Was the ceremony an impromptu affair or was it pre-announced? Obviously, the latter. So why wasn’t training scheduled appropriately? What is worse is Suresh Kalmadi’s statement: “It is no big deal as it is being made out.” Precisely, it is no big deal. The fact we don’t feel proud of being Indian is no big deal either. If we have done well, that’s in spite of the system, not because of it. Such views are usually articulated most by those who are major beneficiaries of the system.

Even if one forgets these so-called fetishes, do we care about our national treasures and heritage? CBI closed the case about the theft of Tagore’s Nobel medal, gold watch, ornaments and ivory artifacts. The crime hasn’t been solved. No one has been held accountable. All one is wrangling about is insurance claims from the National Insurance Company. No big deal. Rare books, manuscripts and letters related to Tagore, Netaji, Sarat Chandra Chatterjee and Sarojini Naidu have been stolen from the National Library, Kolkata. We don’t even know what has been stolen, because the register of the Rare Books Division has also been stolen or misplaced. No big deal.

In Kolkata’s Rajya Charukala Parshad, paintings by Rabindranath, Abanindranath and Jamini Roy are being destroyed. No big deal again, and West Bengal is the norm rather than the exception. There is the inevitable argument about the government’s lack of financial resources. To some extent, this is valid and there are opportunity costs of public resources and questions about prioritisation of expenditure. But this is a simpler problem to solve, since one can outsource to the private sector — and not necessarily to the corporate private sector. Perhaps the non-government sector is a better term to use. The non-government sector will not only be more efficient at maintaining national assets, it will also be more efficient at generating revenue, a percentage of which can be passed on to government. Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. For this to work, the non-government sector needs a sense of national pride and there is no evidence that this exists. The answer can’t be in our genes. Indians who have become first-generation Americans are extremely proud of being American, even more so than seventh-generation Americans. The experience is no different in other countries. Consequently, the answer is indigenous to India.

... contd.