The Great Rilaway Bazaar - My Take

Since everyone is posting their reviews here, here's mine

Oh and what are the topics that have been floated ... also if ppl could just let us know the topic they would be working on, it would be great !

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Undoubtedly a very well researched article. A very quintessential example of how obscure government policies can be. If I extrapolate a bit further the recent spat over reservations in institutes of higher education quite rightly points out the skewed outlook of our policy makers. Reservations were meant (as proposed by Dr. Ambedkar ) just for the first 10 years post independence … but it has continued even after more than five decades ! Arguments of the HRD are based on some 30 yr old census which is of no consequence today. Policy makers hence need to open up and need to take a more sensible, mature and rational stand on issues, instead of just continuing with old norms and laws thereby making a mockery of the entire system !

I would also like to add that this “license fee” system is not new to me. I feel it is the socialist and the communist outlook that is very strongly instilled in people – especially the middle class. If we analyze, we would realize that it is the “job security” and the perquisites that people are running after. They are ready to pay a hefty sum just to ensure they land up in a govt job and settle comfortably in the lethargic system. I have seen people paying huge amounts of money to secure a government job.

Regarding the current article, there are still some questions that are left unanswered, or rather have raised some questions in my mind-

• Is this phenomenon prevalent just in and around N.Delhi? Has the demographics got something to do with it?
• What is the background in terms of educational qualifications of those offering to be porters?
• Are the perquisites same across all railway divisions?
• If railways is such a profitable organization, what then are the bottlenecks in increasing thenumber of porters and granting them employee status?

Sunmay Shivadekar

Oh and what are the topics that have been floated ... also if ppl could just let us know the topic they would be working on, it would be great !