Reservations

The perennial Indian obsession with reservations is back and, unsurprisingly, generating a great deal of heat.

Personally, we are strongly opposed to quotas and reservations -- these are highly inefficient and profoundly immoral means of trying to correct real and perceived inequities in our society.

Having said this, we see little value in expressing stale lament over Government's attitude on this subject. Our politics have long since fallen to the seductive and poisonous embrace of brazen populism -- this strategy is a vote-winner, hence nothing else really matters.

Frankly, what reservation opponents ought to be doing is not protesting Government's predictable senselessness, instead constructively engaging the purported beneficiaries of its myopic approach on why we think this is counterproductive.

Given our democracy and our demographics, persuasion is the only real way to win this valid battle. This long-term process will be costly -- we'll probably lose IITs, for example, as the genius factories that they used to be -- but this would be a cost worth bearing if we ultimately convince the vast majority of Indians that reservations are profoundly violent to the spirit of our equalizing constitution.

If we fail, unfortunately, so will India.