Women's Reservation: Progressive or Regressive

Its interesting to observe the difference. The Ruling UPA alliance hails ensuring a fifty percent reservation for women in the panchayats(in villages) as its biggest achievement(http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20100518/814/tnl-in-rae-bareli-sonia-targets-maya-on.html). In the more developed part of the world 'reservations' are seen as negative impetus for human development. Did Darwin not talk about the 'survival of the fittest'. Reservations for the weaker sections in India started about sixty years ago and every ten years the target is extended for the next ten years. And to top it now we have the women's reservation. Is it a genuine intention on the part of the legislature to take the country to the higher pedestal of progress or does the 'British Raj' legacy of 'Divide and Rule' still lingers on in the minds of our opportunistic legislatures. Living from one election to another, oner day to the next, one agenda to another is that all that is the aim of politicians, seen by MK Gandhi as the true servants of people. Reservation, the appeasement politics by another name, may benefit the myopic policy-makers agenda in one election; but is it not like the termite that eats the wood and thrives on it. The sad state of affairs brings to my mind the effervescant question who's country is it anyway? Increased polarisation with every passing elections, opportunism; brain drain which some infact see as better then brain in the drain; for how long can it all continue? Can we forever afford to live with this 'chalta hai'('everything works!') attitude?