Magic Figure 51

So Mr. Narendra Modi has decided to go on a fast for EXACTLY fifty one hours to show his support for the construction of the Narmada dam. Mind you, it isn't forty eight, it isn't fifty, it isn't fifty two. It's PRECISELY FIFTY ONE. I wonder how he arrived at the figure.

Maybe he was checking himself out in the mirror, spotted a paunch and was going to embark on a 2 day crash diet a la Gabrielle Solis, so he thought might as well throw in a little political goodwill.

Maybe all he was gonna be given to eat for that much time was chicken flown in straight from Singapore or Turkey. Import quality.

Maybe it's the longest he can pretend he hasn't been eating anything.

So basically, now there is a fasting tug -of- war going on between Mr.Modi on one side and Medha Patkar on the other. Of course, it is of no consequence that Patkar has been fasting since Godknowswhen and is now hospitalised for it, while Mr. Modi, of course, is fasting to a definite deadline. Can't let it get to intravaneous, can we? Naah, then it'd all just be a farce!

Now i don't claim to have expert knowledge about whats happening with the Sardar Sarovar dam project, and all i know is that a dam is being built over the Narmada to facilitate hydroelectricity and irrigation for several states, but that the higher it is built, the more peril it puts the poor neighbouring villagers of being washed out in.

My point is, bulid the dam, by all means build it, even pocket most of the profits that come from it as you're gonna anyway. But make sure that the people you are suddenly uprooting get properly and adequately relocated. Don't disable a whole populace. You cannot build something worthwhile on somebody's ruins - just because they are too helpless to be able to hurt you. And when celebs like Arundhati Roy and Aamir Khan and Rahul Bose, people whose influence can possibly hurt you stand up for what is only morally and humanly right, don't 'protest' by burning things down and ransacking movie theatres. Don't wield your power by resorting to melodrama like fasting and stuff. And even if you do, at least don't make it all hogwash by setting deadlines to it.

I admit to one thing - it was the involvement of Aamir Khan and then Rahul Bose that got me to really sit up about this cause - but then, from where i look at it, if this is true of even 10 other people, it is well worth their effort. But now that i read deeper into the case and unearth the twisted workings of that slimeball Modi, i think Aamir or no Aamir, cause or no cause, i'd still stand by the issue, if only to spite that man.

Still, i can't help but wonder. I can't help but wonder that in the land of Gandhi and in a case where people are falling over each other to pull a Gandhi (with fasts and suchlike), how many of his truly worthwhile principles are biting the dust.

It is so bloody amusing and so bloody sad at the same time, that where hundreds of thousands of poor, helpless, victimised tribals and farmers who have always lived by the sweat of their brow are being literally potentially washed out by a dam, the dam continues to be built, nay, even widened. And where one bigshot who rolls in wealth threatens to leave a place for another equally opulent one because building an essential flyover there might tickle her golden throat, the flyover decision promptle comes to a standstill.