Needed: Tough person for CIC - India - The Times of India
Some stunning facts and numbers on how right to information (RTI)act is being implemented in India.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
As most of the countries in the world talk on issues like infrastructure, economic polices and pollution control that their governments would do for the coutry, we still talk about providing basic needs like drinking water, housing facilities, eradicating poverty etc., even after 60 years of independence. How long is it going to take for us to be out from this frame and join the league of western world and Japan? Are our current breed of politicians capable of doing that? I felt this after reading an interesting piece of article written by a foreign journalist. Here are some excerpts from the article. For the complete article go here.
.....These lives aren't defined by caste or creed. They're defined by poverty. A kind of endemic, abject poverty that crushes souls. The villagers' eyes shine brightly and their tongues are quick, but tummies are empty and clothes falling apart. It's a world away from the India Shining story we've read ad nauseam in recent years.
The accepted theory, in US academia, is that Economic Status and Education Level are the strongest positive predictors of political participation. India flips this maxim squarely on its head. Here, it's the poor who queue up for hours, who sit in dusty government buildings for near eternity, to ensure they have voter ID cards.
Finally, if Nepotism is a problem in America, it's a disaster in India. Politics, like most other enterprises here, is a family business. But in a nation of 1.2 billion people, in a nation which produces Nanden Nilekanis and Amartya Sens and Indra Nooyis, isn't there someone without the surname Gandhi capable of leading the country?
A Hindu villager in Karnataka, with his vegetarian diet and spoken Kannada, has little in common with a Christian from the North Eastern town of Shillong or a Muslim from Jammu and Kashmir. Yet their voices, poured through the voter's funnel and distilled into the Indian Parliament, all coalesce. It's truly an epic confluence of different perspectives. And somehow, miraculously, it all works.
So if the Lok Sabha itself is sometimes a cacophony, forgive it. It's only representative of its constituents.....
.....These lives aren't defined by caste or creed. They're defined by poverty. A kind of endemic, abject poverty that crushes souls. The villagers' eyes shine brightly and their tongues are quick, but tummies are empty and clothes falling apart. It's a world away from the India Shining story we've read ad nauseam in recent years.
The accepted theory, in US academia, is that Economic Status and Education Level are the strongest positive predictors of political participation. India flips this maxim squarely on its head. Here, it's the poor who queue up for hours, who sit in dusty government buildings for near eternity, to ensure they have voter ID cards.
Finally, if Nepotism is a problem in America, it's a disaster in India. Politics, like most other enterprises here, is a family business. But in a nation of 1.2 billion people, in a nation which produces Nanden Nilekanis and Amartya Sens and Indra Nooyis, isn't there someone without the surname Gandhi capable of leading the country?
A Hindu villager in Karnataka, with his vegetarian diet and spoken Kannada, has little in common with a Christian from the North Eastern town of Shillong or a Muslim from Jammu and Kashmir. Yet their voices, poured through the voter's funnel and distilled into the Indian Parliament, all coalesce. It's truly an epic confluence of different perspectives. And somehow, miraculously, it all works.
So if the Lok Sabha itself is sometimes a cacophony, forgive it. It's only representative of its constituents.....
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)