Celebration of winning a sporting event (?)..

The ongoing celebration in Calcutta for winning this year's version of IPL by KKR is absolutely unprecedented by many standards. The victory by the franchise team is being hailed by many Calcuttans as something bigger than winning the last year's ICC World Cup by India. Few facts around this celebration have raised eyebrows. The unofficial local mouthpiece of the party in power in the state (The Daily Sangbad Pratidin) has been uncomplicated in describing the win as the win of change in the state. The Trinamool Congress propaganda machine went on as far as claiming that since the CP(I)M influenced Sourav Ganguly (what the shit!!) was not in the team, this time Shahrukh Khan and Gautam Gambhir took the challenge with lot of enthusiasm and the CM Shreemati Bandyapadhyay was always next to them in this battle. Wow!!!

http://epratidin.in/Details.aspx?id=8296&boxid=145735515 (my non-Bengali friends won't be able to read this, but I have already translated the first few lines of the crap).

The CM who always complains about lack of funds in the state government treasury, had shown that she has a kind heart by spending millions of Rupees of the taxpayers for the victory celebration of a franchise team. When Shreemati Bandyapadhyay hails the victory and relates it with the 'pariwartan' (change) of party in power in Writers' Building we must think that IPL is a political event, not a sporting one. In fact that's not that big a shock keeping Shreemati Bandyapadhyay's track record in mind of nonsense comments on hundreds of matters. But it was a real beamer when the President of India appointee, the Governor of West Bengal joined the chorus with the Trinamool Congress leader. Shree Narayanan described the victory of the sporting event (?) as the beginning of real 'pariwartan' in the state. I thought the Governor's role had nothing to do with any party being in power. I am aware that the governors in our country in general are not free of political bias all the time. But a person of his stature comparing the win of the sporting event as the political change in the state - frankly speaking, I have not heard anything like this before.

One more train accident..

One more train accident, loss of many lives and then the announcement of compensation to the victims' families. We have been watching this reality show of Indian Railways for decades now. Yesterday's train accident in Andhra Pradesh is just the latest in that decades' old reality show. In fact, we, the common men have accepted this reality as our fate and have learnt to be patient to be killed by the next train accident. That's why I do not see any public outrage after such a tragedy. The callous attitude in general among people about the death toll of 26 makes me feel sick. Such attitude of ours encourages the ever opportunistic politicians to indulge into cheap and populist vote bank politics. Railway Ministers have not increased the passenger fares for almost a decade now (apart from higher range fares). Former Railway Minister Shreejukto Trivedi wanted to bring some changes in that trend, he proposed to increase the passenger fares for all the classes in his much discussed Railway Budget, he wanted to bail Indian Railways out of ICCU. It is no secret that the largest PSU of the country has no financial arm either to provide the safety and security to it's passengers or to go for it's long pending modernization, definitely the hike of passenger fares was the need of the hour. The supremo of his party Shreemati Bandyapadhyay's wish of a populist budget was compromised - absolutely unacceptable - result: all of us know. And the situation remains unchanged. We, the common men are responsible to a great extent for letting our Ministers like Shreeman Ray (the present Railway Minister) wash their hands of playing with our lives by allowing them just to declare some compensation and set an inquiry commission after every tragedy, I do not see any public disgust being expressed towards the decision makers for their gallery shows. We hear about the anti collision device after every train accident in the country, but do not know when that is going to be a reality (or is that just an Utopian expectation?). We do not know how many losses of lives are enough for our politicians to to be shaken - to wake up and make more realistic and lesser populist decisions. Shreeman Ray, people won't mind spending few Rupees more if they are guaranteed of a much safer journey. Wish you could think about that rising above your and a certain Shreemati Bandyapadhyay's street level politics of cheap populism.

here i go..

Welcome to my blog!! It's been quite sometime I have been nurturing the thought of starting my blog. So here I am. What am I going to talk about? Well, nothing specific and everything in particular.. politics, cricket, football, religion, movies, adventures and et cetera et cetera. It is going to be kind of my diary - as my blog title suggests.