Hello Goanetters,
Whoever this 'info guy' is; what is stated is the Ugly Unpalatable Facts,
undisputed.
All that I want to add is this:
IT'S THE 'rotten and primitive' CULTURE, DAMN IT!
Complete Reform of this dirty Culture is required; nothing less will help!
I suggest Limited Time Rule under 'EMERGENCY' powers like during Indira
Ghandhi's time as PM.
More on this later, under a new Headiline.
Nascy Caldeira
Melbourne, Down Under.
----- Original Message ----
From: Info <i...@comma.in>
Monday, November 16, 2009
Seeing Through the Potemkin State
Within seconds of landing, the harsh reality hits you between the eyes. The
airport
is shoddy, grimy and smelly. To exit is to confront a menacing crowd of people,
straining at the barricades: vast numbers of drivers pushing and shoving;
swarms of
noisy families come to receive their near and dear ones; and various other
categories teeming around the crumbling arrival terminal. True, such crowds
gather
at arrival terminals everywhere in the world but at Indian airports it adds
another
dimension to the chaos that reigns supreme.
Step outside and it is quickly evident there is no system to smooth the way for
arriving passengers. You are left on your own to dodge honking and swerving
cars
torturing the driveway; and everywhere, smoke and fumes and rubble.
However, if you are an anointed “VIP,” as India’s public servants are called,
you
are whisked away through a plush private terminal to a private parking lot and
into
your car, all within minutes. Public servants don’t even wait for their bags;
there
are flunkies to retrieve them and deliver them to your house along the VIP
route
into Lutyens Delhi of the smooth, wide, tree-lined boulevards with flowering
rotaries, manicured parks and expansive villas.
In India, you can have a top job or a fortune as a businessman but unless you
are in
the VIP zone of the cities and towns, you may not have reliable electric power,
adequate water supply and any sanitation at all. Those who can afford it make
their
private arrangements; the rest suffer. Just in recent days, when it rained
consecutively for two days, the capital was submerged. Questioned, a VIP
dismissed
the water logging and the traffic jams as an act of nature, a result of the
heavy
rains; he seemed criminally unaware of the problems people faced getting around
the
city. In his Lutyens Delhi, there is no flooding, light traffic and your
workplace
is but a pleasant drive of a few minutes.
This disparate order makes the chaos of India not just irksome but menacing. It
is
as though the system milks the ordinary individual who has a job or business to
provide for the VIP. The random but deadly civil disturbances that plague India
are
spontaneous expressions of civic anger against the system that barely makes
room for
the middle class, leave alone marginal groups.
In huge swathes of India, the most deprived people have fallen sway to Maoist
ideology and have taken to violence. No political party, not the hydra-headed
government agencies, not the self-righteous NGOs can control them. Such civil
violence will increase in frequency and scope as more and more citizens begin
to see
the disparity: not just the gap between rich and poor but between the
privileged and
the rest.
You don’t have to look too hard to see beyond the Potemkin mirage:
dysfunctional
highways and airports; garbage strewn cities and hapless villages; deadly
traffic
and pervasive pollution; the poverty of civic values and the sheer indignity of
the
human condition.
The slogan “Incredible India!” cuts both ways: one, the Potemkin way that the
government intended; two, it is incredible that a modern 21st century democracy
with
one of the fastest growing economies in the world is in such a shambles.
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