Click to play videoIn CNN-IBN's special series Ideas 2006 we bring you the big ideas of 2006. On Wednesday, the focus was on the big reservation debate. 2006 was a year when India witnessed the big reservation debate.
New Delhi: The announcement of 27 per cent quota for Other Backward Castes (OBC) sounded the war-bugle. It was time for the great Indian reservation war of the words.
The monumental building of All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) was turned into fortress. The OPD Corridors turned into barracks and war-plans were finalised behind the closed doors.
Books written for different purposes all together suddenly came handy while deciding on war strategies.
The war soon spread across all news channels and news studios turned into battlefields overnight with the anchors literally running for cover.
Veterans from the 1990 Mandal war took charge of their respective battalions. Armies came out marching, dressed in their immaculate uniform brooming all decencies away.
War correspondents gave us blow-by-blow accounts. Tanks rolled out to liquidate the enemy.
Mobile phones turned into weapons to circulate "phoney-pamphlets". Tense stand-offs lasted not for days but for weeks, and the fast-food generation realised for the first time, the virtues of fasting.
The collateral damage was for all to see like in all wars, innocents were caught in the cross-fire as they waited in the casualty wards with little help coming their way.
But finally the Generals decided it was time for a cease-fire. General Moily leading the charge of the Parliamentary brigade that was supposed to draw the road map for peace.
Though peace has prevailed ever since, borders of caste still divide the people who are in some way or another nothing but prisoners of war.
(For updates you can share with your friends, follow IBNLive on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest)
More on IBNLive Right Now
TOP NEWS
MOST SHARED
PHOTOGALLERY
