WEDNESDAY 15 FEBRUARY 2012

| OPINION |9

NEWS UPDATES

Money is not the problem

henever authorities are asked to explain lack of development, they normally lament lack of funds. But even areas sanctioned more money than they need sometimes go without development. A case in point is three districts of Uttar Pradesh, once hotbeds of Maoists: Sonbhadra, Chandauli, and Mirzapur, says The Times of India. Though no major Naxal activity has been reported from the region since 2004 Naugarh landmine blast, the To fetch a pail of (contaminated) initial development has stopped. Following the 2004 incident, agwater. gressive policing pushed back the Naxals, and the State and the Central governments have given huge funds for the development of the region. But utilization of the funds under several schemes, primarily the Special Infrastructure Scheme (SIS) and Security-Related Expenditure (SRE) has been uneven. The condition of the poor has become more pitiable while the wealth of immigrants has increased. The disparity is more visible in Sonbhadra; while localities housing the immigrant population show signs of prosperity, those of original locals are intolerable. This district has four Assembly segments. Barring Renukoot, where industrial development has generated jobs for locals, the other three are underdeveloped. Ghorawal, where crusher units make up its industry, is known for tomato cultivation. But sometimes tomato growers have had to junk huge quantities when there is surplus yield. Ramjanam, a cultivator, says: For many years we have been demanding food processing units that can help increase farmers earnings and avoid wastage of tomato. But no attention has been paid. Robertsganj, the district headquarters and a core Maoist zone, lacks both higher and technical educational facilities and specialty hospitals. Power plants in Obra Assembly constituency segment electrify many parts of the State but locals reel under power crisis. Roads are in a pitiable state and pollution is sky-high: There is always a dust haze from the mines and crusher units and ash and smoke from power plant chimneys. Villagers get drinking water from the Rihand dam, but chemical disposal has polluted the water. Amarnath, a Robertsganj resident, says: Crisis of water and the compulsion of consuming polluted water are not limited to Obra, Renukoot and Duddhi; even residents of Robertsganj suffer badly. The Kanhar dam project is in its 35th year of construction. Mirzapurs famed ceramic pottery and carpet industry is in decay. Chunars over 200 pottery units have dwindled to a single unit. Increasing cost of coal and poor valuation of our products led to the closure of the units, say Ashok and Santosh Prajapati, who now make plaster-of-Paris idols to earn their livelihood. Barring the one unit, ceramic pottery business has shifted to Khurja.

A very long innings!

