The ABC of Ayodhya

Source: The Internet

A celebration of slavery

A recent campaign by Arindam Chaudhuri (of IIPM) about his latest article on the Common Wealth Games interested me and took me to his blog. The article is about Indians creating hype around the CWG and that we should stop participating in such lavish games.

In a country like India where we cannot provide the basic necessities of life to lakhs of people across the country - is there a need of spending Rs. 70, 000 Cr on a 11-day event? I am sure many would have been happy, at least, if the money was genuinely spent on the games, but we know what has happened to it, which is a different story in itself. Even the central government did not show much interest though it involved so much money.

In terms of expenditure, Rs. 70, 000 Cr is a whopping amount compared to the 1951 and 1982 Asian Games for which the expenditure was only Rs. 5cr and Rs. 55cr respectively. Yes, there has been inflation over the decades but this is mind boggling. The amount spent on the games is a lot more than the yearly food budget of the country.

Arindam says in his article (complete article here) that these games are a celebration of our slavery under and British Empire and of all the nations that were under the colonial rule. Frankly speaking, they are. Is there a need for any of the erstwhile colonies to celebrate their centuries of oppression?

Amazingly this year, the celebration of slavery started a day after Bapu’s birth anniversary.

 

Also read

Arindam’s article on CWG

Was IIPM offering an MBA degree that nobody would recognize? – By Vir Sanghvi

Food for thought: I hail from India…

 

 

I hail from India - the country which ranks at 66 among 88 in the Global Hunger Index. A nation whose child malnourishment record is worse than that of sub-Saharan Africa. A country now ranking 134 in the United Nations Human Development Index below Bhutan and Laos.

Here, issues of grave national concern get only a couple of stories spanning a modest few inches across three or four columns in newspapers but full pages are devoted to deaths of fashion models.

Here, 836 million Indians (77 per cent of the population) live on Rs. 20 a day or less. (Report by National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector)

Here, the authorities say that ‘there-is-no-money’ to feed the hungry while the country spends Rs. 10,000 crore on a new airport, more than Rs. 40,000 crore for the Commonwealth Games, Rs. 60,000 crore happily lost in the spectrum scam, Rs. 500,000 crore in write-offs under just three heads for the super-rich and the corporate sector in the current government budget. Here, funds for the hungry are hard to come by.

Economists estimate that if rice/wheat were made available to all Indians at Rs. 3 a kilo, it would add Rs.84,399 crore to the food subsidy in coming budgets. That's about one-sixth of the tax write-offs for the wealthy in this year's budget. (Other estimates place the added expenditure each year at no more than Rs. 45,000 crore).

It is the same country that has 49 dollar billionaires in the Forbes list.

I hail from India, the land of the Mahatma.

(Excerpted from (a must read article) Food security — of APL, BPL & IPL by P. Sainath of The Hindu)

The Indian Jawan

These are few stories told by the jawans in the Indian paramilitary forces.

Story 1

“I spent one third of my 20 years in the CRPF just travelling. Of these 20 years, I could spend only three years with my children. I took medical leave to get married. I could only reach my village five days after I received news of my father passing away. I am the eldest in my family but I couldn’t even perform the last rites. I couldn’t attend three of my four sisters’ marriages. I had to arrange a separate house for my wife and kids after my father’s death because my brother threw them out from the joint family house. But if you take any of these problems to your officers, they just shoo you away.”

Story 2

A jawan who has spent 16 years in the CRPF — six in Jammu and Kashmir, three in Assam, three in Tripura, and three in Manipur. Too scared to talk at the CRPF headquarters, he calls late at night to share his story. During a posting in Srinagar, he was charged with indiscipline and lost 15 days of pay for daring to complain about inedible food and cockroaches in his dal. When he fell sick in Tripura, he couldn’t get a car to get to hospital. “I had to hire a jeep,” says he. “Only if 15-20 constables fall sick and need a car together, there’s a chance of us getting it. Otherwise the cars are busy ferrying the officers’ children. This country got independence in 1947, but we still live like slaves. Our officers order us to do unauthorized things; we have no right to express ourselves. They tell us to barge into people’s homes and pick up bricks and cement and construct our quarters. They pocket lakhs of welfare money; they take commissions from ration shops.

We pay Rs 1,326 per month for food. The bills are for A-grade rations but we get C-grade food. The commander is like the king of a battalion. He runs it the way he wants. As a driver, I am sent all the time for unauthorized pick ups. All the risk of being caught is on me. You live under so much pressure, you either shoot yourself or shoot someone else. I am just waiting to complete 20 years so I can get a part of my pension and then I’ll quit."

Story 3

One retired jawan remembers a tortuous journey in 2004 that stretched 8,000 kilometers over two months as the Home Ministry ordered his company like a pawn to move from Agartala to Gujarat via Bangladesh, Delhi, Kashmir and back to Agartala. Crowded trains, no reservations, no accommodations, no sense of why they were being deployed anywhere, and, most of all — no sense of respect. “I have fought insurgents for 20 years,” says the jawan bitterly, “but this one journey showed me my standing in my country’s eyes. How can you fool around with so many human beings on the pretext of an emergency situation?” Other jawans speak of being summoned to places for six months and being asked to stay for six years.

Read the full article here: Soldiers of Misfortune

Also read ‘My patriotism is dead’ & ‘We felt like pawns’ on the same page.