Saturday, October 03, 2015

Is India the most mysterious country?

Our most esteemed Chief Minister of Delhi has mocked the Prime Minister on his Swachh Bharat Mission saying," Singing songs doesn't help, nor does a photo-op of you cleaning streets, once a year." Wow! It is hard to imagine the Chief Minister taking pride in his city being one of the dirtiest cities in the world, with broken roads, which have not been repaired for ages, endless traffic jams everywhere, because there is not one traffic policeman to be seen anywhere, and a dengue epidemic killing hundreds of people, because drains were not cleaned in time so water stagnated. Delhi is the capital city. Imagine what foreigners think of us when they see the filth all around. Perhaps, when he watches news on television he should see roads of capitals of other countries and hang his head in shame, instead of being proud. If he did his job he would not need to spend Rs 220 million on ads to glorify himself. Meanwhile, the Meteorological Department is proud that the monsoon has been deficient by 14% this year. Has it? They are counting rainfall from 1 June and disregarding the rains that came in April and May. The temperature in Delhi reaches 45-46 Celsius in May-June every year but this year it stayed at around 40 Celsius because of periodic showers. Sure, there were deficiencies in some areas, particularly in Karnataka, interior Maharashtra, in Konkan region and parts of Gujarat, while there were floods in Assam. Would it not be better to lay pipes to divert flood waters to deficient areas so that the water does not flow into the sea? Cheap and easy. The reason why IMD is proud of sparse rainfall is because a private company, Skymet had predicted normal to excess rainfall this year. However, the last word has not been said as yet. Storm systems are forming in both the Arabian Sea, off the coast of Kerala, and in the Bay of Bengal, off the coast of Tamil Nadu, and if these storms converge over peninsular India all the deficient areas could end up with excess rainfall. Patels in Gujarat have been agitating to be included in the Other Backward Castes category so that they can avail of reservations in government jobs and institutions of higher learning. The total pie being limited to 50% other groups are resisting. So, one bright fellow has recommended that there should be 100% reservation, with every caste benefiting according to their proportion of the population. What happens if there are 10 seats and 20 different castes in one area? Imagine the number of court cases. Truckers have gone on strike against paying toll. They are demanding a one time tax on all vehicles,, which makes sense because the toll system is utterly corrupt. Companies start charging toll before beginning construction, have defaulted on bank loans and cheat the government by not reporting all vehicles passing through. Naturally, politicians and civil servants must be benefiting somewhere. Nothing in India is as it appears to be, is it?

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