I was directed to this piece of news by my friend Amit Varma, who blogs.
The news goes like this:
The Gandhi Monument Council, headquartered in the United States of America, has approached Mayors of 185 cities in 39 countries to name a major street after Mahatma Gandhi .
The cities contacted included hugely-populated ones like Seoul (peopled by over 10 million), Tokyo, New York and London, to sparsely populated ones like Eschen (in Liechtenstein, with a population of about 4,000), Valletta (Malta), Encamp (Andorra), Dudelange (Luxembourg).
This is HORRIBLE!
The Gandhian vision has nothing to do with cities, towns and their markets, without which human beings cannot survive.
Rather, the Gandhian vision is about "self-sufficient village economies" wherein there is no exchange: we spin our own yarn on our own charkhas, weave our own khadi cloth, grow our own crops and eat them, and have nothing to do with the outside world.
Ironically for the Gandhi Monument Council, it is ONLY because of this STUPID VISION that there are NO ROADS IN INDIA.
The Gandhian Planners never thought that villagers need transportation links to actual physical markets in cities and towns in order to do what human beings alone can do - which is, TRADE.
NO URBAN THOROUGHFARE SHOULD BE NAMED AFTER GANDHI.
Yes, straggly unpaved roads in remote villages can - and MUST - be named after this GREAT ENEMY OF ROADS!
And there is MORE!
All Mayors around the world should note that the Gandhian vision has NOTHING to do with MAYORS.
The Gandhian Utopia is of little village republics run by "village elders" - the panchayati raj bullshit.
Let the Gaon Pradhan name his straggly unpaved kuttcha road after the Mahatma.
No MAYOR (or Buergermeister!) should do this.
I must confess that I wrote this after a mighty shot of RUM.
Gandhi was an enemy of this fuel too!
I wonder what he would have thought about the two "decent smokes" I had before that.
Or the few beers I am going for right now!
As Mr. Knopfler put it: I Need Very Heavy Fuel.
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ReplyDeleteTalking of Panchayats and talking of rum, you might be interested to see what the Mahila Mandals of some Panchayats are up to. Check out the article called "Heady Row" in the latest issue of India Today at http://indiatoday.digitaltoday.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19628&Itemid=1&issueid=79§ionid=3&page=in&latn=2&limit=1&limitstart=1
ReplyDeleteHave copy pasted the text below in case the link disappears. Isn't it weird???
HEADY ROW
Rohtang women are pushing for local brew
Tribal women in the Rohtang region are protesting the sale of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) since it casts a bad influence on the men, particularly the youth.
IMFL has pushed down sales of the local chhang and ara, mostly brewed by local women. “IMFL has deprived women of their income from traditional brews,” says Ram Lal Markanda, BJP MLA from Lahaul-Spiti.
Mahila Mandals of 15 panchayats have imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on anyone drinking IMFL.
—Ramesh Vinayak
I was once in Karsog in Himachal. Beer (brewed in nearby Solan) was 100 rupees. And "country liquor" was 70 rupees a bottle. So the local people drank what the village women made - and it was called "Bapu Brand"! And I drank "Bapu Brand" too during my vacation there.
ReplyDeleteActually, the people of Porbandar addressed their Raja as "Bapu". Gandhi's father was the Dewan of the Raja. The name "bapu" was borrowed by Gandhi from a good king.
Porbandar is a trading city of old, situated on the coast. It is not a "self-sufficient village."
"Bapu Brand". Amazing. Could have been called "the father of the intoxication". :-)
ReplyDeleteIn my comment, I was referring to the Panchayats claiming that IMFL is a bad influence on youth. And the stated reason for that being that it was depriving women of their income from local brews. Rather illogical, isn't it?
Even at a Panchayat level, we now have fines and tariffs. Take this logic to its extreme and sometime in the future each village will fine anyone using products made in the neighbouring village. And Bapu will be happy.
On a different note, the organisation is called "Gandhi Monument Council". One is thinking maybe they think that after naming roads, the cities will ask them for Gandhi statues to put up. That's where they will make some money, eh? This is a good business strategy, no.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the name should be Gandhi Monument Company. And after Mahatma Gandhi, they can diversify into Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi...