Skip to main content

Medha Patkar and A K Antony




Medha Patkar was in Kerala today.  She praised A K Antony, India’s present defence minister and Kerala’s former chief minister.  She said that Antony was trying to bring development to Kerala without harming the environment. 

Antony is an honest politician.  No, I don’t mean any irony like the one spoken by Shakespeare’s Brutus about Mark Antony of the ancient Rome (Sonia Gandhi’s Italy).

Yesterday A K Antony criticised the Congress government in Kerala for scuttling many of the progressive measures that the Central government could have done for Kerala.  He said clearly that he was able to do much more for Kerala when the Left govt was ruling in Kerala than now when the Congress govt is ruling.  He said he has no courage now, when the Congress govt is in power, to bring industries to Kerala.  He said that the Left govt had cooperated more with him.  He became emotional mentioning the Left leaders like V S Achuthanandan (former chief minister) and Elamaram Kareem (minister in the Left govt) for the support they gave him in bringing developmental projects.  (I watched both Antony and Patkar on TV – that’s why I could gauge their emotions.)

Kerala’s present Congress govt has been trying to scuttle the Kochi Metro rail project being handed over to Dr Sreedharan of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.  The reason: Dr Sreedharan won’t accept bribes and the policy of bribes.  Which Congress politician in Kerala wants to run a project without what’s called “cuts” ?  This is what made A K Antony emotional.

This is what makes me emotional too.   

When will we Indians rise above the need for “cuts”?  When we will we realise that every “cut” we are making is a cut into the breast of the ordinary Indian, the poor Indian, who still stands in front of a temple or gurudwara for the food supplied in charity?  When will we raise India from that quagmire of charity?
We need more Medha Patkars and A K Antonys.  
Labels:

Comments

  1. Tanya SehgalNovember 17, 2012 at 11:36 AM

    You said it so simply but with a pierce down the throat. We definitely need Medha patkars & AK Antonys unlike the corrupt politicians the nation contains. I pray that this wish come true in the coming elections. Thanks! for sharing your insights!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 17, 2012 at 11:48 AM

      Thanks, Tanya, for sharing my dream. I don't call it optimism, i call it dream. Will it be a chimera, I wonder. Given the kind of politics we have in India, and the economic system which feeds on and nurtures GREED, my dream is likely to end as a chimera.

      Delete
    2. Tanya SehgalNovember 17, 2012 at 12:07 PM

      Let hope for the Sir, its the only thing in our hands. We are referred as the largest democracy but still nothing seems to fall in place. Vote for the right candidate is all we can do :)

      Delete
  2. VetirmagalNovember 20, 2012 at 11:15 AM

    A good post for us to know about AK Anthony.
    Hope more and more people will speak up , and still work in the framework of parties.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 20, 2012 at 4:23 PM

      It's certainly not impossible to he honest and yet be a politician.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
15 comments
Read more

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...
14 comments
Read more

Mahatma Ayyankali’s Relevance Today

About a year before he left for Chicago (1893), Swami Vivekananda visited Kerala and described the state (then Travancore-Cochin-Malabar princely states) as a “lunatic asylum.” The spiritual philosopher was shocked by the brutality of the caste system that was in practice in the region. The peasant caste of Pulayas , for example, had to keep a distance of 90 feet from Brahmins and 64 feet from Nairs. The low caste people were denied most human rights. They could not access education, enter temple premises, or buy essentials from markets. They were not even considered as humans. Ayyankali (1863-1941) was a Pulaya leader who emerged to confront the situation. I just finished reading a biography of his in Malayalam and was highly impressed by the contributions of the great man who came to be known in Kerala as the Mahatma of the Dalits . What prompted me to order a copy of the biography was an article I read in a Malayalam periodical last week. The article described how Ayyankali...
14 comments
Read more

Duryodhana Returns

Duryodhana was bored of his centuries-long exile in Mythland and decided to return to his former kingdom. Arnab Gau-Swami had declared Bihar the new Kurukshetra and so Duryodhana chose Bihar for his adventure. And Bihar did entertain him with its modern enactment of the Mahabharata. Alliances broke, cousins pulled down each other, kings switched sides without shame, and advisers looked like modern-day Shakunis with laptops. Duryodhana’s curiosity was more than piqued. There’s more masala here than in the old Hastinapura. He decided to make a deep study of this politics so that he could conclusively prove that he was not a villain but a misunderstood statesman ahead of his time. The first lesson he learns is that everyone should claim that they are the Pandavas, and portray everyone else as the Kauravas. Every party claims they stand for dharma, the people, and justice. And then plot to topple someone, eliminate someone else, distort history, fabricate expedient truths, manipulate...
14 comments
Read more