Page 74 - EW-June-2024

Postscript

Corruption folklore culminated in the multiplication of telephones in India
from 5 million in 2001 to 1 billion currently. After that,
ESPITE POLITICAL PARTY LEADERS expressing Pitroda chaired the country’s first National Knowledge
loud intent from every rooftop to eliminate it, gov- Commission. However, after the rout of the Congress
Dernment corruption in the southern state of Karna- party in the general elections of 2014 and 2019, this
taka is acquiring the momentum of a runaway train with octogenarian returned to the US and was appointed
the state set to emerge as the most venal countrywide. chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress.
This gloomy prediction is prompted by the experience In early May, Pitroda was sacked from this position.
of a dedicated housekeeper with over three decades of His transgression? In a media interview to elaborate
faithful service in your correspondent’s family home. Her India’s unity-in-diversity boast, he observed that the
good fortune of having inherited a small land parcel in country comprises citizens of several ethnicities. “People
a village on the outskirts of Bengaluru — the country’s in the East look Chinese, people in the West look like
premier hub of new ICT (information communications Arabs, people in the North like, maybe, white and people
technology) industry — has been substantially vitiated in the South look like Africans.” This innocuous observa-
by the necessity of having to pay Rs.20,000 as bribes to tion sparked outrage back home in India. Especially the
several government officials to transfer the title to her African simile.
name. After several centuries of Central Asian and later Brit-
Leftists and socialists who architectured post-indepen- ish rule, and thanks to Bollywood cinema and foreign
dence India’s Kafkaesque bureaucracy and administrative multinationals hawking skin-lightening creams, the popu-
system invariably dismiss such reports of fence consum- lation has swallowed the ‘white is beautiful’ myth hook,
ing crop as anecdotal. Yet despite the previous BJP state line and sinker. As a result, no Indian is comfortable in
government having suffered severe electoral damage after her own skin, a national inferiority complex. Although
it was branded a ‘40 percent commission’ administration forced to ride off into the sunset, there’s no gainsaying
following an open revolt of the Karnataka Contractors’ that Pitroda — a rags-to-riches millionaire who has made
Association (KCA), it’s business as usual under the new outsize contribution to the Indian economy — is a na-
year-old Congress government. In a recent media release, tional hero. Don’t hesitate to tell it like it is again, Sam.
KCA claimed that every payment clearance file has to
large and small bribes, civic contractors are obliged to cut Socialism warning
“travel” across 40 government “tables”. Forced to pay
corners in project execution.
Over half a century ago in his monumental three- ERE’S AN AMAZING STORY OF SOCIALIST
volume Asian Drama, economics Nobel laureate Gunnar central planning with which the Congress party’s
Myrdal warned government and society against ignoring Hde facto chief Rahul Gandhi continues to be enam-
the “folklore of corruption”. Left-liberals paid little heed oured.
while like the old man who refused to get off Sindbad the West Bengal’s Ghatal constituency sited 120 km from
Sailor’s back after the latter helped him cross a swollen Kolkata in the rain-fed catchment area between the
stream, India’s 20 million-strong neta-babu brotherhood Shilabati and Jhumi rivers has been suffering severe
is also unlikely to get off the country’s back, even as gov- annual flooding for centuries. In 1959, a Ghatal Master
ernments come and go. Plan was presented to the Central government in Delhi
to address this problem. In Delhi, the then all-powerful
Soviet-style Planning Commission took 20 years to
Tell it again, Sam approve the plan.
In 1982, the foundation stone of the project was laid
with Rs.50 crore sanctioned for it by the commission on
NE OF THE MANY REASONS WHY self-pro-
claimed Viswaguru India is ranked #134 on the condition that 60 percent of the cost would be borne by
OUNDP’s Human Development Index and #126 on the Centre and remainder by the state government. This
the World Happiness Report, 2024 of Oxford University, project, whose cost has since risen to Rs.1,250 crore, is yet
and way down in the bottom rung of every other index, is to get off the ground and remains the prime election issue
that it is a nation without heroes. There is no shortage of in Ghatal.
domestic critics of even Mahatma Gandhi who wrested According to a report in Times of India (May 23), 64
India’s freedom from almost two centuries of humiliating years on since this project was first mooted, 1.7 million
foreign rule. Today the Mahatma is remembered twice citizens in 12 blocks of the West and East Midnapore
a year — October 2 (birth date) and January 31 (date of districts of the state are bracing for another round of
assassination). flooding and home collapses as the south-west monsoon
In 1984, Satyen (‘Sam’) Pitroda kickstarted the process advances towards West Bengal.
of revolutionising India’s dilapidated and obsolete Coincidentally, the very same edition of ToI features
telecom system by establishing C-DoT (Centre for a disturbing op-ed essay on the impact of half a century
Development of Telematics). C-DoT devised a nationwide of central planning on rural India where 65 percent of
automatic switching system which spared citizens the the population suffers severe neglect. All right thinking
time, money and frustration of having to book inter-city citizens should ensure that socialism and its handmaiden
trunk calls through hassled operators. That invention central planning don’t make a backdoor re-entry into
sparked the start of India’s telecom revolution which has governance and administration.

74 EDUCATIONWORLD JUNE 2024