Startup recruitment - the madness needs a method

Placements and offers at IITs will again shoot up the roof once the season starts in December. We'll again hear about overseas job offers by the likes of Facebook and Google with large dollar salaries - even larger now in rupees as the currency keeps dwindling. And now we also have these startups, most of them with weird names, paying huge salaries, like 20+ lacs, to 20-somethings.

I guess in all generations you see people younger than you making more money than what you did at their age, and even what you make now. The bases for salaries are not complicated... coz they are not objective. It may just be a hype cycle each time, leading to crazy valuations. And then there's a price war of some sort - to price same guys higher than what competitors do. In that crazy competition to buy talent, no company really tries to find out whether those prices are realistic, i.e., whether the return on investment on hiring a particular guy or gal at a certain salary would be positive, and by when, if at all... what are the short and long term returns expected from such an investment... how much of professional growth is the company capable of offering any person it hires in his/her area of interest, whatever be the strength of the business model of the company. This should be an important point to consider particularly in the IT industry, especially when choosing among candidates for hiring, coz the industry is composed and driven by individuals of a certain kind - mainly powered by knowledge and analytical skills - thinking individuals, whose skills have short-lived relevance but whose abilities to evolve is tremendous - and hence, so is the hunger for growth. The highly rampant hiring and firing in the rapidly developing tech / tech-enabled start-up landscape is unhealthy for the intellectual and emotional well-being of such talented individuals, and therefore the industry should treat its talent with caution... as smart and talented individuals, rather than commodities with x y z skillset.

Most of the contemporary managers and even CEOs of these start-ups do not have a mature understanding or point of view on these things. They do most of their hiring in an ad-hoc manner and expect everything to settle and resolve in the long run. Can't really blame them for their lack of experience or foresight, coz while that is truly their weaknesses, these are still extremely complex issues with lots of variables at stake for the people running the businesses. Large companies absorb their flab - if they consider some of their workforce as such - until they have to shed some, and economies of scale allow some sustainability to them, in spite of the inefficiencies. For start-ups, even leaders with the right intentions fail to find right and good solutions for managing their human-resource-pool. In the absence of any standard systems and practices, and resources and scale to afford those, things often get unimaginably complex.

Here are some random real-life cases that are eye-openers of some sort:

• A guy with 4-5 years of technology experience, struggling in his current job, is offered a salary of 98 lacs INR per year from a startup that was recently in news for wrong reasons. 
• An e-commerce startup which had multi-million dollar investment was forced by its investor to hire only IITians and to push the employee count to 20+ in a few months time. The startup ended up hiring fresh graduates from IIT at 10+ lacs INR salary. Those guys failed in their jobs coz lack of any work-experience and absence of training programs in the company to groom fresh recruits.
• Highly skilled employees getting burned out due to being heavily overworked - 100+ hours per week - and forced to quit companies and sometimes even industries, just coz most of the other employees are not competent enough to handle tasks at work.

All these examples suggest that there is something wrong with the way startups recruit and groom their guys to make them true professionals.There was a saying in the 80s in the US among HR managers in the context of recruitment - no HR gets fired for hiring from Stanford and MIT. It seems the same logic is applied in India when it comes to recruiting from the IITs. Some sweeping assumptions:

• This guy has good grades from an IIT - hire him - he'll build our next-gen product! 
• This girl is in a good company - hire her - she must be good coz she's got this big brand on her resume! 
• This guy has a high salary - let's pay him higher and get him - there must be a good reason he's paid that high!

If the above rationale fail, there's still an ultimate rationalization for everything arbitrary - the founder's gut feel. Nobody can dare question the decision of a 24 year old founder of a company who not only set it up, but also managed millions of dollars in investment. In a nation this hungry for jobs, who would really doubt the wisdom of a job creator? But things are soon changing as the nation now is also having to get used to getting laid off in masses. Although it's been rare for placement committees to question salary figures and structures of companies and the sustainability of their payout promises, they're beginning to do that now - the Zomato blacklisting from IITs is the latest example.

