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Death
of an Issue Ayodhya's time is over. The country now has pressing business at hand.
That is why it is dangerous for either brownie-point seekers in the Congress or unrepentant dinosaurs in the BJP to try and resurrect Ayodhya. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has stressed repeatedly in Parliament and outside that the Ram temple construction is not on his Government's agenda. Unless conclusively proved otherwise, his assurances should be taken at face value. However, Vajpayee's commitment also needs to be imbibed by many of the lesser leaders of the BJP who are still living in the past. This includes Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ram Prakash Gupta whose knowledge of contemporary realities is somewhat tenuous. It also needs to be imbibed by Congress leaders who feel that Ayodhya is a wonderful issue to cause dissensions within the NDA. It's a dangerous game because there is always a chance that a dead issue may be revived by political machinations. That's what happened in 1986 after the Shah Bano judgement and it's a lesson that India can ill afford to forget. It is time politicians devote their minds to more real concerns. For a change India is getting its priorities right. Let's not mess things up again.
Bad News Zone Is life in India no more than a disaster waiting to happen ?
Personal tragedy can never be explained away. It can perhaps be suffered if a larger lesson is drawn from the experience and if a whole society becomes more quality conscious, more cognisant of safety norms and learns to value each human life that much better. To expect India -- to expect even the Airports Authority of India -- to react in such manner to the bereavement in the Jethani family would be to ask for the moon. What has been the immediate reaction? A quick investigation leading to the suspension of three lowly officials who -- let's face it -- are likely to be quietly reinstated in a few months.The plane collision over Charkhi Dadri in 1996, the Uphaar cinema fire in 1997, the Gaisal rail disaster earlier this year -- contemporary India is a litany of man-made, and unpunished, catastrophes. In any contest of nations India is as likely to be crowned Miss World as Calamity Jane; and still be smug about it. |
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There are some issues that
get timed out. Ayodhya is a concern whose time is well and truly over. The vexed question
as to whether or not the Babri mosque was built on the site of a Ram temple in Ayodhya may
have obsessed the political class in the '90s but the issue carries diminishing returns
today. The temple issue didn't feature even remotely in this year's general election and
neither the governing NDA nor the opposition Congress considered it fit for their
manifestos. There may have been an element of expediency to this omission but it was also
guided by sheer pragmatism. The incontrovertible fact is that the nation has had enough of
sectarian bloodletting and wants politics to take a constructive turn. Ram may remain an
article of faith but the immediate construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya is not. India
has moved on. 
When little Jyotsna
Jethani lost her life to a malfunctioning escalator at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International
Airport a week ago, everybody was shocked but nobody was surprised. The gruesome nature of
a seven-year-old child's death, her body being put through the equivalent of a "paper
shredder" -- to borrow an airport official's macabre yet accurate expression -- would
make the strongest stomach churn. Yet, somewhere deep in the Indian heart lies the
realisation that such "accidents" are inevitable. They have to happen, people
just have to pay for somebody else's negligence. After all this is India, where the
national motto is chalta hai, where anything goes. So a cinema hall turns into a
incinerator at one point and an escalator comes to pieces the next. Trains run into each
other as if it were the most natural thing to do. Public utilities are such a disgrace
that if you drink the municipal corporation's water without boiling it, you're either
brave or suicidal.