There is much hullabaloo over the SC judgement on the RTE Act. But two more suicides by city students this week show that the statutory right to the three Rs, that the judges, activists and rulers are so obsessed with, often goes against the larger right to life and livelihood of us students. The basic question arises if we should at all be put through this education wringer only to emerge in shreds.
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Mother nature just made a morbid missed call. On the earlier occasion she came calling in these same regions it was a rage that ravaged nations and people in one mighty swell and sweep. That she has chosen to come crawling this time is not to be mistaken as modesty or a measure of her mercy.
We have known Governments to be in the dock. Or on the mat, to use another manner of speech. But on the run? Honest, Honourable MSingh’s regime now has that rare distinction. Chased by an army of activists, an activist judiciary, an aggrieved army, alert auditors, agitated masses, an articulate middle class and an alarmist media, the Government of India has turned out to be the first fugitive. And it is also running from itself, knowing full well its own dark shadows will follow it to the finish.
Even before the first run, the Chennai Metro rail is running over sensitive toes. It is expected that such a project would upset the existing topography and displace businesses, educational institutions and livelihoods. The courts are presently seized with many such issues relating to status quo and compensation in the normal course.
The Bengal tiger or tigress rather, though those famed and feared carnivores themselves may resent the comparison to Mamata, is at it again. For well over a decade, she had fine tuned her roar and honed her fangs to fight the Comrades, her permanent prey.
‘These polls are turning out to be great for our channel’: We know that most anchors on TV are snooty and self-absorbed. But this remark by the snootiest of them all takes the cake. What the polls meant to those States, those voters and the nation is of no consequence, pushed to the backseat or even to the boot!
A cheque deposited on Monday gets cleared by Wednesday, or worse, Thursday. However, cheques issued on Monday promptly land in your debit on Tuesday itself. That is why most of us treading on thin liquidity ice keep a buffer of two days for issue of cheques against cheques received. Also post dated cheques that outlive the mortals issuing them pack the cheque calendar tighter.
The spate of daylight and midnight heists, of banks, jewellery shops etc, not to speak of routine robberies, within the space of a month in TN opens up interesting avenues for grinding the mental grist. So while the cops chase and hunt down the thieves let us spread our dragnet deeper and wider over self and society.
Child and teen crimes, though a regular national occurence, suddenly topped the charts this past week in TN. A classroom murder, a gang rape by trusted friends and a spate of suicides has left parents and teachers petrified and terrified. Every ward in every household or school must have received a second, suspicious look from a paranoid elder scouting either for a lingering offender or an innocent victim.