The salary offers by some startups are so insane and out of whack that it's surprising they are not questioned by investors for offering such large salaries while their loss-making business models evolve randomly with no strong analyses or arguments backing their decisions, that go with endlessly dragged excel sheets with ever increasing growth to back the monetarily obese recruitment. And the investors turn blind eyes to all this drama, as their bonuses are tied to short-term bets, hoping a majority work out in a booming market. You can't blame a herd for grazing where it's green as long as the grass is growing. It's considered fair in capitalism to try to get a bigger bite. Someone who cautions the group that the grass may get exhausted if eaten at that rate is only considered a fool. The wisdom - as taught by dominant economic thought - is to eat the most you can when all are eating, and conserve your energies for when the grass is gone. The weaker ones will die of hunger, the grass will regrow to satiate those who remain, and the cycle goes on. You are not supposed to question as to why there have to be cycles, coz when you do, you are called insane and kicked out of the race... and there has to be a race.

Everyone is in a hurry now. And in recruitment at IITs and IIMs, the hurry is by design - to create mad rush and chaos, and thereby a hype for the institute. In my experience it neither benefits the candidates nor the companies. A friend of mine heard his ex-boss say this to his CEO - you can't put 9 ladies together and expect them to deliver a baby in 1 month. Very short placement periods - like a placement week - often lead to random candidates getting hired for random roles. Large organizations don't feel the hit so badly when misfit people play crucial roles, as there is already a flab that can be afforded due to economies of scale that cushions things out. But in startups it is impossible to grow strongly when certain parts are weak... and all of the few parts of a startup are very crucial. High quality products have their own lifecycle which cannot be expedited beyond a point just by investing heavily and blindly and falling prey to people-pricing wars.

It is therefore high time everybody questioned their decisions and the way things are bubbling up unnecessarily:

• Investors: Do I have the scientific and economic basis to invest in a certain company? Am I unnecessarily forcing my biases to run the companies in my portfolio? Am I setting the right terms and guidelines to help groom my companies for long term success, rather than making headlines for investment volumes and crazy salary figures?
• Founders / CEOs: Is my hiring based on the right principles? Am I doing justice to the talent I am hiring and to my company in return? What is my explicit and implicit messaging to attract talent - do I project the vision, mission and culture of the company, or the salary I offer?
• Employees: Is this the right salary for me - for the capabilities I bring and the expectations of my role? Is the company's business model sustainable enough to pay me this salary with the expected year-on-year growth for the long term? Will I be groomed as a professional in this company?

A company is not just about the money it makes by managing all stakeholders. It impacts lives of all stakeholders including its employees and customers. In the long term, companies tend to achieve a balance through natural corrections. But for a startup, if all the talk is about money and none, or little, about the value it delivers, there are definite alarm bells which will be heard sooner than later, albeit all the funding and crazy valuations. So startup founders need to introspect and build their foundations most wisely, and set the right examples for future generations of entrepreneurs.

The bubble is not bursting. Only those who have inflated beyond their capacity or have skin too weak are releasing the winds to the stronger players.

With thoughts from Manish Kumar and Ravindra Naik

The God Delusion

The Tolerance/Intolerance debate is going so crazy, it sometimes sounds funny how people can take sides without even looking at the culture we represent, and even more basic, the species we are. I definitely won't say much out of line, coz I am no Shahrukh Khan. Nobody can ensure I am protected from some crazy bunch of guys motivated by an ideology. Or perhaps a hungry bunch of idiots who are motivated by a guarantee of their next meal.

