I see an overpowering optimism driving India, the Startup India initiative has picked up and is the biggest such movement in the world. Recently the Asia head of a leading IT company told me that earlier I used to go to IIT for campus selection and the toppers would run to us for jobs now when we go they say sorry we want to start our own company we want to become job givers and not job seekers” said Union Minister holding Law and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad. He was speaking at the launch of the book “Lutyens’ Maverick – Ground Realities, Hard Choices and Tomorrow’s India” at New Delhi’s Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, the book is writen by former Member of Parliament Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda.
He identified democracy as one of India’s biggest strengths describing it as something that has within itself a self correcting mechanism “There was certain political forces in the North East and Southern India who wanted to move away from India when people gave them power they never talked of alienating away from India because when you come to power with a popular mandate with it comes responsibility therefore. This is one reason why India’s democracy is widely appreciated overseas.”
Prasad observed that a large number of people are working passionately to transform India at the grassroots and lamented that these people do not get the due credit “This is a new India where a large number of people, driven by their passion are working ceaselessly to transform India for the better the problem is that in Lutyens’ Delhi their voice is rarely heard what Jay has done in many of his writing is to identify these people.”
Regarding the issue of 10 per cent reservation for economically week in the general category he said that the Supreme Court has never questioned the power of the parliament to implement reservation “In the Indira Sahni case the Supreme Court had deemed that reservation cannot be given to those who are not educationally and socially backward hence we are coming up with a Constitutional Amendment not a legal amendment. If you go through all the judgments of the Supreme Court they have never questioned the power of the Parliament to come up with reservation.
