Democracy inAction?
Anyone who has been to my college would know how pathetic the road leading to it is. Well, we share the road along with a few MNCs, residential areas and a couple of schools. Today morning, we were all supposed to have a joint protest march from 9am till noon. We students put a reasonable level of enthu - arnd 35 students participated (out of 130 who were on campus) - I hadnt expected too many more newayz. But the way the march turned out was a huge disappointment.
It effectively became a road roko. We just didnt march!! Of course, traffic was blocked, and a whole lot of people were inconvenienced. We were told that the plan was to stay put till an MLA or any other person of authority came and promised action. After a couple of hours, the local MLA did arrive. He took the mike and spoke for a few minutes in Kannada - which none of the students understood. We learnt from a residential group participating in the protest that all the MLA did was blame everyone else for the delay in repairing the road. So promptly junta started shouting "Bhaashan bela, raasta beku" - meaning "down with the speeches, we need roads". We of course did join in the shouting. Anyways the MLA responded to all this by saying that he would also join our protest and wait till the authorities from various departments came and promised action. To make it worse, someone - presumably a political worker- took the mike and started talking about how the NDA govt was willing to make roads between India and Pakistan, while our own road was a mess!. This was when most of us students gave up, and beat a hasty retreat.
Effectively, we got some practice in slogan-shouting and had some fun at the cost of a huge amount of inconvenience to those who were stuck on the road !! some of our better slogans were "Hamara road kaisa ho, MG ROad jaisa ho!" - well, actually that was our only slogan! :((
Makes me wonder if all this is going to make any difference at all. Hence the tille of this post(note that I deliberately missed the space between 'in' and 'action'). Maybe the best option is to invite the PM or the President to our college - for the convocation, or on any other occasion. That should get the concerned departments working - or so one hopes! Aahh, that reminds me of "Hope is a good thing" from Shawshank Redemption - anyways, I gez I'd write a separate post on that movie some other day. Hope rox!
It effectively became a road roko. We just didnt march!! Of course, traffic was blocked, and a whole lot of people were inconvenienced. We were told that the plan was to stay put till an MLA or any other person of authority came and promised action. After a couple of hours, the local MLA did arrive. He took the mike and spoke for a few minutes in Kannada - which none of the students understood. We learnt from a residential group participating in the protest that all the MLA did was blame everyone else for the delay in repairing the road. So promptly junta started shouting "Bhaashan bela, raasta beku" - meaning "down with the speeches, we need roads". We of course did join in the shouting. Anyways the MLA responded to all this by saying that he would also join our protest and wait till the authorities from various departments came and promised action. To make it worse, someone - presumably a political worker- took the mike and started talking about how the NDA govt was willing to make roads between India and Pakistan, while our own road was a mess!. This was when most of us students gave up, and beat a hasty retreat.
Effectively, we got some practice in slogan-shouting and had some fun at the cost of a huge amount of inconvenience to those who were stuck on the road !! some of our better slogans were "Hamara road kaisa ho, MG ROad jaisa ho!" - well, actually that was our only slogan! :((
Makes me wonder if all this is going to make any difference at all. Hence the tille of this post(note that I deliberately missed the space between 'in' and 'action'). Maybe the best option is to invite the PM or the President to our college - for the convocation, or on any other occasion. That should get the concerned departments working - or so one hopes! Aahh, that reminds me of "Hope is a good thing" from Shawshank Redemption - anyways, I gez I'd write a separate post on that movie some other day. Hope rox!
posted by eV at 12:11 PM
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