One thing is religion - one's concept of the unknown - and another is all the bull-shit stories written around it, to make the unknown sound very real and manifested in earthly stuff. The need for it in the human mind has been exploited by the smart to control the minds of the dumb masses, and over time all that fiction started sounding real, so much so that now even the smart guys take it at face value. And understandably so - coz most of us are not in a position to question everything with hope of getting a satisfactory answer. That's true even for the so called scientific facts, which are again based on trust and belief that someone must have researched all that following reliable and acceptable procedures and came with genuine readings and valid conclusions. And even if all that's documented, who has time and interest to verify all the stuff! Just like a 6th standard science book says matter is composed of atoms and molecules, some book also says there was a man called Ram who was incarnation of a God called Vishnu. I didn't question the existence of atoms, as I want to be a man of science. Even if I did, I am told there is a way their existence can be inferred. I trust that as well. I can't trust the existence of Ram (or Vishnu) nor the non-existence of him, coz nobody tells me there is a basis to prove it, nor to disprove it. Understandably so, coz any theory for the unknown cannot be proved by definition. And if it can be proved, then it ceases to be a theory of the unknown. There is perhaps a point where known and unknown intersect... and moving beyond is our constant endeavor - either through science or through god. While Science only gives us a feeling of trying to move to higher levels of knowledge and deciphering the unknown, God directly places us in the unknown realm, albeit fictional. But we are gullible humans with short life-spans and looking for excuses to stay motivated and for ways to make sense of this life. So god always wins, beyond a point. That point is where science ceases to be helpful, although it may continue to be interesting.

My secret, silent and lonely life at IIT Bombay from 2000-2004 had long hours of introspection and discussions with myself about truth, life, meaning and beyond. Long walks in the campus, and walks in the hockey field at mid-night - on the fine grass there - were absolutely fantastic. A parallel at IIM Lucknow during 2009 were long jogs around the campus in the dark. Unlike the kind of best memories most people have of these stints, my best ones are these long quiet moments of introspection, which I enjoyed tremendously. I can't claim to have found what I was looking for, but these beautiful moments did mould my personality and points of view to make me who I am, to some extent. There are also a few adventures which form part of my fond memories of these times - one was crossing the extremely dark trail in the jungle behind H8 (IITB) from chinks (that time) to campus guest house at mid-night during the time when the Panther scare was at its peak. In fact a few days before I did that one guy was chased by a panther at night... that guy managed to save himself, but was bedridden with fever for a few days. I don't know what came on me to challenge myself to do it at 3.00 AM - but I crossed the whole dark trail - so dark that one cannot see anything at all - I was lucky no panther showed up and I came back to my hostel safe and sound. It was a stupid thing to do, of course. But I pushed myself and did it... in the name of adventure, I guess. I don't regret it. But I guess I wouldn't do it now, at this age. There is indeed something about the early 20s that makes you take crazy risks. Some take good ones and make their life. Some take stupid ones and recall those memories for life.

There were many of my batchmates at IITB who were followers of ISKON faith. It's a large community of Krishna followers who marry science and teachings of Gita and talk your brains out even if you don't give a damn. They used to sell crazy books in the campus and tried to convert more people into their ideology. That was their little adventure of youth I suppose. There is an ISKON temple in Juhu where many of them went in the weekends for free delicious food. But they talked like real psychos most of the time... anything extreme seems nuts... even Science, and especially when it's combined with god to create some supershitty nonsense. But they were harmless folk. Very tolerant, if you were tolerant to their ideology.

Anyway, after last 2 paras of seemingly unrelated crap, let me come back a bit. I hear lot of people speaking and acting about religious intolerance these days, and a lot of people pointing fingers at them, saying they are politically motivated, citing instances in the past when they did not act in a similar fashion nor raise a voice. I think those pointing fingers need to understand that the strength of numbers doesn't always emerge, and for a herd to form for raising a topic that induces fear otherwise, it takes a lot of chance and coincidence. And people draw strength from the herd once it gets formed, for whatever reason. So a lot are able to speak up coz they have the strength of numbers acting in similar way. A lone shouter may be silenced by our crazy gangs with political support. A group shouts, then it becomes a nation-wide debate... while the group has the security of being part of a herd. So understand and acknowledge, rather than getting defensive and pointing fingers. We all know what we truly are, what our culture truly is, what unites us, what divides us and what India should really be. Let's not fool ourselves and let's not fool each other. Time to clean-up our culture!

Games go on...

