Base human nature

Base human nature

In Hobbes’s view of democracy, he held that men in the mass are naturally and fundamentally selfish, quarrelsome, power hungry, cruel and perverse in spite of all religions, the Sermon on the Mount, the Gita, Islam and so on. He said that he had arrived at the final truth about human nature and behaviour.

I have also arrived at the final truth about our political parties. Their only ideologies are  power and hoodwinking voters.

In power, all parties are same! Their ‘vote banks’ will collapse if illiteracy is wiped out. All parties have vested interests in illiteracy, caste and religious differences.

If a private bill is introduced in our Parliament to abolish castes, it will be voted out by our political parties.
—SS Bankeshwar, Mumbai

Power con

It’s about time the people of Vasai and Virar are given a better deal when it comes to power supply. The distribution company seems to think it is doing the public a favour with its erratic and fluctuating power supply, where people are inconvenienced and expensive gadgets ruined.

If the company is incompetent and uninterested in performing its duties, it should hand over the services to private companies, where there is some accountability.

The company is quick to cut off the power supply to defaulters, but how can the public punish it for defaulting in its service?
—Simon Lobo, Mumbai

Idea with merit

The debate about quotas and reservations has always had me on the side of merit, and a recent incident has made me think even more so.

I work for a PSU and was on the interview panel for the selection of nurses. Following government guidelines, we had to select a fixed number of candidates for the ‘reserved — SC/ST’ and ‘open’ categories.

As the interviews progressed, what surprised us was that the so called ‘backward’ category candidates outperformed the ‘open’ category candidates.

This created a problem for us as we now had to select a less worthy candidate in the ‘open’ category even though there were several superior candidates in the ‘reserved’ class.

If by giving equal opportunities for education, the ‘reserved’ are doing better, why are we discriminating against them while giving jobs? This kind of reservation is working against them rather than for them.

It is obvious that 50 years of reservations have benefited the scheduled castes and tribes of this country. Isn’t it time to invoke the sunset clause for reservations as far as jobs are concerned? Let merit and personal worth alone count where it matters most.
—Vineeta Rao, via email

Dry anguish

The dry day that was observed on Thursday, July 26, for Devshayani Ashadhi Ekadashi is a blow to those who like a drink in the evening, but are deprived of their drinking rights.

The government must consider re-defining dry days. I feel that there is a need for just four dry days in the country — January 26, May 1, August 15 and October 2.

It is the poor who visit bars as they cannot stock alcohol. The rich stock their alcohol and consume it at home on government-declared dry days.

The government should let people decide when they want to drink, rather than apply hypocritical moral  policing to drinking.
—Cajetan Peter D’Souza, Mumbai

Callous disregard

The report on the boy drowning in a swimming pool reinforces the fact that human life has become very cheap (‘Six-yr-old drowns in school pool’, DNA, July 26).

The school coolly denies responsibility saying that the swimming activity was outsourced. But they seem to forget that once the children are in school they become the responsibility of the school authorities.

They can’t shrug off their responsibilities by saying that the activity is not under their control.

Such negligence and callousness on the part of the school authorities is going to give parents sleepless nights regarding the safety of their children while they are at school.
—Sunil Sharma, Mumbai