are quotas then after 60 years of independence we are generating social imbalance in the society. But argument will be still there are some people who need a helping hand and such genuine unprivileged people should be given benefit. Now a question arises that these needy people can be of any caste. So the prevailing criteria is not apt for the situation. Someone would argue that government is taking action and Creamy Layer is the outcome of it. But the argument is still that concept is not practised. And the discussion goes on...

It seems that first it is a very hard to decide that should we need quotas or not and if yes then what should be the criteria for the reservation if not caste then. And if you come up with some practical criteria then how would you practise it? So to me this problem turns out to be a NP Hard problem. You are welcomed to give your word on this.

Should we make machine Intelligent?

Well some days ago I heard from someone that teaching process is changing so rapidly that there will not be any pen and paper in use. I remember my primary school days, when my teacher used to say all these stuff about the (future) technology. I used to feel so thrilled about it at that age thinking 'Yes.. it would be the great day!'

Now when I am an M.Tech student with specialization 'Machine Intelligence' , where we are taught to make machine intelligent so that one day a human can be replaced by a machine at many places. Well let me define what we mean by 'Machine Intelligence' for those who are new to this term, cause my mother asks me this question twice in a month. I will try to make it clear using an example. If you put one apple and one orange in front of your computer, turn on the camera for it and ask it to identify which is an orange? It will see the objects through a camera but probably you will get no answer, because your machine can not make decisions i.e. it is not intelligent enough to "infer". If you perform the same exercise with your 4yr old niece, she would spontaneously come up with the correct answer. Well, here one branch of machine intelligence 'Pattern Recognition' plays a role. Here we make these things easy for a machine. We can provide it some shapes and colour data to make decisions. Still there isn't any technology that can let your machine smell the object and perhaps taste the object!

In 'Machine Intelligence' we are directly in race with the Nature. Though we have started just 50-60 years back in this race, we have reached quite far but still a long way to go. At many places we have replaced the human effort. Like, where you had to keep a door man to open the gate only when, yours or your relatives', cars come, There are automatic Door opener with the system installed with desired Car number plates data that "if any car with provided numbers comes then only open the door" kind of instructions.

I see a danger in doing so. Population of many countries is increasing with a rapid rate. Then how will be the scene after 50 years when we would have enough machines to do all the work. What shall people do if there is a machine to do that. And always human labour is costlier than machine so I am sure what would industries prefer.

Other concern I see is, some conventional methods, i think, are still needed. Like, I find teaching on the board more effective than that through slides... Rough work/drafting with pencil and paper... Chapati made by your mom.. printed photos than digital on screen photos and blah blah..

So sometimes I get confused, should we stop this race or continue with increasing speed. Though as a student I will continue doing my assignments  still this topic is rolling in my mind quite often.