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campaigned against it and ot many people received the support of may remember the large sections of the British timeless cricket media. The monarchybetween England and bashers maintained that the South Africa which was inroyal family had become a conclusive even after 10 huge white elephant. It days at Durban. It was amassed a vast fortune, 1939; war clouds had gathpossessed tracts of arable ered and the last ship to sail land and precious urban to England was ready. Rereal estate but did not pay grettably, the endless Test adequate taxes. The antihad to end and the English monarchy movement team boarded the ship and V Gangadhar ebbed and flowed, but it returned home to play a was certain that despite enjoying a cerdifferent, more dangerous, game. Ten days; 60 years. There is a lot of dif- tain kind of charisma its members did ference. But one was a game, the other not evoke the same kind of public supthe duration of a monarchy. On February port as before. The world was changing fast; so did 6, 1952, while on a tour of Kenya, Princess Elizabeth learnt that her father the fortunes of many nations. England and the King of England, George VI, was no longer the empire where the sun had died in his sleep and that she suc- never set. The nation had peaked under ceeded him. There could not be any the leadership of war-time Prime Minisdelay. Flying back home, she assumed ter Winston Churchill, when, exhibiting her official duties though her official coronation was in June 1953. BRITAIN , LED BY A It turned out to be a memorable year for England. It welcomed a new, young SUCCESSION OF WEAK Queen. To greet her there was a famous Ashes cricket victory after 20 years AND OVER-AMBITIOUS against Australia when Len Huttons PRIME MINISTERS, Englishmen defeated the enemies Australia, led by Lindsay Hassett at the Oval, STEADILY LOST England. There was one more feather in the English cap. The British Everest ex- GROUND EVERYWHERE pedition, led by Sir John Hunt, conquered the Mount Everest. Two of its amazing valour, resilience and a sense of members, New Zealands Edmund sacrifice, it fiercely resisted and finally Hillary and the Nepalese Sherpa, Tenz- won the war against Germany and ing Norgay, stood on top of the summit, Japan. But the war effort took a severe toll, and the British economy was among the first human beings to do so. Did the young Queen know that her the last to recover . War hero Sir Winreign would go on for more than 60 years ston was not needed any more by the and she would not step down for reasons British people as his Conservative Party best known to herself ? One of her prede- was defeated in the general elections after cessors, Queen Victoria, had ruled for a the War. Finally, the bitter truth dawned; longer period. Elizabeth II married the Britain was no longer a world power. The new world order was led by the dashing Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh; the couple had three sons and US, with nations like Germany and a daughter. What more could England Japan, boasting of fast-developing and its royal family ask for? Yet Queen economies. Britain , led by a succession Elizabeth continued her long reign at a of weak and over-ambitious Prime Mintime when the existence of the monarchy isters, steadily lost ground everywhere. was increasingly questioned, not only in Clement Attlee was a good man but most of the democratic world but even in lacked dynamism. Anthony Edens colonial arrogance led England. There were often noisy outbursts against monarchy; political parties to the war against Egypt and the loss of Suez Canal. The Harold MacMillan government was overthrown due to the scandals created by the involvement of one of its senior ministers with high class call girls. Edward Heath, Harold Wilson, Alec Douglas Hume were good men who maintained the status quo but could not go beyond that. The British Queen had no direct control over her government. But Elizabeth II, though unhappy at the steady decline of Great Britain, carried out her largely ceremonial duties splendidly and was a popular ambassador throughout the world. She presided over the Commonwealth summit with dignity, undertook State visits to almost every country and built upon the special relationship with the US. Of course, there were plenty of hints that Her Majesty did not quite like or approve of a certain Prime Minister, particularly Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher who acted on many occasions as though the Queen did not exist. Thatchers arrogance, her vengeful attitude towards the working class and brutal suppression of trade unions would not have gone down well with the Queen. There was no warmth in their exchanges, but, of course, they had to tolerate each other. More disturbing to Queen Elizabeth was the growing anti-royal feeling even within the United Kingdom. Surprisingly, the Queens personal popularity did not decline, but as one scandal after another broke out about the royal family, Buckingham Palace became the hotbed for media leaks and rumours. The Queens sister, Princess Margaret, thwarted in a love affair, entered into an unhappy marriage which broke up; it led to all sorts of affairs with younger men. The antics of Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, after her divorce from Prince Andrew were splashed all over the tabloid media resulting in her being not invited for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton (now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge). The Queens only daughter, Princess Royal Anne, who always preferred horses to human beings also divorced her husband. These were testing times for Queen Elizabeth, but the worst period was the break-up of the marriage between Prince Charles and Lady Diana which turned

Queen Elizabeth II

out to be crude but tragic melodrama. The Prince, already in love with a divorced woman (Camilla Parker-Bowles) had no place in his life for the vivacious Diana who became a huge public favourite. But a marriage with three people did not work. Diana went to town with details of her affairs and it was the lowest moment for the British monarchy. Yet, when the princess died in a Paris car crash, the royal family first stood aloof. But Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted that Diana should have a State funeral. As flowers mounted outside Buckingham Palace the mood of the British people clearly indicated that Diana was their favourite and not members of the royal family. Queen Elizabeth survived these tough days too. Obviously, it made her all the more determined she would not abdicate in favour of her son Charles. There were clear indications that the next king of England would be Prince William. But when that would happen was anybodys guess; for the time being, the 85-year-old monarch appeared to be going strong. There was still a lot of life in the ole girl.

Writing on the wall

he incident at Chennai School when an IX class student stabbed his teacher to death does not come as a surprise. In fact, it was long due. It is the writing on the wall and we never cared to read it. Only, we are shocked about it rather belatedly. Here only three parallels: Willie Hayes, a student of North Central College, Naperville, stabbed Shaun Wild, a North Central College alumnus; she died at Frankies Blue Room; a 17year-old Korean student has been arrested for stabbing his teacher in the back with a knife as he wrote on a whiteboard during a class at an Auckland high school; In Pittsburgh North Side Neighbourhood a student at Clayton Academy stabbed the teacher with a pencil. She was admitted into the hospital. The police have charged a 14-year-old student for allegedly stabbing a teacher. This boy must have had all the inspiration of his mates in another country, while stage-managing the attack, which must have been very emotional to start with, but very thrilling and breathtaking to accomplish. Parents and elders of this generation had this coming. It is easy to brush it aside as a consequence of defective parenting, teaching and other societal and cultural mores. The other day, I was on a flight from Hyderabad to Vizag. A mother was sitting next to me with a 2- year-old child in her lap. During the entire journey I heard her speaking to him only in English. No, you should not, you are my darling, mother is unhappy etc; not a single word in her mother tongue. Since when have we stopped talking to our children about all the good things in life? I visited a play school run by Telugu teachers. They teach Clap your hands, clap your hands, listen to the music and clap your hands. What is this music? Not of Jesus Christ, at least. In my early childhood, poor mothers and teachers used to teach us sriramuni dayachetanu. Which has better music, more importantly better sense and the import of it all survived 72 years with me. The Western connotation teaches us something clinically right, but emotionally bankrupt. Our peers imported everything good for that age and can carry the thought further. But who cares? Since when have we forgotten to tell our children Acharya devobhava. For several learned intellectuals today, this may sound like fundamental jargon. God, a symbol of ulterior faith, unfortunately has been hijacked by some political parties, and several others shelved everything that concerned God, in the name of fundamentalism and politics. This culture was conceived by our an-

