The Adarsh Society Scandal!!!
Nandan Nilekeni, the nation’s pick for the making of Unique ID cards may set out on his project right away from Mumbai’s Adarsh Nagar Housing Society. As someone known to me once remarked that the UID will end up serving the police and other arms of the state to set up a data base of the subversives and pick them up as and when the need arose.
Well. I know that those bent and the beautiful people who inhabit such high-rise structures in our cities will not really constitute the subversives. But then, I do hope that things will change one day when we, the people of India, in whose name the constitution was enacted and on whose behalf the regimes had seemingly worked in the 60 years since January 26, 1950, will one day be realized, not in part but in substantive measure! And on that day, as it happened on the streets of Paris, in 1789, the people will not have to depend on dubious voters lists to identify those to be sent up to the guillotine.
Lest I am misunderstood, I am aware that the Paris commune did not reach anywhere it intended to; nor do I celebrate the guillotine as a means to do away with those who eat into the vitals of our nation. But then, the reference to the commune and the guillotine are indeed inevitable and I try to be figurative in doing that.
Look at the list of people who own flats in that apartment complex, which in a sense, is also a story of scandal, land grab and all things illegal. Contrast the Adarsh Nagar story with the story of the people living on the banks of the Cooum in Chennai; or any one of those sprawling slums elsewhere in Mumbai. We do know that not a day passes without the poor being displaced, JCPs (I know it is a trade name for that machine but it is known better than otherwise) doing the job and when slum clusters are set on fire (and the caste certificates of the school going children, that are so important in their life, getting burnt in those fire that are not really accidents) and the families then being sent to far off places on grounds that the law of the land, under Article 21 of the Constitution, simply says that they will have to be given alternate dwelling sites and not necessarily in-situ rehabilitation.
Nothing of this kind happened to those who encroached upon public land in the case of Adarsh Nagar Housing Soceity! Well. This is only one little story that has come to light. There are numerous such encroachments by the bent and the beautiful across our towns and cities. And they remain there, without necessarily having to show cause, because the builders make sure that such men as ministers, police officers and such others who think the same way as the nobles in France thought around the time before the revolution in France thought. They believe and with some basis that the law of the land does not apply to them.
The trouble is that these are people who will then wax eloquent over the need to love the nation, patriotism and all such virtues. Or else, how does one explain the fact that even almost a week after the scandal, with all the details and evidence, was uncovered by the media, our own Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee and our own A.K.Antony who runs the Defence Ministry are asking for more time. And it is clear that the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan may be asked to go by Sonia Gandhi. But will that do? Certainly No! All those who own apartments there must be dispossessed and the flat complex, rather than being demolished, must be converted into a national museum where the inglorious story of corruption is told.
All those who owned flats there must be prominently listed out in one corner of the building and a plaque be installed in their ``honour’’ as the Rogues who funded this museum! Well. I am not sure if such a huge building, with so many floors and so many apartments will do to tell the story of corruption in independent India. We may require more space. But there could be a beginning!
Nandan Nilekeni, the nation’s pick for the making of Unique ID cards may set out on his project right away from Mumbai’s Adarsh Nagar Housing Society. As someone known to me once remarked that the UID will end up serving the police and other arms of the state to set up a data base of the subversives and pick them up as and when the need arose.
Well. I know that those bent and the beautiful people who inhabit such high-rise structures in our cities will not really constitute the subversives. But then, I do hope that things will change one day when we, the people of India, in whose name the constitution was enacted and on whose behalf the regimes had seemingly worked in the 60 years since January 26, 1950, will one day be realized, not in part but in substantive measure! And on that day, as it happened on the streets of Paris, in 1789, the people will not have to depend on dubious voters lists to identify those to be sent up to the guillotine.
Lest I am misunderstood, I am aware that the Paris commune did not reach anywhere it intended to; nor do I celebrate the guillotine as a means to do away with those who eat into the vitals of our nation. But then, the reference to the commune and the guillotine are indeed inevitable and I try to be figurative in doing that.
Look at the list of people who own flats in that apartment complex, which in a sense, is also a story of scandal, land grab and all things illegal. Contrast the Adarsh Nagar story with the story of the people living on the banks of the Cooum in Chennai; or any one of those sprawling slums elsewhere in Mumbai. We do know that not a day passes without the poor being displaced, JCPs (I know it is a trade name for that machine but it is known better than otherwise) doing the job and when slum clusters are set on fire (and the caste certificates of the school going children, that are so important in their life, getting burnt in those fire that are not really accidents) and the families then being sent to far off places on grounds that the law of the land, under Article 21 of the Constitution, simply says that they will have to be given alternate dwelling sites and not necessarily in-situ rehabilitation.
Nothing of this kind happened to those who encroached upon public land in the case of Adarsh Nagar Housing Soceity! Well. This is only one little story that has come to light. There are numerous such encroachments by the bent and the beautiful across our towns and cities. And they remain there, without necessarily having to show cause, because the builders make sure that such men as ministers, police officers and such others who think the same way as the nobles in France thought around the time before the revolution in France thought. They believe and with some basis that the law of the land does not apply to them.
The trouble is that these are people who will then wax eloquent over the need to love the nation, patriotism and all such virtues. Or else, how does one explain the fact that even almost a week after the scandal, with all the details and evidence, was uncovered by the media, our own Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee and our own A.K.Antony who runs the Defence Ministry are asking for more time. And it is clear that the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan may be asked to go by Sonia Gandhi. But will that do? Certainly No! All those who own apartments there must be dispossessed and the flat complex, rather than being demolished, must be converted into a national museum where the inglorious story of corruption is told.
All those who owned flats there must be prominently listed out in one corner of the building and a plaque be installed in their ``honour’’ as the Rogues who funded this museum! Well. I am not sure if such a huge building, with so many floors and so many apartments will do to tell the story of corruption in independent India. We may require more space. But there could be a beginning!
posted by Krishna Ananth at
4:34 AM
1 Comments:
thank you arun. i meant jcbs.
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