Protestors

 सलाम उन लोगों को, जिनहोने उठाई अपनी आवाज़

सड़क पर आए और नारे लगाए बिना कोई आराम

COP28 दुबई तक पहुँची लिसिप्रिय कंगूजाम

बोली बंध करो जीवाशम ईंधन, १२ वर्षीय जाँबाज ।

डरे हुए लोग

जो मूह नहीं खोल पाते, वह क्या चलाएँगे ज़बान

वह उखड़ेगा परचम, जिसने बेच दिया हो ईमान?

जो सीधे खड़े नहीं हो पाते, वह कैसे तानेंगे सीना

इन लोगों के लिए, झुकने का नाम ही है जीना

डरे हुए लोगों की आँखें मीची है मंदिर के बाहर

लड़ते रहो बे उम्र उमर, शीघ्र समाप्त हो यह ग्रीष्म लहर ।  

In my most ideal life, I'd

1. be a manager
• of a Premier League football team.
2. be a hooligan,
• a local at any one of the English football clubs, know all the songs, and travel with the team.
3. bat, chew gum and not wear a helmet,
• like Vivian Richards.
4. get cast as the youngest son. 
• Michael Corleone.
5. not be named Kuntal.
• Bond, James Bond.
6. like mushy tomatoes, 
• but only when avoiding bulls in La Tomatina in Buñol.
7. have a milk mustache
• and live on a quiet farm in the Italian Alps.
8. run
• and bike and swim like a triathlete.
9. work remotely
• on clever things on an Apple laptop.
10. fight injustice 
• by telling bullies over the phone "you'll hear from my lawyer."
11. have no quiet celebrations
• and do dandiya on every Indian festival.
12. say "kai po chhe" every Sankrant,
• when flying a kite strung with glass-covered manja.
13. be witty
• and get published in The New Yorker as a short story writer.
14. be a purveyor of fine writing instruments
• and write cursive as neatly as my dad would, with a smooth Hero fountain pen.

Standardized tests, affirmative action and government jobs

 The elite colleges of the country have deviously contrived to keep their admission policies beyond scrutiny by lumping standardized tests with affirmative action. They are, in fact, separate and you can have both in place. Affirmative action must continue and be given a growing proportion of admission spots until there is meaningful race equality. For all the spots, standardized tests must be one of the inputs. The final admitted class must mirror the racial distribution of scores on standardized tests.

Let's work through some examples of the proposal, in parts

Growing proportion of affirmative action spots

1. Say the percentage of affirmative action spots is 5% today. In the next 5 years, it must change to 50%. 5 years because corrective action requires immediacy, otherwise it becomes like the Brown vs the Education board - the students who petitioned did not benefit from desegregation. 50% because meaningful change requires substantial numbers.

Standardized tests

1. From personal experience with GRE, and my son's experience with SAT, I can say that you can prepare very well just with free material. I studied from an old book that was used by my friend and my son studied off the ETS website. ETS is the administrator for the tests. Public libraries have test prep books.
2. Within the affirmative action spots, students with the highest scores should be preferred.
3. Say the race distribution of the highest quartile is: 30% A, 30% B, 40% C, then even after all factors such as extracurricular activities have been considered, the final admitted class should have the same distribution of races.

Government jobs

Finally, the government can do more in ensuring that diversity of thought is engrained in every institution of the country. There is no reason that the Secretary of the Treasury comes from Goldman Sachs, the head of the Federal Reserve comes from Harvard and the Supreme Court Judges come from Yale.

I think socially aware companies such as Apple should withdraw its Amicus Brief here:

Documents Archive - Harvard Admissions Lawsuit

legal_-_filing_-_200521_-_businesses_-_2020.05.21-16_brief_for_amici_curiae_amgen_et_al_.pdf (harvard.edu)