cestors, intertwining everything with God, not knowing that there would be a day when a modern man could reject God altogether for wrong reasons and look elsewhere for lasting values. The first-ever rhyme sung by a mother (almost all the mothers in the past knew this rhyme, while feeding their children) Chandamama rave, jabilli rave was bestowed on them by Padakavitapitamaha Tallapaka Annamachrya some 650 years back! How many children remember clap and clap and clap in their next age group? It is total crap and they will soon know it. A child today is made to understand that his mother will be happy if he speaks in English, and anything that he does to make her happy will be his idea of achievement. He will certainly imbibe all that pleases her and make her proud. Unfortunately, she does not know what to filter in the mindless orgies of the Western cultures

money he can make and judge the status by their ability to circumvent or rob the other persons opportunity. Cold commercialization has eroded our values. Our ethics are drooping to a new low each day. We watch women battering their children, abandoning them as rotten vegetables, acid-throwing sycophants and youth swayed by short-term results and sensationalism; boys resorting to selfstyled revenges like acid-throwing. Our leaders end up in jails each day, bully the system, and lie unabashedly about their ill-gotten fortunes. We have legislators raising cudgels in the very temples of democracy; aged ministers having affairs with married women and murdering them. Though this may sound simplistic to relate this behavior to the influence of our films and TV soaps playing to the galleries with violence and bad taste, one cannot deny their share. Our generation has completely eroded the future of our children; 70 years hence, we are going to hand over this planet as a barren desert to posterity. The youth today are restless; they are seething with pain at this mindless loot. They were not taught

Future of Indian polity: Bright or bleak?

ill the future of Indian politics be better than its past has been and its present is? Indians hope it will be, though, for the life of them, they know not how. That is a tribute to the Indian morale, which is a law unto itself, even when the news is tough on all fronts. One moment, conventional wisdom seems absolutely adamant that there Ramakrishna Hegde is nothing for the countrys A man of vision political future, what with elected representatives of the people watching porn clips on their mobiles; the next moment, however, without the least suggestion of a raised eyebrow, conventional wisdom reports that all will be well soon and there is nothing to worry about. The latter trend owes not a little to men of vision like the late, unlamented, Mr. Ramakrishna Hegde, inveterate optimists who kept people in heart at a time when their morale was about to sag. Hegde once suggested that the Congress head a coalition of secular parties so that, by the next general election, there might be the long overdue political polarization. At its conclave near Bangalore, however, the Janata Dal declared pompously that Hegdes view did not reflect the partys policy, as though it had ever had one on anything. So seasoned a leader as L K Advani was so rattled by the suggestion as to tell a press conference that there would be few takers for the thesis even in Hegdes own party, and that the BJP was anyway set to come to power at the Centre the following year. Yes, indeed, his prediction came true in 1996, but why should Hegdes view have given the goose-pimples to that party if it had been so sure of victory? Advani must have known that the BJP had emerged as the second largest party in Bihar and Karnataka because there were far too many secular parties in the fray for the voter to decide easily. If, instead, the voter had had a clear choice between two candidates, one backed by all secular parties and the other by the BJP, the choice would have been rather obvious. It was possibly the prospect of such a clear choice that sent a chill down the spine of the BJP. The then Congress spokesperson Gadgil was not taken seriously when he ruled out the possibility of a coalition government at the Centre, and said that the party would form a government of its own after the next general elections. After all, according to him, the Congress was a natural party of government! In the process, however, he gave many hostages to fortune. For one thing, the natural party of government, a cock-of-the-walk all along, had overnight found itself reduced to a wistful onlooker in 1977 and 1989, and even in 1991 it had formed government with a wafer-thin majority. For another, Hegde was merely thinking aloud; starting a hare, as it were, and not offering solutions. Neither did he, even by implication, refer to the possible outcome of the then ensuing parliamentary elections; he talked

