Two things that struck me in news recently are one that happened in the US and another that seems to happen in Bengal.
The US President, George W Bush, the World’s First Citizen (WFC), made a very ‘intelligent’ remark the other day about the prospering middle class in India and also in China eating more these days and as a result, contributing to the food crisis. The problem I have with that statement from the WFC is that it sounds very insensitive – as insensitive as Marie Antoinette’s remark during the French Revolution, that people who don’t have bread should eat cakes… What prompted WFC to make that remark were surely accusations that his biofuels policy was responsible for this crisis. In his enthusiasm to provide an alternative cause, he has banked on this brainwave of an argument which economists are not buying. Does WFC know where India and China appear on the globe? Does WFC care what living conditions prevail in these nations? Does WFC treat people in the two most populous nations as mere numbers in his statistics charts or does he care if they exist? Shame on WFC!
Secondly, I have seen a few reports on how terror reigns in Nandigram in West Bengal, that bastion of the Red salute party which likes to make much propaganda of their scruples and their firm faith in secularism. If the reports are to be believed, the Muslims in Nandigram are suffering as much as the Muslims did and do in Gujarat, the bastion of the Saffron salute party. I wonder if the two parties concerned have faith in Democracy and in the belief that voices should not be stifled. I wonder why the Press that misses no opportunity to assert its freedom, is relatively so quiet in this case! Lord Acton‘s prophecy, “Power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely” comes to my mind.
