I should’ve written about this a long time ago. Its not ‘newsy’ anymore, but because it still makes me angry to drive past the DGP’s office in Chennai, I’m going to put it down.
In a traffic island in the middle of the road stands the tall statue of thespian Sivaji Ganesan. With its unveiling on July 21st, Karunanidhi has ticked off another item from his long list of (slightly dubious) poll promises.
The location of the statue was contested in court because it violated the Tamil Nadu government’s own undertaking before the Supreme Court that they would not erect any structure (temporary or permanent) that would obstruct movement of traffic. The Madras High court directed the state government to seek the SC’s permission on the location of the statue, but declined to stay its unveiling.
And then in the most brazen display of the governments contempt for the common mans problems and violating their own undertaking, they conducted the unveiling ceremony right there in the middle of the road, blocking off traffic on the arterial Kamaraj Salai while office leaving traffic was forced through the parallel but much much narrower road that runs just along the beach.
I tried to speak to a few people who were crawling along in traffic and was disgusted to find that people just don’t feel angry. Silently like lambs being led to the slaughter they negotiated their way, crawling along where they would’ve been zipping down the beach road. Yet, stop and ask them a question and the responses ranged from… ‘no… it is ok’ to ‘the traffic is not that bad’ to people just walking away! Rudely!
The meek shall not inherit the earth if they get stuck in traffic.
And today two policemen stand guard in front of and behind the statue. Surely, in a city where a serious robbery can take place in the chief ministers own neighbourhood, and the police to public ratio gets more disproportionate all the time, police resources can be put to better use than guarding dead heroes.
8 comments:
Mr. Syed
You have put it very nicely. But, I dont think NDTV or anyother Channel would give any coverage to it. There are more pressing matters for the channels to cover like the shahrukh- amitabh cold war or the 30 mins promos daily of KANK which are issues concerning the nation.
Here you are talking about social consciousness and growth rate..come on who gives a damn about it , everyone is concerned about who gets exclusive clips of KANK.
I know how the channels operate and Im sure Alaphia knows it too that even if she takes such issues and wants to do a story, it wont happen.
Hi Alaphia
good post and hope TV channels telecats his kind of news rather than running after the Item girls,so called demi gods(Actors and actress)
News channels spend a lot of time in discussing when a petition is filled against a film and they don't spend a single minute when there things that are affecting the common man.
everybody loves self advertising.if politician wants advertising they use a long queue to show us what they are. If the sportsmen and cine actor/ actress wants to increase there popularity they go to the media and talk some rubbish things to get cheap popularity. IF channels need higher TRP then thay put a news story without any substance or evidence or investigation. If that doesn't work then thay use filthy videos in programs in name of fashion and using pretty faces to read news. These pretty faces doesn't know how to tell sad story. mostly they end laughing a lot when they read news on farmers suicide or any deaths.
hope news channels do good job in setting things right
Dr. Arif - you are quite right. Im always amazed by two things - people who demand their rights before performing their duties - and the meekness of the common man. But we must also understand that if you actually start to question you need to be prepared for the consequences. As Arundhati Roy puts it, India being called a democracy has been one of its most successful PR campaigns.
Rajesh and Narayanan - I think people love bashing the messenger - the media. Yes we are flawed, yes we make mistakes, yes we dont do enough... but i think we're damned if we do, we're damned if we dont.
Cynical - yeah you're right. Its been tried before and it doesnt work that well. And there again perhaps the fault lies not entirely with the media, but with people... viewers. The same viewers who dont feel angry enough to slam the government arent going to watch some story about some traffic jam. So its all very well for Rajesh to blame the media but look inward also buddy.
Well..... Even though the public had to face hard ships, you have failed to notice two points
1. This is NOT a ROUTINE phenomenon, but once in a year function
2. This has been announced in the papers and other media and every one should have known that there will be a traffic block that day.
Hence it is not that bad, after all
Dr. Bruno - wow... you really expect very little from your government. You are a dream come true for the dravidian parties. God help people like me.
Rajesh - exactly. Theres bird crap on most of those statues!
HaHa Rajesh, 365 great men and 365 days routine stoppages would be simply great. I dont think unless people are sensitised , these statues and other trivial issues will always get more importance.
See the dravidian parties are full of people with high level IQ and they know the real worth of installing statues. One must understand how much benefits a state would derive from statues and bird crap. At the end of the day, very few people care about traffic jams. And the media wants to highlight only about page 3, who is getting married or seeing whom etc., hence the whole cycle of inaction is complete. Its time to ask for statue installation in all the nooks and corners of the country.
Btw, Alaphia i heard that sanjay pinto got a phenomenal annual increase this time around. This guy stabbed his friend (veer) on the back and he is being given an increase.
hmm.. 2 things.. good news is that Youth Unplugged is coming on air before aug 18th.. second is that talk about cynicism... when will these politicians learn... TN will truely reach its height only when all these damn dravidian parties crash without a trace..
While I agree with many of the sentiments expressed here, I still don't see how this helps anything in any manner. Unless there is widespread education there's not going to be any change in this country. And that change will take a generation at least... So we're in this deep shit for quite some more time.
srikrishna/cynicalcount: I'm sorry but I doubt the dravidian parties have a monopoly on bad governance. On the contrary, our brethren up north have shown equally fantastic skills of non-governance. The BJP has shown that it's just as bad, if not actually worse than the Congress. The Left is the left where ever it is...
I'd argue that the dravidian parties merely make for nice targets for a national media that has little clue on South Indian politics.
I wonder what the classification of the (R)JD(S)/Congress/BJP would be on these lines. Could I make a sweeping generalisation that the damn Aryan parties have led to the absolute chaos in most of North India?
Venting our frustrations on a blog provides cathartic release. But what can we actually do about any of this?
Post a Comment