Future of India - Not so bright after all?

Kind of a follow up to my blog about the I-Day. My friends S n S had mentioned that our nation is still very young and things will take time to become right. I had sort of agreed then, considering that 60 is a young age for a nation.

But some of the events since then have again made me wonder if we will ever grow up. For starters, we have 2 states - Maharashtra and Karnataka, fighting over a town (or is it a city?) Belgaum. K'taka decided to have it's assembly session there (at a small cost of only Rs. 450 crores) just to show to the people that they care. Not to be outdone, Mah responded in kind by having it's own get together (for lack of a better term) with the Dy CM of Mah the chief guest! I don't get it - why are we internally fighting over a small city when there are tonnes of more pressing issues that need to be addressed? Why waste so much of the taxpayers' money on something which could have been conducted in Blore at probably half the cost?

The other incident, has taken the reservation obsession 5 steps further. The h'able (?) education minister of k'taka has gone ahead and closed approx 2100 schools because they were not following the govt directive of "having Kannada as the medium of instruction"!!! About 1.25 lakh students are going to suffer because of this. It gets better though - schools being run by wives (yes you read it right) of IAS and IPS officers flouting the norms have not been touched! And the piece de' resistance : all these students are to be accomodated in govt run schools! The TOI carried pics of about 4 such schools - the best one had 2 floors, 11 classrooms for students of stds 1 - 7 and it was right next to a pile of garbage bigger than the school building! About the rest, the less said the better! And if this is not taking 10 steps back for every 2 steps forward, then what is?

And yes, the govt of k'taka has taken a leaf out of mah(?) govt's book and decided to go ahead and rename Bangalore as Bengaluru! As if the change will make all the city's problems disappear! (Maybe they have Harry Potter on whom they are relying to do the magic?)

The other thing, which was probably not given much importance, is the withdrawal of truce with the ULFA (For those who don't know: it is allegedly a terrorist org in the NE ). Now that region is one of the most neglected part of the country and govt really needs to be sensitive and serious about resolving the dispute. But no, they go ahead and break the truce which could lead to a loss of even more human lives. Instead our GoI decides to fight terror by joining hands with Pak and the ISI!!!

Moving to less ridiculous stuff - a colleague was mentioning how she bought some property and had to get the registration done - she had to wait for 3 hours in scorching sun and her work didn't get done. I told her why didn't you give 100 bucks to the peon/clerk and get your work done. Her reply stunned me - She had already paid 1000 rupees as bribe and yet the concerned person didn't do her work!!

If things continue at this rate, and people don't raise their voices soon and let politicians get away with murder, I don't think the future is going to be very bright! (And this is coming from a person who generally has a positive outlook towards life in general!)

-uv.

Stop Press!!

Folks,

Please vote for ur friendly neighbourhood super hero - The Maven at:


The Daku Times

Thank You!

-uv.

p.s. regular blogs will resume shortly!

Ganpati Bappa Morya!!

Yes, I am back - in blogland and more importantly in beloved Bombay!! Landed yesterday afternoon, on the day of Ganesh Visarjan. It was surprisingly a very cloudy day and apparently had been raining since the previous night. Took an auto and in no time reached the outskirts of borivli - the entire journey uptil tat time took abt 20 odd mins; a journey which even at 1130 pm on Friday night takes 35-40 mins, such is the magnitude and importance of this ocassion!! On the way, saw the first of the Ganesh processions and got goosebumps on my hands - I was, afterall back in Bombay for the visarjan after a gap of 5 years!! The band playing, the weird ranti dance of the people and above all the idol of Ganpati bappa in the truck - simply awesome!!

On the way saw a few more processions and the last one was where a really huge idol was being carried in a truck and the truck had stopped on a flyover slope - I could not figure out how they had managed to stop the idol from rolling down! And the best part was the folks ahead were dancing (or shud it be playing/doing??) to the lezim tune!

In the evening headed towards the local Siddhivinayak temple and boy was it a nightmare! No space for the auto to move, random people becoming traffic constables and diverting traffic and soon all hope of reaching the temple was lost...we decided to return home but the auto guy got lost and we ended up bang in front of the temple!! There I witnessed (surprisingly for the first time ever) the idols being immeresed in the pond.

With respects paid to Mumbai's beloved deity, it was time to return home...while walkin and searching for an auto I got a taste of the changing times....instead of the usual drums/bands playing music, there were huge speakers on tractors/tempos blasting bhangra/pop/remmixes and people dancing like they do in discs!! And the piece de' resistance was one particular procession blasting out - hold ur breath -
Hips Don't Lie by Shakira!!!!!!! I wasn't sure if I should laugh at this or feel sad!

Anyways, the festive season has started in India and Navaratri is next up...in the meantime I shall enjoy my stay in Bombay before I return to the dull n boring work life...

Ganpati Bappa Morya, Pudchya Varshi Lavkar yaa!!

-uv.

p.s. wud recommend the daku times as well...most of the stuff is related to my frndz and our activities at da workplace, but is still worth a read :-)