I heard the word Entrepreneurship first time after joining IIT Bombay in 2000. And I was really surprised by the way it is pronounced. Whatever be the reason the word got screwed so bad, it still is a powerful word. 4 years of BTech at IIT, you keep hearing tales of successful Entrepreneurs from your college. Those days they were of people who made it really very big eventually - like Nandan Nilekani, Kanwal Rekhi, etc. Small-time startups were few, coz there were no smart phones, very few dumb mobile-phones, no e-commerce... nothing much really as compared to the world of today... people had to get really innovative. Things had to scale or die. It was difficult to sustain in hope, coz the hope had no basis, like we do now - the potential reach and the money. The internet and email were gradually changing the world, and the whole world was only talking about IT and the infinite possibilities it could offer. The possibilities did emerge gradually, although none of those were invented in India. But we are doing well to adapt them to our conditions, and generating huge business. And there sprang hundreds of startups with weird sounding names in the past few years.

For kids in this area, especially in India a few years back, the first thought that crossed their minds as soon as it occurred to them to start something of their own was about having a website URL that was really cool. They would keep thinking about it. A few would even go and check for availability of some they can think of. Most would not go beyond that. I kept checking for SochVichaar.com's availability (although not for a startup... just for my blog) for 3-4 years before I finally decided to spend $10 a year and register it. It's not a huge amount, but still good enough to prevent me from spending even for something that I did want. May be I had a price for it in mind, which was less than $10, until I decided to spend it... some sort of continuous pricing exercise our minds keep doing for everything we do in life.

Anyhow, it's different times now and the way startups are started and looked at is totally different from what it used to be 10-15 years back. What kind of companies are seen as startups and what kind of people are seen as entrepreneurs keeps changing with times. It's often a little confusing who should be called an entrepreneur and what qualifies as a startup. Shopkeepers who buy and sell goods are not generally considered entrepreneurs, nor are their shops seen as startups. But similar stuff done online are seen differently. Entrepreneurship by definition has to have some novelty associated with the venture. So right now online shops, which are among the first few, would be considered entrepreneurial and start-ups. But they're almost at the verge of being considered too common to be called novel or innovative from here on, and they'll lose the respect they get. Although some of them may do something really interesting in the way they conduct their business, but that'll be hardly noticed or acknowledged until they scale to a level where they're not considered a chain of shops.

But times these certainly are to start something, whatever random it might be, and make some fame or money or CV points as long as things are hot and as long as you have ways to survive if you go broke, which I think is the biggest fear that keeps even the best of thinkers and innovators from taking the plunge. As I said this, I realized that it's risk takers and politicians who shape the world, not the most innovative and creative people. In fact, a politician is in a way a manager of risk, and perhaps a bigger risk taker than a businessman, coz his pursuit is 'power', which not only does he constantly need to struggle for, but he also has to trust that it somehow helps him make a living more fulfilling than that of a business guy who strives for money - a tangible medium of exchange for anything material he wants. The seeker of power on the other hand is in a constant valuation game - of power: his and others' - and what it can offer in return, besides the pleasure of possessing the power itself. It is not difficult to see why in this herd of competing power-seekers, a lot have to turn corrupt... coz the valuation game has to produce tangible results in some way for each one of them so as to survive, and produce those in huge amounts - coz the valuation, like anything else these guys engage in, is supposed to add to the power they perceive for themselves, otherwise it is self-defeating. It's all a game mind plays with itself.

These mind-games are what keeps the world going. It's amazing how evolution happens in buckets - survival of the fittest leaders and survival of the fittest followers - looked at broadly! And then some more crooked wiring in heads to make sure innovative minds innovate, dreamers dream, entrepreneurs take risks and do stuff - all that adding some action in this world, making people's lives easy in some ways... making the best of the lost, yet comfort seeking lives we are all trapped into, while also forgetting it in the process... telling ourselves that if the show must go on, then why not be on stage like a hero or sit in the audience enjoying the show eating popcorn, without realizing we're equally part of the show - coz there's no hero without the audience... occasionally a seat gets empty and refilled... there is continuous addition of new chairs, as we keep getting added... and the stage keeps getting bigger and bigger, as heroes keep getting added too... and a few go away as well. But we have to focus on the show... or try to... what option do we have. One can exit. But then one ceases to exist. Our mind tells us we want to exist. So... games go on...

