Month: June 2014

By Tungshang Ningreichon

Our house in the village is like a train with a gap, like a bogey derailed. The gap is the living room that was never built and now it stands as the self styled mud room. The gap speaks of hope that one day the house will be completed. The hope has lasted for more than 15 years!

Our home is simple but aesthetically challenged. It reflects a lack of architectural input and resources. People often mistake it for the village primary school a few meters away, or sometimes for the pastor’s quarter, traditionally built in an ‘L’ shape with many rooms to accommodate guests.

Every time I come home there is new “technology” installed. My father loves to experiment with tools, electronics and machines, turning every room into a store room with wires running all over the house; plug points are dictated by his preference for sitting arrangement while typing. He is, by the way, the best typist I have ever known. When he first tried his hands on the computer, I thought the keyboard would break into pieces with the force he is used to, on old typewriters.

This time there were fancy lights installed in and around the house that took me by surprise when I went to use the washroom. I was not expecting tiny bright diodes to light up my night activity. These fascinating patch-like diodes were fixed on the wall, taped on each end like it was hurriedly done for temporary use. Yet again they reminded me how the genes of style and utility are so far away from each other with men in general, and especially my father, for most houses in Ukhrul have wires and plug points hanging messily over the wall or from one corner, speaking of men and designs.

Every house however has a number of interesting lamps, torch and light tools which are mostly made in China or Burma. For those who can afford it, the inverter is placed somewhere shabbily but owned like the most prized possession. The district, you see, has acute power shortage. These days the power supply is for an hour and a half during the day, and tactically from 10 pm onwards when the town is asleep so that mosquitoes, insects and animals can find their prey and their way home.

In Tamenglong, local organizations had to shut the electricity department to register their protest of the dancing truant lights. People of the district have found better use for the electric wires—they take it home. This is legally called “stealing” and is so rampant that the DC of the town had to convene a meeting to take stock of the situation. Why blame the people for making use of resources around them I say with a smirk.

One of the latest reasons cited for the shortage of electricity is the poor rainfall. By that logic, the God of rain is pleased with selective places in the State where people have been holy enough to receive rain and be lighted while the remaining can compensate with candlelight dinners!

I don’t know if any of the reasons we have been hearing past many years is justified anymore but, in the words of Apou, my “memory bank” does not have any data of ever experiencing 24 hours power supply ever since we lived in the village.

The last time people in Ukhrul had two days of uninterrupted power supply was when the Governor of the State was in town as the chief guest for Shirui Lily week. His visit was such a hit that the Facebook status of my town newsfeeders; Yoyo, Tennoson, Kahorpam and Khanthing, expressed “joy” like receiving rare grace that comes home like the uninvited guest.

The statuses seemed to say that the town is beaming with life and energy and also lack of direction; of not knowing what to do with the suddenness of being lighted!

The celebration however had to end the moment the Governor left. The set up, as I imagine it, is like the lineman was watching from a tower and as soon as he saw the dust and smog off the line of vehicles, he pulled the plug puffing a cigarette, much like how the curtains are drawn after a movie ends…ah, how dramatically he must have switched it off, and for the next two days the town was ‘powerless’. Perhaps the electricity department had to reclaim or make up for its generosity and the quota of the two days of lighting the Governor.

We wait for the Governor and his entourage to visit the town again or, even better, if Narendra Modi comes to see Shirui Lily and tour the villages in Ukhrul… yawn yawn…while my father and families acquire newer tools to light homes and the companies and dealers lick their fingers counting the profits!

Tungshang Ningreichon is a happy mother from Langdang and writes occasionally for the love of stories, histories and memories.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/06/waiting-for-the-governor/

By B.G. Verghese

The new government has set a scorching pace for systemic reform in a bid to streamline the administration. This is as it should be to ensure better governance through the avoidance of delays, weeding out out-dated legislation and rules, reducing fragmentation of responsibility with its resultant turf battles, passing the buck to avoid accountability for decisions and so forth. Few realise that delay oftentimes implies denial and that there is a huge opportunity cost of delay. India has no time to waste, even as Nehru reminded us in 1947 that aaram haram hai(idleness is sin).

The PM met all secretaries to Government and told them he expected them to take and hasten decisions and promised them direct access if they had problems trouble-shooting. This should not however imply by-passing Ministers and making the PMO the focus of decision-making. Collective cabinet responsibility too must remain inviolate to ensure parliamentary accountability. However, too many decisions are pushed up – and sideways to the Party in power – in order to hedge responsibility and insure against wild and indiscriminate charges made years later, even posy-retirement, to hound honest officials.

The Supreme Court’s decision to set aside the so-called single directive to the CBI to seek permission to investigate/prosecute officers of the rank of joint secretary and above is timely, but has aroused undue fear among officials that this will open the door to witch-hunting. Rather than go back on this salutary decision, the remedy likes in awarding prompt and condign punishment for frivolous complainants. The Secretaries have also been told to ensure clean office spaces and corridors, send old files to designated depositories (to end the nuisance of “searching for files” for an eternity), abbreviate and simplify forms, and recommend the repeal of archaic rules and Acts.

