WHY THIS KOLAVARI DI

Why this Kolavari Di?

This is a very true reflection of the Indian ethos and mind set. Kolavari D! Which I think in ancient south Indian Language – Tamil - means excessive rage.

Today, 88 people died of asphyxiation from smoke in a Kolkatta hospital. The grassroots special Didi reached the spot earlier than any Italian origin national leader, or dalit messiah or any of the octogenarian rickety gaited yet more virile than any trotful teenager, CM could reach.

The onwers of the hospital, who I believe are also the founders of Emami, were arrested. The arrests would fray tempers temporarily. Then time is a healer. More than time, it is Indian fatalism. Indians take pride in moving on, and they will. Americans did not move on. They got stuck in the wedges of 9/11 and solved it.

Of course hospital owners and authorities are responsible and should be arrested. But what about the fire authorities who would have taken money to certify the hospital fire-safe despite zero compliance? Why should the chief fire officer not be arrested just like the owners were?

It is a fact proven beyond doubt, that private enterprise is profit driven. It is meant to be. Left on its own without regulation, it would turn a nelson’s eye to any measure that would impact its profitability or cashflow.

Union Carbide / BP / Enron all MNCs and all exemplifying culpability for a common reason – compliance - bear eloquent testimony to my claim.

And now my favorite refrain - people get the governance they deserve. The Americans felt that national security was paramount, taking primacy over all other concerns, and re-elected a president who sanitized the country and did not allow another 9/11 to occur on American soil.

When have Indians elected a government which would secure our border or work for economic development or resurrect national pride? When have we chosen politicians who would accord precedence to national interest over petty parochialism. So many educated readers of mine would already start calling me ‘fascist’, ‘rightist’ or overly jingoistic. That is how our mind works.

Mahipal Maderna got a village midwife killed because she was blackmailing him. What impunity? And it was cautioned that his arrest after a furore raised by the media, would upset the Jats. It should have been the Jats who should have disowned such a scoundrel than standby him in support. But in India politics is a caste equation. Admittedly, everywhere in the world, politicians have their vote bank and protected constituencies, but in India, this reality is accentuated.

The rich have always had it good in this country, be they under Moghul or British rule. The poor have always struggled for 2 square meals regardless of who holds the reigns of the nations destiny. So why should they care. The attitudinal callousness is not making of one day, but of generations of misrule, mis-governance and consequential cynicism.

The media would run the hospital fire news bytes incessantly for 24 hours with a high pitched maniacal fervor. An hysterically animated Barkha would hurriedly conjure a panel, comprising a poker faced retired health secretary, a verbose hospital manager, a strident khadi clad NGO/human rights activist to debate real time on how norms are ignored at the cost of human lives. However, the next day it would be a different story brutalizing our sensibilities and dignity - possibly of blast or a rail accident. TV screens would show bytes of another wailing mother being pacified by her sobbing husband!

The next day it would be another story that would rule the byte world. The people also forget. This frailty of public memory politicians recognize all too well, and the bureaucracy of course is cast in a steel frame and escapes any accountability whatsoever. What a scourge?

The peoples’ ire against the politician can still be felt, but the same against the bureaucrat is unknown. Queasily, I wonder why he always goes scot-free. The power that he enjoys, due to our British legacy is enormous. But he just would not use that power against the “people who matter”. The handful few who do, get marginalized by their own creed. Who should we blame but ourselves for this attitude?

A friend of mine narrated a story to me. He went to file an FIR to a police station for theft of his car side view mirrors. The SHO gave him such a sob story about understaffing, and frivolous deployment of his force, and how such things can be prevented by deploying private security, that my friend felt guilty of having wasted time of a helpless state mandarin and came out sympathizing for the force instead. But should he have contacted one of the “people who matter” to put in word to the SHO, his mirrors would have been not only recovered but replaced.

WHY this Kolavari D.