Aug

31

Dirty hands, deep ditches

August 31, 2009 posted by indiatime |

Times is reporting about a global hygiene survey that shows only 44% Indians have clean hands. I wonder why we need a survey to tell us that the majority of Indians have dirty hands. If you add up all the politicians, top/mid/low level bureaucrats, law enforcement, judiciary, etc, that would already amount for a large share of the dirty hands right there. With politicians, you can add their family members, wives, sons, daughters, etc. And add these people’s partners from the industry and corporate world, from small-time grocery shops to big-time corporates.

Actually, we should be celebrating that 44% Indians have clean hands. That’s almost half a billion clean hands, probably the largest population of clean hands on the planet. I was discussing this amazing piece of good news with a friend, when he enlightened me that the 44% clean hands literally meant clean hands, free of biological germs. That revelation, instead of tempering my joy, further heightened it, because that 44% clean hands figure started looking even more impressive.

But ‘clean hands’ wasn’t the only metaphor happening this morning.

In New Delhi, a top bureaucrat. who once served with a prime minister, died yesterday, when he fell into a 6-foot roadside ditch. Speak of good people’s lives driven to ditches because of the government’s callousness. 78-year old Trilok Nath Makan was a private secretary to former PM Atal Bihari Bajpayee. Walking close to a sidewalk which hadn’t remained much of a sidewalk because of roadside digging by the local municipal government, Makan fell into an open ditch. He couldn’t see the 6-foot ditch because the roadside lamps had been turned off. He lay in the ditch overnight, his family and his old wife worrying to death about his whereabouts. They found his body in the ditch in the morning, one of the topmost bureaucrats who served this country, literally disappearing into a ditch because someone failed to cover it.

Now let’s have those survey people go and talk to the officials in the Delhi municipality and the corrupt contractors. How many clean hands, you think?


Comments

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind

2 Comments so far

  1. Ask A Doctor on September 1, 2009 3:30 pm

    no wonder swine flue is spreading so rapidly in India

  2. vjkuuhwk on November 7, 2009 2:08 am

    eCXSFB ramsixnysnoj, [url=http://qmgtdjehkipu.com/]qmgtdjehkipu[/url], [link=http://zmkqkprzzzud.com/]zmkqkprzzzud[/link], http://vjeicnaepshn.com/

Search

 




Most commented

Mumbai's communal overtones signal upcoming elections (475)
Ten reasons why India is doing better than Pakistan 60 years after independence (441)
Why did Kolkata police murder Rizwanur Rahman? (333)
Bun roller millionnaire saves Indicted Swami's buns by posting $10 bond (161)
Top 10 Zardari jokes banned by Pakistani (105)
Top 10 reasons India sucks at the Olympics (77)
Auntie, Corruption bureau and Crime branch (64)
Desperate Indian housewives (54)
Shah Rukh Khan detained at immigration checkpoint in US (46)
Sex, lies and CD at the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) (40)


Most visited

Hollywood’s first Indian star
Meeting Raj Kapoor at the barbershop
Madhubala on a postal stamp
Why I’m happier than Mukesh Ambani
An inconvenient truth about India’s intellectual property
UFOs may be ‘idlis’ but time travels only in ‘medu-wadas’
Dr Singh is no Dr King
Lesser Known Indians
The Most ‘Nobel’ Teacher of Them All
The third Indian revered in China
A little Poland in India
The vanishing of Indian languages
The looting of Chandigarh’s treasures
Bharat, Pakistan and Hindustan, Indiana
Welcome to India, Steve!
Top 5 explanations for the president’s gesture
An IIT on every street, an IIM on every block
Pakistan, Jinnah, Wadias and the American anthem
An IAS officer’s nightmare of lustful, lascivious stares comes true