The Rajasthan Government has also taken a bold step in announcing amendments to three national labour laws that have come in the way of new and expanding employment in order to preserve a limited number of traditional jobs by barring efficiency norms, innovation and so forth.

Meanwhile, the Government is reportedly looking to fill up to eight Raj Bhavans with new incumbents, many of them party faithfuls or retired officials. While this is understandable up to apoint, Raj Bhavans have a role to play in gosod governance by offering objective advice. Men and women drawn from the field of professionals, academics, public life and the arts can be inspirational and should not be crowded out.

On the side, as a matter of protocol, no band, civil or military should be permitted to take liberties with the national anthem. Quite often one hears unauthorised trills and variations in tempo, especially in the very last jaya, jayajaya, jaya he which slows down to a tired funeral dirge. This is disgraceful and should not be permitted. It is much like allowing the national flag to be painted pink instead of saffron in order to meet somebody’s idea of jollification. No liberties should be permitted in case of the national anthem and other national symbols.

It is altogether another matter, however, when individual freedoms are sought to be curbed, sometimes violently, by ideological vigilantes, busybodies and crackpots on grounds of “hurt sentiment”. Books have been blacklisted and targeted in recent months, resulting in their “withdrawal” by publishers. This is sheer criminal blackmail. The answer to criticism of a certain point of view, whether literary, artistic or philosophical, is to present a reasoned critique, another book perhaps, rather than drown a dissenting voice in majoritarian clamour.

Last week, in Pune, a young Muslim IT professional, was beaten to death, ostensibly by a group of ultra-right Hindu RashtraSena hoodlums, for an allegedly hurtful Facebook posting of Shivaji and Bal Thackeray. The HRS is headed by 34-year old Dhanjay Desai who is already booked in 23 other cases, involving hate crime and Muslim baiting. Just before this incident, Orient Blackswan, publishers, withdrew for “comprehensive assessment and review”, Dr Megha Kumar’s recently-released “Communalism and Sexual Violence: Ahmedabad since 1969”. Objection to the book has been taken by Dina NathBatra, convenor of the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti on whose diktat Wendy Donniger’s book on Hinduism was withdrawn by Penguin. Batra has also targeted SekharBandopadhyay’s 10-year old book “Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India” on the ground that it defames the RSS.

This kind of banning of scholarly and artistic works by blackmail is intolerable from whatever quarter. Though not necessarily mala fide, there is a whiff of latent mischief in the CBI’s report to the Government that some foreign-aided NGOs are stalling development, such as those that opposed the Kudankulam nuclear power plant, the first 1000 MW unit of which is now feeding into the southern grid, and would like to stall the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor on environmental grounds.

The new Government needs to take a close look at these trends and ensure that development,the environment and a free and liberal society coexist and reinforce one another. There is room for anxiety when the RSS, VHP and other Parivarentities press for abrogation of Article 370, oppose GM technology, seek a ban on cow slaughter and so forth. The VHP leader, Ashok Singhal called on Mr Modi at a press conference in Delhi on May 24 to “restore Hindutva rule … after PrithvirajChauhan” and ban religious conversion “to ensure peace and well-being”. Mr Modi cannot remain silent when such divisive voices are raised.

The Government has done well to announce early visits to neighbours – Bhutan by the PM and Bangladesh by the Foreign Minister – and to host the Chinese and Japanese heads of government within the year. Movement on Teesta sharing and land boundary agreements with Bangladesh, currently vetoed by MamataBannerjee, is imperative for winning Dhaka’s trust and cooperation so important for transit to the NE and India’s Look East policy. The opening up of Indo-Bangla trade and investment could also be packaged in agreements on improved border management, issue of work permits and a resolution of the long-festering problem of “infiltrators”.

Though largely good thus far, even if only in parts, ShashiTaroor was not irresponsible in his praise of the new Modi model which, he said, would hold the PM up to the new standards he is setting for himself. The Congress, however, reacted in a petty manner. Rahul Gandhi has run away from the battlefield to rebuild the Congress “in the streets”. Kharge could be a quiet but effective leader of the Congress parliamentary party in the real forum where it can make a turnaround through constructive debate and playing the role of a responsible and vigilant opposition. Dynastic politics is dead. If Rahul does snort realise this truth then his irrelevance is all the greater.

The past 10 days have also witnessed the disgrace of unabashed rape in UP where goonda raj prevails under a crude father and son duo. Years of feudal mis-governance indicate that the time is ripe to divide the state into three or four units as proposed. Telengana and Seemandhra have come into being howsoever untidily. The division of UP should not be delayed but it must be planned better and more consensually.

www.bgverghese.com

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/06/good-in-parts/