Saturday, January 26, 2013

Pranab Mukherjee - Pranab Speech Reason For Rulers To Look Inwards Mail Online - Mail Today Comment

By Mail Today Reporter

PUBLISHED: 19:51 EST, 26 January 2013 UPDATED: 19:51 EST, 26 January 2013

Indian President Pranab Mukherjee addressed the nation on the eve of the country's 64th Republic Day

President Pranab Mukherjee 's traditional address to the nation on the eve of the Republic Day was shaped in the backdrop of the brutal gang-rape and murder of a young girl who he said was "a symbol of all that new India strives to be."

It was not surprising then that even while hailing the achievements of the Republic on its 64th anniversary, the President called on the nation to urgently "reset its moral compass".

After wondering aloud as to whether "the powerful (has) lost their Dharma in pursuit of greed," he called on the political class of the country to "win back the confidence of the people" and to "ensure that the fruits of economic growth do not become the monopoly of the privileged at the peak of a pyramid."

Mr Mukherjee urged the nation's elite to realise that it was on the "cusp of generational change" with the youth of the country being in its vanguard.

But this very group, he said, suffered from "existential doubt". The young were concerned as to whether the system of the country offered "due reward for merit" and whether corruption had "overtaken morality in public life." By any account, this is a harsh reading of the state of the nation.

But, clearly, Mr Mukherjee felt that as the president of the republic, it was his duty to articulate it. This critique of gender injustice, corruption, amorality and crony capitalism is powerful stuff coming as it does from the first citizen of the country.

But it is even more telling considering that it comes from a man who has been in public life for over four decades and was a central figure in the United Progressive Alliance government from the outset. Mr Mukherjee is no ivory tower figure who has been elevated to the highest office, but a politician who is conversant with the ways of the world and concerned about the direction that the country is taking.

Ashis Nandy at the Jaipur Literature Festival

Unbecoming of Nandy to speak the way he has

We wonder what Ashis Nandy was thinking when he made unacceptable remarks about Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes on Saturday.

Speaking at the Jaipur Literary Festival, Mr Nandy reportedly said that most of the corrupt people come from the SC/ST and OBC sections.

And while he has since claimed that his comments were torn out of context, there is no disputing the statements he made on the occasion.

How the renowned intellectual has arrived at this questionable position is difficult to tell considering that there is no study yet which has looked at the issue of corruption from this perspective.

Such a stance also fails to explain why India has been corrupt through the decades though the rise of the lower castes in professional terms is a relatively recent phenomenon.

What seems likely is that Mr Nandy harbours a shade of the same prejudice about the downtrodden sections of our society which has permitted their exploitation and ill-treatment over centuries.

Nothing could be more unfortunate. In a country where the social order continues to suffer equality, with Dalits in particular still being at the receiving end of upper classes, the progressive sections of our society, to which Mr Nandy belongs, have a critical role to play in change.

So there can be no excuse for them to mouth illicit generalisations.

Excluding Sushil from Padma honours unfair

If there was a highlight of the Padma awards announced on Friday, it was the exclusion of double Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar from the list of honorees.

The selection panel consisting of three bureaucrats and scientist Anil Kakodkar and actor Ratna Pathak Shah, left out Sushil despite the wrestler following up on his Beijing Olympics bronze with a silver in London.

For good measure, he also won a world championship gold in between. The sportsman's disappointment on this front is quite understandable.

Some have also pointed at the fact that the panel taking the call does not include a sportsperson. It seems the panel went by the guideline which stipulates that an individual must wait for a designated period after receiving a Padma award before she gets another one-Sushil became a Padma Shri in 2011.

But, at the end of the day, this is just a guideline and in light of Sushil's achievement - no other Indian has won an individual medal at two consecutive Games - an exception could well have been made for him.

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