TWO
CASES OF INJUSTICE :PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
Dear Friends,
It’s very heartening to catch you
up again, nearly after a month – My Quest for a new opening in Pondicherry
University, preparing for interview, after getting selected obtaining relieving
order from Annamalai University and finally settling down and starting a new
spell of Academic Life in Pondicherry University, with new Colleagues, new
students and new environment made me completely halt my thinking and writing. I
know writing a blog is no easy joke – It needs consistent periodicity no matter
how brilliant the writing is and marginal revolution is a good example for it.
Its author writes almost every day – no matter how much, but he writes every
day!
If not every day, I wish to write
at least once a week, no matter what I do and where I am hereafter. Here are my
frozen reactions for the affairs around me
1.
The
Injustice of Public Road Transport – Can’t they learn from Railways?
This
is about concession for children shown towards children. In Public Transport –
say the State owned Corporation Buses follow a peculiar policy for child
concession. They collect half the adult ticket charges for kids below 5 years
and say that the kid should occupy only half a seat – 50% off and hence 50%
space only!
More
worse is that some of the buses have a specific line above the floor level
drawn in the walls of the bus and any kid above the line though within 5 years
should pay full fare – Does this mean a healthy child should be punished? We
want ‘Complan Growing’ at one stretch and also accommodate that a five year old
kid should be of a certain height only.
I am happy that
this parochial attitude, thinking and subhuman contemplation have not
percolated the Railway Personnel! Imagine the fate of a grand old man of six
feet availing concession of one-third the actual fare?
How and why this happens?
The
Bus Conductors are issued their conductor licence only after proving that they
are literate. But their rent seeking agenda back seats their public morality
and ethics. These kind of issues could be effectively addressed by the personal
experience of superior officers but which bureaucrat will travel with his wife
and kids in a Public Transport? How many Yatendrakumar’s (IAS: MT :1996) are
amidst us? I know this officer at more or less at personal level, who is/was
austere to dangerous levels that most of his own colleagues developed a fear
for his highest standard of Public Morality, Administrative Accountability,
Administrative Ethics and above all his uncompromising attitude. I can boldly
say that these people here and there are the practical manifestations of values
and virtues what the world speaks of!
2.
Improper
Urbanisation and Resulting Human Disaster
The end of last year 2011,
Pondichery was devastated with Thane Cyclone. What was more devastating is the
slow pace of relief measure that even bureaucrats official residence were not
restored electricity even after three days! Why ? The roads and streets were
too small for relief measure. The roads of the newly formed residential areas
are in a crazy curve, sometime tapering in dead end and even to a sudden
downslope – What is wrong?
(1)The
absence of a definitive Land Use Plan for Urban Area (2) Vested Interest in
sanctioning Layout approval without even bothering of accommodating the lay out
in a futuristic master plan (3) Under the table dealing for reclassifying
agricultural land for house plot and (4) a thorough absence of “public
consciousness” about the far reaching consequences of improper urbanisation.
There
are ample surveys and studies being done in Urban Studies but the standard of
Urban Slums, Urban Drainage system and its hygiene impact on kids and old and
the relative escalating cost for health care, Indian Government’s impotency to
provide “safe, clean drinking water” (Mind not food, just water) and this
travesty need to be shared by all of us.
Human
Greed to buy land without proper approval and even if the layout is approved,
the flouting of norms by the lower bureaucracy and above all our willingness to
yield to this mal function in fact we need such malfunction for satisfying our
greed are the few reasons.
Shamelessly we speak of providing Urban
Infrastructure in Rural Areas!
What a self contradiction!
