Friday, May 12, 2006

The Demolition Men shot down

First of all I’d like to say that I’m really enraged by the bill passed today. I mean here are certain respected men (the judges of the Supreme court) trying to uphold the law and the constitution and what happens ? Well the same in just any other romantic tragedy, the anti-hero gets shot down for standing up for what’s right !

I don’t know much about the legalities but I think the current government should be held in contempt of court.

I mean amongst all the chaos surrounding the demolition drive in the city, what comes up is that thousands of traders will be left stranded. What is generally very conveniently overlooked by everyone including the media is the question that how could have so many people disobeyed the law in the first place, and I’m talking about the same thousands here. I think it’s simply preposterous that such mass-scale fraud could have taken place in the first place. The concerned bodies should simply not be forgiven for that.

But well, what’s done is done and we should not look at the past but think about what can be done. Right. I completely agree with that. Let’s forgive the offenders, after all they’re also families just like mine and yours. But let’s atleast stop it now that we are aware of it! Simply acknowledging the fact that the law has been broken and generously forgiving those responsible still does not cure the problem. That is exactly what the demolition drive was doing. It had identified the problem and was castrating it. Until ofcourse the unwelcome child of democracy – vote bank politics stepped in.

Indeed the politicians, whose vote bank lies in the illiterate small traders, street hawkers, etc wouldn’t bare a chance to get re-elected or gain political mileage if they hadn’t stepped in. So instead of making these people understand why / how they were wrong, and providing relief to them by compensating them somehow in some way, they just used their constitutional muscle and stopped the drive altogether. Why can’t they see the long term repercussions of their actions I fail to understand. It’s all just about getting re-elected the next time.

All I can say is that I really hope that they actually come out with a viable action plan in the one year they’ve stolen. In my crystal bowl, however, the prediction is pretty easy though. At the end of one year, a committee will be set up to investigate into the matter which will come out with a very depleted figure of the number of encroachments. They will then give recommendations which the already incompetent authorities will sit upon and probably get new ways to gobble up some money as well. People like you and I on the other hand, people who struggle to find space or infact air to breathe which should be rightfully ours, will simply eat a hard bullet.

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