humblegenius
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French teacher talks about colleague in Shimla
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04.11.08 (6 months ago)
#1
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Taking Stock of the Situation in Himachal
Shimla was the capital of the British and we did inherit a certain legacy in this regard, but by allowing colonial undertones to survive in our society, we are inadvertently aiding the gradual decimation of the Himachali culture and spirit.
What politicians ever do is use national resources to earn goodwill of a handful of deep pockets while shamelessly ignoring sentiments and basic needs of the ‘simple’ Himachali. And then the Himachali is struck by a lack of basic amenities and brash absence of a sane administration. For example, the existing water system was designed to provide for 15,000 but now has to cater to lakhs of people, including tourists and labor from Nepal, Bihar
and other parts of the country. And do we have ANY clue what the authorities plan to do the next time intense winters burst open water pipes and leave us without water for days? I hope they don’t expect us to keep bribing the local plumber again and again. Due to inaction and nonchalant attitude of the people that rule, Shimla has now been brought under the Jawaharlal National Urban Renewal mission, main purpose of which is to initiate wide ranging urban reforms to save the legal, institutional and financial system from shutting down. Clearly, we have ended up paying money and respect to people who are directly responsible for putting this town on crutches.
So I believe we made the system that gave us this vicious cycle of self defeat and now we are fueling it year after year. Democracy, replete with ignorance and the Civil Services are failed experiments that have been destroying the country for over half a century but we allow them to subsist, still. These people in power do not have to go through the hardships of standing in queues and travelling in unkempt buses, in fact they seem to be too busy driving from one part of the town to another and we don’t have the vaguest idea what they do for us. OUR SUPERHUMAN TOLERANCE TO THE MYRIAD OF EVERYDAY ISSUES AND BY EXTENSION, TO THE PEOPLE WHO RULE IS THE REAL ISSUE. If its difficult to see this as a citizen, lets get an outsider’s perspective – I have a friend from France who teaches French at HPU. She gets invited to parties in a bureaucrat’s house every now and then. To quote my friend, the bureaucrat’s wife is ‘lazy even by French standards’ because she is always late to the University where she is also a language teacher. Also, she has 2 exotic ducks and a full time maid just to keep an eye on the ducks! This is the kind of vanity that these people in power have gotten used to. Further, the foreigner said that the bureaucrat’s friends always get her drunk on expensive French wine. It’s a pity that we accord such VIP treatment to foreigners and have no respect for our own. Needless to say, the foreigner herself felt that at a time that she was being treated as a princess, there were people without basic necessities, perhaps living down the lane. I did not have the heart to tell her that incidentally her hosts were responsible for the despicable condition of those people.
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