The annual rate of increase in the country’s total headcount currently seems to have come down significantly compared to the years some two decades ago. The rate of yearly addition to the mass of earlier year(s) and the actual increment of more than one crore every year need to be reckoned together for a clear understanding of the phenomenon of population explosion, a term occasionally heard in public domain. The numbers of the country’s diverse sections based on faiths and creeds they are known to follow and wish to be identified under those faiths, castes as revealed by their personal names, ethnicity, regions that host them egging them to be called sons-of-the-soil, lingo spoken (including those without script) and so on, going by the demographic picture sourced to official data, sets a scenario in which some all-too-familiar sections pro-actively increase their numbers resulting in a steadily rising proportion of people in the total headcount. This feature is on expected lines in the backdrop of vociferous clamour for favoured treatment for jobs in the Government as well as plum posts in many establishments and berths in the Cabinets of State Governments as in Karnataka.
Senior citizens can vouch for times when decisions were made by powers that be, like in the period of monarchy in the erstwhile Mysore State, in the matter of identifying persons for key positions in administration, not to forget the posts of Professors and Vice-Chancellors of the Universities, based on their credentials, irrespective of other aforementioned classifications, much to the delight of society of those days. Today’s dispensation is a far cry from that of the past.
