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
44 comments
Read more

Remedios the Beauty and Innocence

  Remedios the Beauty is a character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude . Like most members of her family, she too belongs to solitude. But unlike others, she is very innocent too. Physically she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, the place where the story of her family unfolds. Is that beauty a reflection of her innocence? Well, Marquez doesn’t suggest that explicitly. But there is an implication to that effect. Innocence does make people look charming. What else is the charm of children? Remedios’s beauty is dangerous, however. She is warned by her great grandmother, who is losing her eyesight, not to appear before men. The girl’s beauty coupled with her innocence will have disastrous effects on men. But Remedios is unaware of “her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman.” She is too innocent to know such things though she is an adult physically. Every time she appears before outsiders she causes a panic of exasperation. To make...
4 comments
Read more

The Death of Truth and a lot more

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...
10 comments
Read more

The Covenant of Water

Book Review Title: The Covenant of Water Author: Abraham Verghese Publisher: Grove Press UK, 2023 Pages: 724 “What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.” This massive book explores the intricacies of human relationships with a plot that spans almost a century. The story begins in 1900 with 12-year-old Mariamma being wedded to a 40-year-old widower in whose family runs a curse: death by drowning. The story ends in 1977 with another Mariamma, the granddaughter of Mariamma the First who becomes Big Ammachi [grandmother]. A lot of things happen in the 700+ pages of the novel which has everything that one may expect from a popular novel: suspense, mystery, love, passion, power, vulnerability, and also some social and religious issues. The only setback, if it can be called that at all, is that too many people die in this novel. But then, when death by drowning is a curse in the family, we have to be prepared for many a burial. The Kerala of the pre-Independ...
10 comments
Read more

Butterfly from Sambhal

“Weren’t you a worm till the other day?” The plant asks the butterfly. “That’s ancient history,” the butterfly answers. “Why don’t you look at the present reality which is much more beautiful?” “How can I forget that past?” The plant insists. “You ate almost all my leaves. Had not my constant gardener discovered your ravage in time and removed you from my frail limbs, I would have been dead long before you emerged from your contemplation with beautiful wings.” “I’m sorry, my dear Nandiarvattam ji. Did I have a choice? The only purpose of the existence of caterpillars is to eat leaves. Eat and eat. Until we get into the cocoon and wait for our wings to unfold. A new reality to unfold. It's a relentless hunger that creates butterflies.” “Your new reality is my painful old history. I still remember how I trembled foreseeing my death. Death by a worm!” “I wish I could heal you with my kisses.” “You’re doing that, thank you. But…” “I know. It hurts, the history thing. I’...
10 comments
Read more