Nov 2004

In May, we gave ourselves a new Parliament in Delhi, as well as a few new State Assemblies, when citizens cited issues of bijli, sadak and paani to oust incumbent MPs and MLAs. Unfortunately, they should have used their votes more intelligently.
Not because their issues were not legitimate. But because local roads and water, and—for that matter—sanitation, garbage, primary health and education, building permits, registration of births and deaths, slum development, and a host of other basic services, are the domain of LOCAL government. Not the Union or the State Government.

The world’s hunger fighters are beginning to see the need for a shift in strategy . . .

In the 1960s, this country set out to prevent famine by boosting agricultural production. The push was so successful that wheat and rice stockpiles approached 60 million tons. By 2001, India had its own grain export business.
But Murugesan, a 29-year-old illiterate peasant, was still hungry. He had no land to grow crops, and no steady income to buy food.

It’s only human. We cling onto fond memories, of the city we grew up in. We nurse reminiscences of the small, quiet, quaint, warm little town it was. In our times.
From wistful talk of a Bombay’s Kanchanban [one-time forests that are now part of the crowded Vile Parle area], to the long-pst beauty of the lakes of a Bhopal or Bangalore . . . we have turned to the scream of traffic, the snarl of people clogging every bustling district, to the faceless living in huddled matchboxes that are sold as luxury spaces by builders bred on avarice, and governments blind to the disasters ahead.