When the prime minister made ten suggestions to corporate India, just one of which was to “resist excessive remuneration to promoters and senior executives” (‘Vulgar wealth display insults the poor’, IE, May 25), almost the entire media and of course the corporate sector raised their voices in consternation. Perhaps they should take another look at the PM’s remarks after the ‘Gurjjar trouble’ in Rajasthan.

A community demanding a particular status is not a new phenomenon, but when one finds deaths occurring because of protests in a community into which one is born, one tends to sit up and take note. Let me clarify at the outset that I have never either sought or got any benefit for merely being a Gurjjar and being one has never been a handicap in my professional career, starting with the Indian Railways and ending with a stint of almost 22 years with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Therefore the comments I choose to make now should not be linked to the fact that I happen to be a Gurjjar myself.

Notwithstanding all that has been written about social justice, empowerment of the dispossessed, and the like, the path the country has traversed in trying to ensure equality of opportunity to all citizens has been far from smooth. The objective, and hope, of the framers of the Constitution that equality of opportunity will be achieved in ten years, has obviously not been met. Some of us might wonder if they were naïve or over-optimistic. They were neither. But they were certainly idealistic and I assume that those who lead us would also have similar ideals.

... contd.