Ground Zero, Yesterday

Yesterday, I wrote about the "knowledge deficit" in the IAS man heading the civilian administration on Ground Zero, here in Hassan, Karnataka. Today, as I surfed the newspapers, I found this interesting report in Mint: That the central ministry of education has appointed a 4-member committee to look into higher education. This committee is headed by an IAS officer. Should these bureaucRATS be allowed to infect young minds with "socialist" ideas and ideals? A question, I assure you, of mere "academic interest" only.

But let me tell you about yesterday, when I visited two of the most fantastic old South Indian temples I have ever seen - and I have seen most of them, in Tamil Nadu, in Andhra Pradesh, and even in Orissa - Konarak and Jagannath Puri. I have recently visited Hampi. But these temples at Belur and Halebid are something else. They are quite close to each other, about 40 kms out of Hassan.

The journey was quite interesting. The landscape was incredibly beautiful: undulating terrain, here and there a small hill, a water body here, another water body there. Picture post-card beautiful terrain. There seems to be zero understanding that a great deal of great real estate could be developed in the surrounds of Hampi.

As we approached the town of Belur, I saw an overcrowded, congested, higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of new, private houses - the sort of "legal" housing our The State allows. The town offered NOTHING for the tourist. It is a bustling market town, not a tourist town. I walked to the temple in a light drizzle, and it was quite magical inside, in the soft rain. The carvings on the inside and outside are in old, black rock, and most intricate - of demons, horses, elephants, apsaras, and gods and goddesses. Stepped out and ate some jackfruit off a roadside stall. Delicious. This jackfruit deserves to be promoted to foreigners, who have discovered the papaya and the mango but not the great Indian jackfruit.

The temple at Halebid was even better. I could not believe my luck, to see two such splendid ancient wonders of Indian architecture in one day. Halebid town was nothing worth noting at all. Yet, all around the temple, there is a HUGE lake! The bus I took back to Hassan drove along this lake. Nothing at all along the lake. And this is a truly beautiful, ancient SHIVA temple. I didn't ask around for Boom Shankar in Halebid. I knew you wouldn't get any.

That is something I tried when I got back to Hassan. The auto-rickshaw drove me ten kms out of town, along a narrow, broken road. We past some "suburbs" where the middle classes live - and there are no internal roads in these suburbs. Yet, there is abundant space - and quite beautiful, at that. Way up along the road we passed a huge, barb-wired property of the Department of SPACE!

They haven't even colonised the abundant SPACE around our cities and they want to explore outer space!

On the way back we passed some more of these middle class "legal" housing colonies, with their extremely narrow streets. There is a lot of commerce on the streets: too much commerce, too little street. And there is an automobile revolution happening. The King of the City of Hassan drives around in a shiny white Ambassador.

Actually, Mr. Chief Justice, it is first and foremost an "academic question" whether India is a "socialist" country, or not. The constitutional bureaucracy exists to provide "rational-legal administration." The word "socialism" affects this "rationality." In either case, the word should go from the Constitution because India has always been a "mixed economy" and The Market was always there. Today, it is our society's leading edge; our only hope. It is vital that the Economic Science taught to school and college students, and to civil servants, include a thorough understanding of the principles of a market economy, and its central importance to society.

Read some interesting news about Hassan in the papers. First, that the head of the Zila Panchyat lamented about the "population problem" on World Population Day, the day decreed by the United Nations for bemoaning birth and celebrating death. In the same paper there was a report that the coffee farmers of this district face shortages of labour and import workers from other districts in the season. Population problem in Hassan? I saw great, wide open spaces all around, including virgin, unowned forest land. And anyway, we are talking about tourism, which means more people. The more the merrier, in fact. Get the deep philosophical errors in the district's leading "politician" - of the socialist, panchayati raj mould. And I bet my bottom dollar that the IAS dude here is spending a fortune on "employment guarantee rpogrammes."

Saw lots and lots of very happy cows on the drive to Belur, Halebid and back. Not herds of them being driven down the highway as in North India, but healthy, happy cows, here and there, tethered to a post on a grassy knoll, happily chomping on clean, green grass. This is where cows should be - not in the City, that too on Main Street. This morning, there were 5 cows on the road divider. The owners of these cows are abusing collective property. They are also abusing their animals, subjecting them to a horrible life. Their treatment of these cows should be widely condemned. And the civilian administration should look after the most important collective property in a city - Main Street. It matters much more than the Sensex.