Scam time for India
We have ministers, bureaucrats, business tycoons vying with each other to get into the scam page of the newspaper. I think there seems to be some gradation system working with scams being rated – I heard the title “mother of all scams” in a news channel recently. Tihar jail and 5-star hotels have almost similar guest list nowadays and the jail authorities are seriously considering introducing “frequent guest schemes” to give the hotel programs a run for their money. It would really be popular like if one person tainted in a scam stays so many nights in Tihar, he can get some points which can get him/her some freebies…
Watching the news or reading the newspapers have become funny too. Crocodile tears are putting crocodiles to shame. People are forgetting to remember and then forgetting to forget (technique copyrighted by Mr. Kalmadi). We are familiar with tantrums of toddlers and the racket that they can create when they are deprived of their favourite toy. But an outgoing chief minister slapping another minister and smashing a laptop in anger at having to resign – where have we got ourselves to ?
In this gloom and doomsday scenario a news report stood out of the paper yesterday. In Bellary, the same scam tainted Bellary, where mining has shaken skeletons out of many cupboards, we have a 76year old businessman doing the same business with dignity, running schools for the under-privileged, pledging part of the wealth for the upliftment of the society and in general doing a bit more for the public than most. Even his business has been bunched together in the recent ban. He takes it with a smile knowing how difficult it is to be a good apple in a basket of rotten apples.
He is one Mr.Ghorpade , Chairman Emeritus of Sandur Manganese Ore.
Nice writing Sudipto.... The phrase I liked most has to be "forgetting to forget". Very aptly put. With Anna Hazare now on the fast and score of hundreds of people emulating him the hope is certainly afloat, unless all this is part of a "Scam" on its own
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