Ok, this is the latest tete-a-tete with my old friend Anopheles. For those who came in late, she is a female mosquito who specialises in intelligent conversation, sometimes giving me a complex.
This time, she asked me what problems my countrymen were facing. Brainwashed by the stories on TV every breathtaking hour, I replied, "The falling rupee."
She said, "What do you mean?"
I explained, "It's our currency. The rupee. It has fallen to an all-time low against the American currency, the US dollar."
She seemed amused. "Do you travel abroad frequently?"
"No," I said.
"Do you need something so badly that you have to import it?"
I was about to say "gold" but checked myself and said, "Not really."
"Then, pray, how does the rupee fall bother you?" she wanted to know.
I was a bit flummoxed. Then I thought of a killer reply "We need petrol and diesel, you know.That has to be imported. So we need dollars."
"Oh, so you can't do without oil." She seemed quite disdainful. "What research have you done into using solar energy, which is almost free? Or any alternative sources? Why haven't you developed electric cars, with all those millions of engineers whom you keep churning out of your wonderful colleges?"
How did she know so much about what we didn't do, I wondered. But outwardly I put up a brave front.
"Research is on, you know. We'll soon have some of those."
She was not convinced. "Are you sure? How many products or technologies have you produced out of your labs in the last sixty-five years?"
I could count about four or five, and gave up.
"Ok, let's talk of something else," I beseeched her. She relented, so I told her how my state of birth was being split into two- Telangana and Andhra.
She was sceptical of the benefits.
"How do you expect the same bunch of people who ruled the earlier state to do anything different with the people just because you made a new boundary line?" was her searing question.
"Smaller states are easier to govern," I argued.
"Then how come you had all these great empires in the past? Were they all badly governed? The U.S. is large. Is it badly governed?" I had to admit my logic was sounding flawed, in retrospect.
Mulling over that lesson in "good governance", I bid her goodbye with a promise to meet another day.
This time, she asked me what problems my countrymen were facing. Brainwashed by the stories on TV every breathtaking hour, I replied, "The falling rupee."
She said, "What do you mean?"
I explained, "It's our currency. The rupee. It has fallen to an all-time low against the American currency, the US dollar."
She seemed amused. "Do you travel abroad frequently?"
"No," I said.
"Do you need something so badly that you have to import it?"
I was about to say "gold" but checked myself and said, "Not really."
"Then, pray, how does the rupee fall bother you?" she wanted to know.
I was a bit flummoxed. Then I thought of a killer reply "We need petrol and diesel, you know.That has to be imported. So we need dollars."
"Oh, so you can't do without oil." She seemed quite disdainful. "What research have you done into using solar energy, which is almost free? Or any alternative sources? Why haven't you developed electric cars, with all those millions of engineers whom you keep churning out of your wonderful colleges?"
How did she know so much about what we didn't do, I wondered. But outwardly I put up a brave front.
"Research is on, you know. We'll soon have some of those."
She was not convinced. "Are you sure? How many products or technologies have you produced out of your labs in the last sixty-five years?"
I could count about four or five, and gave up.
"Ok, let's talk of something else," I beseeched her. She relented, so I told her how my state of birth was being split into two- Telangana and Andhra.
She was sceptical of the benefits.
"How do you expect the same bunch of people who ruled the earlier state to do anything different with the people just because you made a new boundary line?" was her searing question.
"Smaller states are easier to govern," I argued.
"Then how come you had all these great empires in the past? Were they all badly governed? The U.S. is large. Is it badly governed?" I had to admit my logic was sounding flawed, in retrospect.
Mulling over that lesson in "good governance", I bid her goodbye with a promise to meet another day.
1 comment:
I guess we need to get rid of the blood sucker mentality in the government (aka Con Grease) with a party with the Kachua Chhap (Turtle Stamp) as their brand?
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