HEGDE WAS MERELY THINKING ALOUD; STARTING A HARE, AS IT WERE, AND NOT OFFERING SOLUTIONS. NEITHER DID HE, EVEN BY IMPLICATION, REFER TO THE POSSIBLE OUTCOME OF THE THEN ENSUING PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS; HE TALKED OF THAT TIME
of that time. For yet another, the performance of the Congress in the Assembly elections held just a few months earlier in several States would seem to reinforce the need for secular consolidation. If that could begin with a Congress-led coalition government at that stage, the average voter would have understood by the time of the next general election that the choice before him/her was clear and obvious. After all, the electorate has always known as much as any political party that there could no longer be one great Augean accusation which would clear everything up and restore society to a state of primal grace; neither has there been any leader in recent times who could be regarded even as a smudged facsimile of Nehru. Finally, while all this cacophony may have caused discomfort to the then Prime minister PV Narasimha Rao, he was far too astute not to know that his garroting rope was the fickleness of most of his followers, including the avowed ones, who would be the first to desert him if ever the chips were down. For instance, when Bal Thackeray announced that the morning after he had been sworn in Union Minister for Health, A R Antulay had rung him up to say that he was Thackerays ambassador in Delhi, the nation was inclined to dismiss it as the boast of a super egotist and expected Antulay to issue a denial. But the Minister merely compounded his servility to the pinchbeck Hitler through his subsequent explanation that he had, thereby, only sought to convey to the people of Maharashtra that he was the ambassador of the whole State! By the way, had Maharashtra seceded from the Indian Union? Antulay was far too highly educated a person not to know that while an ambassador represented one country in another, a Union Minister represented the whole country, not just his home-State. Then where was the need for him to send such an atrocious message to one whose hands were stained with the blood of thousands of innocent people? If one even today views Gadgils remarks in the light of these facts and developments, one cannot help concluding that, notwithstanding all that he said the party was doing or was planning to do, to project a better image before the nation, all that Congress leaders, as also those of almost every other party, are engaged in is a discreet search for a vote of confidence in their politics, a matter of grandiose designs their commitment to which needs frequent reinforcement and ratification.

SINCE WHEN HAVE WE FORGOTTEN TO TELL OUR CHILDREN ACHARYA DEVOBHAVA? FOR SEVERAL INTELLECTUALS TODAY, THIS MAY SOUND LIKE FUNDAMENTALIST JARGON
which Westerners themselves are struggling to come out of. He imbibes everything that comes his way. Our culture has long lost its way in the mad pursuit of career-oriented accomplishments and not value-based education. Some highly educated women were talking on a TV channel after the stabbing incident, that each school must have a person for emotional counseling. Emotional counselling at school level! Not even one person could diagnose the real malady. Software icon N R Narayana Murthy lamented that the number of role models that our youngsters can look up to today is decreasing. How many people in our public life can you be proud of for their honesty, courage, commitment and hard work? he asked. Without doubt, these are the products of clap your hands; clap your hands culture. There is a saying in the Bhagavad Gita: Yadyadacharati Shreshtaha As the elders of a community stride, so will their followers be. But, sadly, we have to impress on our very own institutions (let alone Siberian) that the Bhagavad Gita is a universal text with time-tested values. We have forfeited our depth of thought, and the lasting values that were handed over to us down ages for the sake of livelihood and careers. We have become wiser and our goals are essentially profit-oriented. We assess each persons success by the amount of how they could ventilate their anger. Commit suicide? Yes, they are unfortunately rudderless. Did we hear of anybody committing suicide some 40 years back for not getting enough marks? They are nervous. They cannot stand the mediocrity because they were condemned for no fault of theirs. They can see that they were led by rogues. How do they react? When a teacher reprimands his or her ward for his poor performance, what can he do? He can checkmate the teacher. The so-called Western culture, which was handed over to him proudly in his early childhood, courtesy his parents and elders, threw many solutions to him. He has no reason to judge culpability. He knew only clap your hands, clap your hands culture. Nobody taught him Acharya devobhava. He stabbed his teacher, chasing her, not once but seven times. He has no remorse. He does not even know and has not been told that a teacher is next to his parents. For the heinous crime committed by this 9th class student, strict punishment should be meted out, no doubt. But not to that poor lad. But to you, me and to all of us who has a major share in this crime, because he is merely the face of the collective failure of society. We are improvising it by importing and imparting this pseudo-culture each day to our children. He is a criminal by default, while we have all committed the crime.