At least 50,000 people converged on Ram Lila grounds (New Delhi) today, the 27th of May, to protest against the quota (reservation) policy of the government.

Opposing governments decision to implement 27% OBC quota in all educational institutions, the protestors struck a defiant note and threatened to continue the struggle if the government does not roll back the proposal. Representatives of people who came from different parts of the country voiced their concerns against what might turn out to be the next partition of the country. Almost all of them voiced support for quota based on economic status rather than a caste based one.

The struggle against reservations was started by medical students at AIIMS (All India Student of Medical Sciences) and has rapidly spread throughout the length and breath of the country and is gaining momentum everyday.

Under the aegis of Youth for Equality a huge rally is planned in Delhi on 27th May protesting against the impending division of the country along caste lines.

Titled 'DELHI AAO, DESH BACHAO', this is a call to all concerned people of the country to come together and fight for what we believe to be right.

To all our countrymen who fought for freedom and equality, in our glorious struggle for independence, and to all those who laid down their lives protecting our borders, today we pay our homage.

Let us stand together and speak in one voice - we won't back down, we won't give up, we won't stop, this time we fight back, and we fight with all our might.

If today we don't stand our ground, there will be no stopping the government from unleashing more populist measures which have the potential to do great harm to our country.

If you are concerned and you believe that what the government is doing vis-a-vis reservations in educational institutes is wrong, do join in. Find more details about the event here.

Subhash Kak writes an emotional piece on Rediff revealing the true nature of the struggle against reservations.

It seems such an unequal struggle: the cold apparatus of the government on the one hand, and the passion of the students on the other. The students appear to echo the words of the Hindi poet, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar:

....perhaps the agitating doctors in India are crying out for something much more than just the reservation of seats in colleges. They are fighting against the impending partitioning of India's soul.

Read the entire piece here.

CNN IBN interviewed Arjun Singh in Devil's Advocate. The text of the interview is available here.

"Karan Thapar: It says, that looking at the Delhi University, between 1995 and 2000, just half the seats for under-graduates at the Scheduled Castes level and just one-third of the seats for under-graduates at the Scheduled Tribes level were filled. All the others went empty, unfilled. So, again, even in Delhi University, reservations are not working.

Arjun Singh: If they are not working, it does not mean that for that reason we don't need them. There must be some other reason why they are not working and that can be certainly probed and examined. But to say that for this reason, 'no reservations need to be done' is not correct."

This clearly shows the homework our honourable minister did before making a law. In the entire interview he has not been able to justify the case for reservation and asserts that it is a decision taken by parliament. So he is not even ready to take any responsibilty for this. He is not at all concerned with the solution working or even figuring out if this is a solution after all.

Two members of the National Knowledge Commission (set up by the Prime Minister to promote excellence in education and knowledge creation), have quit due to the governments persistence over implementing quotas.

Political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta and sociologist Andre Beteille said they were disillusioned with the government’s policies, which they saw as a betrayal of the principles on which the commission was founded.

In his quit letter, Beteille wrote to Manmohan, who had handpicked the commission’s eight members: “I have always made a distinction between numerical quota and affirmative action. What is happening now is dangerous.”

Mehta’s letter said, “The government has revealed that it cares about tokenism more than social justice. We are not doing enough to genuinely empower marginalised groups but are offering condescending palliatives like quotas as substitute.”

The Telegraph has more.

Copied below are the views of Prof. M Balakrishnan, a computer science professor at IIT Delhi as expressed at the iit4equality yahoo group.

Nearly six decades after independence, this country is planning to announce that majority of its population is backward and does not have equal opportunity to pursue education and employment. Along with this, it is going to open up a Pandora's Box by various caste groups to be classified as "backward". What an interesting way to begin the 21st century when finally India was beginning to emerge as a serious player in the new knowledge economy! The major carrot that is being doled out is the seats in the elite medical, engineering and management Institutes. What bothers me is no one is interested in even consulting the people who have built these institutions and brought them to this stature. I have strong views on efficacy of reservations in general but here I would confine myself to the issues concerning IITs. At least here with my three decade long association, I can claim to know something. Many of these arguments may be applicable to the other elite Institutions in medical and management disciplines as well.

The anti-quota rally, organised by medical students in Delhi, saw a massive turnout where thousands of people from all sections of the society turned up to lend support.

The gathering congregated near Jantar Mantar at about 10 A.M. in the morning and was largely peaceful. Medical students from all over the country joined the rally as also hundreds of Engineers, some from major software firms.

The atmosphere reverberated with chants ranging from 'Arjun Singh Hai Hai' to a more RDB'esque 'Inquilab Zindabad'. Motivational speaker Shiv Khera and cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Sidhu also turned up to deliver fiery speeches which was received by the gathering with much applause.

Read more here and here.

It seems that the IIT political party Lok Paritran has split.

Lok Paritran, a party launched by some IITians and other educated youth vowing to usher in a clean administration, has split with four of its seven candidates, who contested in the recent elections, quitting the outfit.

The faction accused the "national leadership" with financial bungling and lack of transparency.

Read more here.

Google has just released a Web Toolkit to simplify development of cross browser AJAX applications.

The Google Web Toolkit takes a very different approach for simplifying development of AJAX applications as compared to other similar initiatives like Prototype.

For one thing, the real development happens in Java and the toolkit provides a compiler which converts that into JavaScript for deployment. The toolkit also includes a hosted web browser where you can directly test your Java code before compiling to JavaScript.

The protests against reservations initiated by medical students in Delhi is now spreading throughout the country.

A group of 200 medical students was lathicharged in Mumbai on Saturday when they blocked a road to the Raj Bhavan to protest against the government’s reservation proposal.

Services at three government medical colleges in Cuttack, Burla and Berhampur cities of Orissa were affected when about 1,200 house surgeons and junior doctors in government medical colleges went on strike...