A bridge too far

If you viewed as I did last week the hysterics over Ram’s bridge from the perspective of a remote island in the Atlantic that has better airports and roads than India, it is not just disheartening but absurd.

A friend’s wedding brought me to this island. On the evening that the finest politicians in India were creating a frenzy over the existence of a mythical bridge I found myself in conversation with a group of Iranians and Indians who have lived in the United States for decades. An Indian techie in his forties said he was thinking of going home after twenty years in California because India now looked like a country that offered hope.

I agreed patriotically and said that most young Indians these days were coming home after college abroad and this was a sign of hope. The Iranians listened sadly and said they hoped India could become a development model that a country like theirs could follow. And, I, bursting momentarily with patriotic sentiment, said we had the advantage of not having religion mixed up with politics and governance.

So when I came home and read the Indian newspapers online and found that the most serious political issue of the moment was Ram’s mythical bridge, I wondered if I was not being recklessly optimistic about the future of our ancient, impoverished, semi-literate land. Is there really hope if, despite having the worst infrastructure in the world, we can argue over mythical bridges and mythical gods? Is there hope if the Union law minister needs to say, “The Government admits its mistakes and wants to remove any doubt whatever that it does not believe in the existence of Ram. The existence of Ram cannot be doubted. As Himalaya is Himalaya, Ganga is Ganga, Ram is Ram. Ram is an integral part of our ethos and cannot be alienated from our hearts.”

Fine. If Christians can believe Jesus was the son of god and Muslims can believe that their Prophet had long conversations with god then why should Hindus not believe that Ram built a bridge to Lanka in a time before recorded history? Faith is faith and there is little anyone can do to persuade the average human that it’s time to start asking some questions.

What worries me is when an India that is on the verge of modernity and an economic boom should be more worried about Ram’s setu than it is about real infrastructure problems. Did nobody notice that the finance minister told a parliamentary committee that India needed to up its investment in infrastructure from the 4.6 per cent it is today to eight per cent in the next five years? Without this the economy cannot grow at nine per cent a year. The finance minister said, “The most visible indicators of overstretched infrastructure are India’s congested highways, airports and ports.”

... contd.

Ads By Google

Message*	Maximum characters allowed

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*

TERMS OF USE:
The views, opinions and comments posted are your, and are not endorsed by this website. You shall be solely responsible for the comment posted here. The website reserves the right to delete, reject, or otherwise remove any views, opinions and comments posted or part thereof. You shall ensure that the comment is not inflammatory, abusive, derogatory, defamatory &/or obscene, or contain pornographic matter and/or does not constitute hate mail, or violate privacy of any person (s) or breach confidentiality or otherwise is illegal, immoral or contrary to public policy. Nor should it contain anything infringing copyright &/or intellectual property rights of any person(s).

I agree to the terms of use.