There was no choice

MBA made me like a stereotypical "aadmi" jisse koi bhi kaam karwa sakte ho - jhhadu, bartan, toilet clean, jhhaad ko paani daalna, ghaas kaatna, ghar ke jaale nikaalna, kutta ghumana, sabzi lana, mara chooha baahar phekna, jaam naali saaf karna, bahar ped se amrood kaat ke lana, bachaa hua khana khana, diwali mein jhhaalar lagana, holi mein rang milana, sabzi kaatna, bacchon ke baal kaatna, bageeche mein ghusi gaay bakri bhagana, baahar rangoli banaane ke liye gobar leke aana, jab jo kaam bolo phurti se kar dena... kya bolein, aajkal "aadmi" bhi itna nahi karte, oopar se choon chaan aur karte hain...

Khair apni jagah har insaan ek "aadmi" hi hai... angrezi mein isko 'resource' bolte hain... aur kaam ko hamesha isse measure karte hain ki kitne aadmiyon ka hai... (even Gabbar asked kitne aadmi they)... for example - Prime Minister ek aadmi ka kaam hai... mere office mein mera cubicle saaf karna bhi ek aadmi ka kaam hai... wo "aadmi" ek aurat bhi ho sakta hai... riksha chalana ek aadmi ka kaam hai... train aur plane chalana shayad 2 aadmiyon ka kaam hai, ek ko baaju mein sona hota hai... jo bhi ho, kaam ke nazar mein sab aadmi barabar hain... ya yoon kahein ki kaam ki nazar mein sab aadmi jo wo kaam karte hain, wo aapas mein barabar hain... aur jahaan ye maanaa jata hai ki kisi skill ki zaroorat nahi, i.e., unskilled labor, wo sab kaam barabar hain no matter what the task and what the difficulty and who is more comfortable in doing what... but bhagwaan ne hame barabar banaya nahi...

We are not created equal, so expecting equal things out of us is not fair. But the world offers enough diversity in the roles we can play to get it going. However opportunities to play those roles are not equally accessible to all. Right from school we have mechanisms to test and rank people on same skills, and these ranks largely decide the opportunities that open up for many kids. Kids are pushed by parents to try harder, to try and match that one kid who is ahead of everyone else. And this constant failure of all other kids is not just a rank on their progress report. It is constant torture and a perpetual reminder of their lack of skills that matter, to the level that matters, in this world we are stuck with. It screws with their mind and self esteem, and they tend to even give up what they are actually really good at, and which in many cases could lead to pretty good careers too. And about even the basic skills our schools impart and test, don't we all know how meaningless they are, most of them, in the jobs we do? In workplaces where relationships, smart work, communication are the key for success, why should competition on academics be so excruciatingly competitive, especially at tender ages? And besides, all the stress on the little minds has psychological effects that hinders the growth of kids' soft skills, and ability to deal with people and situations.

The world is changing fast each day. All my formal education seems a bit obsolete now and fails to help me with my career. One has to be constantly evolving with the world and position oneself in a manner best suited to his/her personalty. They should teach this in schools and homes. Enjoying life is also important - there is probably no better way to live life than to spend it happily with minimum pain. Somebody might have created us with some purpose and plan, and we might never figure that out.  What we can do is to make the best of what we've got. Not just be an "aadmi" and go on like a slave, pretending to have made a choice but knowing deep inside that there was no choice.

Information Asymmetry

Underlying most conflicts in this world in Information Asymmetry. And Ekta Kapoor has built an empire on top of that. Look at any of those Saas Bahu serials on Indian TV. In every scene you have someone knowing something the other doesn't, and vice versa. And that creates all the chaos these serials are about. And there is so much importance given by characters in the stories to protecting information that they possess, that it surprises me they are finally characters depicting ordinary people, not those from some secret intelligence service set out to protect good from evil or evil from good. And the information there is after all only of someone cooking something - not food - even food at times. Sometimes the crazy unrealisticity, which is not even a word, gets on your nerves. But a lot of people are bearing it, as they don't think they have other options. They're clearly lazy.

Speaking of lazy, I find it amazing that a lazy body can still have a very active and hard-working mind. It's a personal experience! Whenever the mind-tapping thing becomes a reality, and stuff of The Matrix and Avatar and all that shit becomes contemporary, lazy people will be in better positions to rule the world - but only the virtual one - if they can only dream of physical action. Extending that thought, if right now this world we live in is all virtual by any chance, then the guy who is dreaming me is dreaming me all wrong. How can I control my controller so he controls me better?

