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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (1809)	7/17/1998 12:59:00 PM
From: sea_biscuit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

My ire is directed against the self-serving, hypocritical upper- and upper-middle-class elite of India who don't give a damn about the rest of the populace, and yet want the outside world to think that India is endowed with a "superior" culture, rich heritage, "contented" people blah blah blah, and who, after grabbing more than their fair share from the system, go about saying that they are the victims! As for vitriol, read the following two letters from a daily in India, ask yourself if it is the same damn crap that we have been hearing for years, and you'll realize why they deserve all the vitriol and more. (Btw, one of my friends from Madras had a very pithy comment when I asked him about his city changing its name. "Same sh*t; different name!", he said :-) ). BEGIN EXCERPT [A couple of letters from today's (07/17/98) "Deccan Herald"] UNDESIRABLE MOVE Sir, Bangalore Mayor's decision to change the names of roads named after foreigners is, in my humble opinion, undesirable (DH, July 13). If the changes are motivated by 'patriotism' or love of Kannada Nadu, I am afraid, it is not proper. It is wrong to claim that 70 per cent of residents welcome the Mayor's decision with enthusiasm. The Mayor is engaged in doing trivial things like renaming roads while doing nothing to clear garbage strewn all over the City. Filth, insanitation and squalor reign the City. It is not an uncommon sight that emaciated men, women and children, begging and lying in these streets. But the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) is doing precious little to alleviate the miseries of these unfortunate ones. If the Mayor thinks that he can ''ring out the imperial Raj'' and rewrite the history of this land by renaming the streets, institutions and parks named after our former colonial masters, he is thoroughly mistaken. It cannot be erased from the pages of history that we were under the British yoke for 200 years. They could rule over us because we were not united. Let the statues of our imperial masters and the roads named after them remind us and the generations to come after us that history will repeat itself if we are not united to preserve and protect our hard-won freedom. Patriotism or love of one's language is not speeches nor is it renaming of roads, but it is a willingness to sacrifice and submerge the personal interests for public good. P N Benjamin Bangalore IMPROVE ROADS FIRST Sir, Bangalore Mayor J Huchappa's move to rename Bangalore roads after famous personalities (DH, July 13) reminds one of Nero fiddling while Rome was burning and of Marie Antoinette's remark that if the people did not have bread to eat, they could eat cakes. What the Mayor seems to be saying is: if we cannot give the people good roads, let us give them famous names. Surely, the Mayor's priority should be improving the City's roads which have gone from bad to worse. Not so long ago, Hyderabad's roads were a disgrace but now-a- days people returning from a visit speak of the excellent condition of the roads there and the number of flyovers being constructed for smooth flow of traffic. The state of Bangalore's roads did not escape the eye of the noted writer V S Naipaul, who had this to say after a recent visit: ''Bangalore is a mess; impossible to walk; streets are so dirty.'' Let me tell the Mayor that if the roads are allowed to deteriorate further, there may be no roads left worth renaming. M P Yashwanth Kumar Bangalore END EXCERPT Dipy.