Skip to main content

The Dark Side of Development


The more notorious a criminal you are, the more respected you are in Tihar, says Kobad Ghandy in his Indian Express column.  The petty thieves and other little criminals vie with one another to join the notorious ones.  Your very survival, let alone success, depends on how close you are to the great guns.  Virtue will undo you.  Principles will turn into knots round your neck. 

Kobad Ghandy knows what he is speaking about.  He has spent seven years in Tihar.  Seven years in Tihar is enough to dehumanise anyone, writes Ghandy.

Is this true only of Tihar?  Isn’t it true for the entire country?  Where do you find virtue and principles in the public life of the country?  Criminals and murderers occupy eminent seats in the parliament and state assemblies.  Mafia dons and land grabbers masquerade as godmen.  The poor become poorer and end their lives on knots that descend in various shapes from above. 

The rich are given more and more.  What little the poor have is taken away from them.  The forests of the Adivasis are snatched and given generously to the rich miners and real estate developers who hobnob with the political leaders.  The whole country is being taken for a ride in the name of development. 

Kerala is one of the states going to elections soon.  The total debts of the state amount to Rs 135,440.4 crore during the UDF regime according to the Legislative Assembly Reports published by Malayala Manorama on 10 Feb 2016.   If we assume that an average family in Kerala has four members, then the debt of every family in Kerala is Rs. 159,340.  Many farmers in the country committed suicide because of an amount smaller than that.  Should the people of Kerala start committing suicide because of the developmental projects on which the State government spent huge amounts of money?  [e.g. Adani got thousands of crores of rupees from both the State and the Central governments for the Vizhinjam Transit Harbour.]

Source
Development is a mantra that has been chanted for a couple of years in the country.  Is the country being converted into another Tihar jail while it is pursuing development?  The question may sound farfetched.  But if we open our eyes a little more and look beyond the miasma of developmental illusion that has enveloped us, the question will find its concrete reflection in some very familiar images: the potbelly of the politician who meets you once every five years begging for your vote, the squint in the eye of the yogi who teaches you yoga and culture on a popular TV channel, the facelessness of the industrialist whose sky-high edifices stymie your very shadow...


Indian Bloggers


Labels:

Comments

  1. Roma Gupta SinhaApril 22, 2016 at 4:17 PM

    This is such an eye opener post ! definitely worth a share...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Abhijit RayApril 22, 2016 at 7:17 PM

    Society is made of all kind of people. Good people should take charge and lead.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 22, 2016 at 8:25 PM

      Totally agree with you. As of now, good people are rendered helpless by the bad ones. That's why I made the comparison between the country and Tihar jail.

      Delete
  3. Online JournalistApril 22, 2016 at 10:00 PM

    Excellent post.
    The country may soon need many more vast jails to accommodate the growing number of criminals.
    As criminals and murderers are elected to make laws, they may take care to increase the facilities in jails in future as they and tother prominent personalities are to occupy the jails.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 23, 2016 at 6:56 AM

      For the great goons the jail is also as good as a five star hotel. That's how the system is now. Actually the original title of this post was 'Country of Criminals'. I mellowed it. But the truth is that the Mahatma's land has become criminals' country.

      Delete
  4. Yogi SaraswatApril 23, 2016 at 2:37 PM

    Criminals and murderers occupy eminent seats in the parliament and state assemblies. Mafia dons and land grabbers masquerade as godmen. The poor become poorer and end their lives on knots that descend in various shapes from above. You and me rarely agree but this time I totally agree with your words and unfortunately nothing is being better in this present scenario .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 23, 2016 at 3:33 PM

      A time will come when you will agree with me in more things.

      Delete
  5. Confused SoulApril 23, 2016 at 7:43 PM

    This is such a powerful post, almost hits you in the face of reality.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 23, 2016 at 8:08 PM

      The reality is hard-hitting for the majority. But who cares?

      Delete
  6. UnknownApril 25, 2016 at 9:50 AM

    Matheikal, I can't help feeling that graft, as they call it nowadays, has permeated everywhere. It's not just in India but world over. I fear this is tantamount to a plague and should be designated as an epidemic that MUST be addressed if anyone is to believe in stated lofty goals of poverty alleviation and income equality

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 25, 2016 at 2:35 PM

      Who is interested in poverty alleviation and equality, Lata? Our politicians know how to increase their salary at regular intervals and they have other sources of income which will seek out offshore investment schemes from where they will bring back black money to our accounts in our dreams...

      Those who can't look after themselves are doomed. The country can only boast of Bharat Mata and other symbols.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
121 comments
Read more

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

Tanishq and the Patriots

Patriots are a queer lot. You don’t know what all things can make them pick up the gun. Only one thing is certain apparently: the gun for anything. When the neighbouring country behaves like a hoard of bandicoots digging into our national borders, we will naturally take up the gun. But nowadays we choose to redraw certain lines on the map and then proclaim that not an inch of land has been lost. On the other hand, when a jewellery company brings out an ad promoting harmony between the majority and the minority populations, our patriots take up the gun. And shoot down the ad. Those who promote communal harmony are traitors in India today. The sacred duty of the genuine Indian patriot is to hate certain communities, rape their women, plunder their land, deny them education and other fundamental rights and basic requirements. Tanishq withdrew the ad that sought to promote communal harmony. The patriot’s gun won. Aapka Bharat Mahan. In the novel Black Hole which I’m writing there is...
61 comments
Read more

Romance in Utopia

Book Review Title: My Haven Author: Ruchi Chandra Verma Pages: 161 T his little novel is a surfeit of sugar and honey. All the characters that matter are young employees of an IT firm in Bengaluru. One of them, Pihu, 23 years and all too sweet and soft, falls in love with her senior colleague, Aditya. The love is sweetly reciprocated too. The colleagues are all happy, furthermore. No jealousy, no rivalry, nothing that disturbs the utopian equilibrium that the author has created in the novel. What would love be like in a utopia? First of all, there would be no fear or insecurity. No fear of betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak… Emotional security is an essential part of any utopia. There would be complete trust between partners, without the need for games or power struggles. Every relationship would be built on deep understanding, where partners complement each other perfectly. Miscommunication and misunderstanding would be rare or non-existent, as people would have heightened emo...
9 comments
Read more

A Lesson from Little Prince

I joined the #WriteAPageADay challenge of Blogchatter , as I mentioned earlier in another post. I haven’t succeeded in writing a page every day, though. But as long as you manage to write a minimum of 10,000 words in the month of Feb, Blogchatter is contented. I woke up this morning feeling rather vacant in the head, which happens sometimes. Whenever that happens to me but I do want to get on with what I should, I fall back on a book that has inspired me. One such book is Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince . I have wished time and again to meet Little Prince in person as the narrator of his story did. We might have interesting conversations like the ones that exist in the novel. If a sheep eats shrubs, will he also eat flowers? That is one of the questions raised by Little Prince [LP]. “A sheep eats whatever he meets,” the narrator answers. “Even flowers that have thorns?” LP is interested in the rose he has on his tiny planet. When he is told that the sheep will eat f...
8 comments
Read more