c# - ODP.NET Oracle.ManagedDataAccess causes ORA-12537 network session end of file -

Last week I walked into our neighbourhood chemist's and the shop assistant gave me a look that spoke a thousand words. He looked me straight in the face and his eyes said "treat me as an equal". He sought equality based on dignity and mutual respect, and his disarming expression, it seems, had already got him in trouble. For the Punjabi woman ahead of me complained to the chemist. She used the nice Urdu word "tamiz", which roughly means "courtesy", but in her feudal mind it really meant that the shop assistant was not sufficiently servile. When she left the chemist confided in me, "this boy is good and efficient, but he is a Dalit from Bihar and his manners seem to put off my customers." Walking back I was reminded of George Orwell's description of social equality in "Homage to Catalonia." There he describes the waiters in revolutionary Barcelona "who looked you in the face and treated you as an equal." The Indian middle classes, used to feeling superior to the lower castes, are now going through disconcerting times as Laloo Prasad and Mayawati have given the OBCs and Dalits a new sense of confidence. We are in the midst of a social revolution that has been created by the ballot box. As economic reforms deepen and prosperity becomes widespread this will only accelerate. The latest poverty figures confirm what we are seeing around us. The Planning Commission reports that people below the poverty line have declined in the nineties by ten percentage points. Somehow cold percentages don't quite capture the enormity of the achievement until one realises that 10 per cent of one billion means that 100 million people have been lifted out of poverty in less than a decade. China, incidentally, achieved more or less the same in the eighties. Nevertheless, there exists huge inequality in our society and between rich and poor nations. Leftists claim that inequality has grown in recent times and globalisation is its cause. This is plainly false. In fact, for the first time in two centuries global inequality has actually begun to decline since the 1980s, and this is mainly because living standards in China and India (to a lesser extent) have begun to rise as growth has accelerated in both countries. China has done far better than India because it has taken better advantage of globalisation. Its reforms have gone deeper, its exports have grown brilliantly, and it has received far more foreign investment. Critics of reform and globalisation--such as the powerful voices in the Congress, RSS, and CPM--should seriously learn from China before they force India to turn inwards, and condemn our poor to perpetual poverty. Soon after the chemist episode, I was at a social gathering where people were avidly discussing the six recently minted MBAs at IIM, Ahmedabad, who had won starting annual salaries of more than a crore and the average for the class of Rs. 18 lakhs was not bad either. The gathering felt righteously indignant, and people blamed liberalisation. I felt, like Justice Holmes, that their passion for equality was merely "idealised envy". These two episodes--the equality sought by the Dalit and the inequality created by the IIM graduates--left me vaguely uneasy. The cause of our discontent, I'm increasingly convinced, is that we confuse inequality with poverty. Everyone agrees that there should be equality of opportunity. This means that every child should have access to a good school, primary health care, and safe drinking water irrespective of birth and ability, and we should minimise the headstart that some children have over others based on caste, gender, or birth. This however, is very different from an equality of result or an equal standard of living that leftists seek. Absolute equality is desirable but it is not possible because it goes against human nature. Most of us would happily accept rich people or an increase in inequality among the middle classes provided it leads to even a small improvement in the conditions of the poor and the most disadvantaged. It is more important to raise the poor than worry about inequality. Economic reforms are bound to increase inequality that comes from open and free competition. But that does not mean that they will worsen the situation of the poor and the most disadvantaged. It is stupid to think that every inequality worsens the condition of the worst off. The IIT students' crores are the result of a competitive economy which in the long run will accelerate economic growth and eventually reduce the disabilities of caste, gender, and birth. Hence, economic reforms are not anti-poor, but they must be accompanied by an equal passion for reforming primary education, health and the delivery of our poverty programs.