This reminds me of economists and their lazy ways.

And also coming back to Information Asymmetry, let me cite another example where it clearly screws up the world, and is yet not acknowledged in the true sense - Markets - stock market, bhindi market, commodity market, marriage market, fish market or the market of opportunities. Nobody has all the information, and yet the ideal models of our economists base themselves on all information being public and driving people's behavior and response. What's the point of an ideal model that is more than 90% away from reality? There is definitely a lot of insider trading, sentiment driven activities, manipulations and all the bla which can tilt the market access and control with respect to different sections and categories of people. All markets are imperfect to serious degrees and yet our economists don't think beyond their ideal models, coz that's all the mathematics they can do - laziness again - in fact trying to understand true economics through mathematics is laziness of highest degree in my view. What do economists control anyhow. The information asymmetry is created, managed and very smartly controlled by whoever can to draw the best returns, while the rest of the people just crib and go away.

I have begun to realize that Information Asymmetry is the biggest source of all power in this world. And if you look around you'll find that consciously or sub-consciously or unconsciously everyone is looking for information which others may not have. Look at work-places. What is office-politics? Taking pride and drawing maximum benefits from knowing information that matters. And one has to be smart in gathering it, coz the source has his/her interests too, and the truth or untruth of the information is always questionable. Timing of gaining possession of the right information - true or untrue - is very important, of course. If you are too late, you'll only be worthy of participating in a chaai pe charcha which is an information sharing/gathering exercise with limited scope of high-outcome-info.

With so many channels of information dissemination and gathering - formal and informal - information overload is a real issue. Diving into tonnes of dark shit and coming out quickly with a glittering diamond is an art which very few are masters of. And managing the precious diamonds - gathered or manufactured oneself - is also a dimension of that art which is inevitable for success.

Freedom to choose one's faith

This post is not going to be long as I've sat through half of my Bangalore-Pune flight doing nothing. Writing is such a boring activity at times and  it's impossible to feel motivated to do it. Thinking happens on its own, but expressing it is a lot of work, and not so exciting at times. Anyway, now that I've started it, let's see where this goes.

I was part of an interesting discussion today with two of my colleagues. One was an American devout Catholic. The other was an Indian devout Hindu. And I was an agnostic mostly non-practicing someone. The American colleague is a much older man with kids and grandkids. And the Indian guy is my age and has a kid. And my kids are not born yet.

The topic of discussion was freedom of religion - whether our kids have it. And I found people had quite interesting views, some of them surprised me quite a bit. That someone our generation thinks that kids have no right to choose their faith, particularly one that's different from his/her parents', and that someone at an age like 17 is not wise enough to make a choice of religious faith surprised me. It also surprised me, though not as much, that it was deeply hurting for an American person to see his kids choose a different faith than his. But then, over the years, he has come to terms with it, and has realized that one has a right to choose his/her religion, and any religion is good as long as it teaches the right values of life.

The argument of the Indian guy, my generation, was two fold - one, that kids have no right to cause pain to their parents by their actions like these; and two, that kids of 17 years and even (older) grown ups are not qualified enough to make choices of faith. They must basically follow what their parents tell them, and not use their minds and make other choices coz what those minds tell them is nonsense.

I agree one mustn't hurt anyone, more so the parents, but if the parents are not thinking right and are hurting themselves for wrong reasons, should the kid pay the price for it by continuing to live a fake life that's not his true self? Of course not. Fixing it once might fix it for all future generations, and would be a great service to a lot of people born and unborn.

And on not being capable of making the right choices... It's the right to choose that makes life more meaningful, rather than choosing right, which nobody knows for sure anyway. And remember, the kid also has only one life which he/she wants to live happily. He should not be denied his right to experiment and search for truth, meaning and realities of the world by making him feel guilty about it.

