The Invisible Wall

A few weeks ago, there was a Puja at my house. It was not a very grand affair. Fifteen people were crowded around the priest. The  grown-ups managed to concentrate, or at least seemed to, on the proceedings. But two really young children, who were running around, distracted me. One was my 3-year-old niece; her father works in a bank of some repute. The other was the 2-year-old son of our house help Rekha. Playing today like friends, ten years down the line, they will be separated by the unscalable wall of disparity. And it suddenly struck me: no matter what figures they show to prove it, what numbers they toss up, no one will be able to convince me that opportunities in our country are equal, or can be for a very long time. Reservation. It is a dirty word. We scoff at the system. We ridicule these ideals. Maybe it’s the age of putting oneself above all others, maybe the most important thing for us is to be successful, have money, power and eventually get into those circles of society where everyone does what we do best-criticise. But how many of us really try to understand what it is that we are criticising? We exploit our right to dissent just like we do the rickshaw-wallah outside the college gates. For an entire chunk of India’s population, getting a job after an education is impossible. Most of those who enrol in government schools drop out by class eight or nine, when things start going beyond their reach. They fall back on jobs their families have been doing for generations. Their kids study in the same dingy, crowded rooms, with little hope of succeeding. Yet some do. But these changes cannot take place over a few years, or even a few decades. It takes generations. Granted that there are more than a few hitches in the implementation of the system. That the system has more than its share of flaws. But surely, that’s no excuse for us, the so-called ”educated” middle class, to act like the problem does not exist. Try as we might, we cannot help but notice the invisible wall that separates us from them… from the man at the sidewalk wearing plastic rags, from the family that’s fighting with the conductor over a tworupee ticket on a bus, from the beggar whose stench makes us uncomfortable, from Rekha’s little boy. It is probably a lost battle, the most vicious of circles. Reservation  may not be the answer, but someone has to look for alternatives. We are not all required to turn into khadi-clad social workers, but if there’s anything that is needed from us now, it is some compassion for those not as fortunate as us. 

Nandana Sengupta
I Physics