Reservations

Large numbers of people in India participate in movements to get themselves, their castes, tagged as backward in ways that can get them preferential and promotional treatment in government run educational institutions and government jobs. There are in fact so many people claiming that a percentage be reserved for them in jobs and seats in colleges, that I find it funny that all percentages - reserved and unreserved - have to add up to a cent and probably none of them realizes that cent is a pie of fixed size. Thanks to whoever fixed the max limit at 50% for all reservations, we at least have a cap on the reserved part. It can surely be amended, but for now, we have some bounds for positive discrimination, although positive to someone would be negative to someone else.

Fundamentally, the intention of reservation is to bring about equality in class to people of all the castes, although in a very twisted way. It assumes all people of the backward castes are hindered in their ability to grow, because of resources and opportunities not being accessible to them; and the reservation system provides them with easy rides, combination of both resources and opportunities. And if someone belonging to one of those castes is not really hindered, it's simply his/her good luck. And implicit in all this is also an assumption that all people of the so called non-backward castes have ample resources and opportunities to achieve what they want, and if anybody doesn't, it's his/her bad-luck. And with 60+ years of reservation already gone, there's a further assumption that things haven't improved any bit with anyone in any of the backward castes, and in fact may have worsened considerably, which calls for more reservation. And over these 60+ years, it's been found that many more castes qualify to be considered backward - some had to fight to prove it - and therefore deserve to be awarded with some reservation. Such castes are the few which have managed to cross the line separating the haves from the have-nots.

All these may be partial truths and logical ways of looking at things, but the funny part is, everyone knows it's none of it which is really driving things. It's something else... the screwed-up political system of India, the way our leaders think, the incentives that drive our peoples - which is really shameful, and the sadly manipulative democracy that we consider ourselves, which ironically the common man is incapable of changing much for good. A model where claiming backwardness is incentivised forever can only degrade a culture and screw up the self-esteem of its people. But we should not complain, coz our forefathers were another bunch of mental cases, who practiced the equivalent of slavery in India for centuries, and someone has to pay the price for it now. And to make matters worse, there are millions of mental-cases even now who are carrying forward the legacy of those forefathers with depraved minds.

The worst downside of this positive discrimination called reservation and all the allied set of benefits that come with it, is that the youth of this country, most of them, who don't otherwise believe in caste-bullshit, get frustrated at losing out in the race to someone less deserving - even if one accounts for access to resources and opportunity - and then the whole system seems unfair, yet incapable of change. And this somehow leads to stronger feelings of casteism - rooted in hatred resulting from frustration - it's difficult to expect someone so frustrated to not have such thoughts and feelings. Especially when the whole system that wronged them is visibly driven to a large extent by opportunism rather than any real concern for the backward and downtrodden. And whatever were the intentions of introducing the whole reservation system, we've ended up promoting the very problem it tried to solve.

Everyone in India knows these things. Then what's the point of writing it down again?

And I don't see a point in trying to suggest solutions either - coz firstly it's nothing nobody has ever thought of - and secondly, for any social challenge, when the political solution and the real issue are not aligned and yet the political class is the beneficiary of the prevalent solution, what's the incentive for the political leaders to enforce or try to put forth an alternative solution less beneficial to them in the short run? And who really thinks long-term these days? Indian political class of today has mostly built its career on issues like caste and religious differences, not on growth and development. For such politicians to think differently would mean playing against their strengths.

Possibly reservation, over the years, has been designed to preserve the caste & religion based divides in our societies, so that our political class, which draws its power from such divisions can continue to thrive. Therefore for reservation itself to end, this political philosophy has to end... But our leaders come from among us. Before we talk about cleansing of our political class, we have to therefore talk about cleansing of our social mindset, which allows these politicians to draw their incentives by playing on divisions like caste and religion. The most challenging part of this transformation is to bring the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the reservation system on a common and equal platform - no appeasement, no demeaning - and design a new social fabric for this country. It does need a strong and charismatic leader who can bind all together with a common message. Who is also capable of thinking long-term, even way beyond his/her lifetime. (S)he may be killed before (s)he succeeds. And another leader has to emerge. And (s)he will. I hope its not an endless pursuit. I hope it begins for real. And ends too. I hope human minds are really capable of achieving happiness and equality for all, and together.