A visitor from Spain to Pondy who is spending 6 months in China on a sabbatical (lucky bum!) was inquiring about the rains here, as would a curious visitor from abroad would do trying to get an indepth about various curiosities.
"Nature and its elements are just unpredictable; China also has its share of floodings in the mid-south but you don´t hear that much since mostly negative things are covered up or simply not talked about".
Hmmm. I wonder - if Shanghai had received 944 mm of rain would it have coped better? Or would we just not have seen ugly pictures and hence never known about the magnitude of the disaster??
I think that kind of cover-up would be hard for a major commercial center housing so many expatriates. But then China - you can never underestimate that country!
But as one drives past the filthy slums on the streets of Mumbai, where kids routinely shit on the street in full view of cars, where garbage always lies in fly-infested piles, one still can't help feeling...
70% of our citizens can't 'somehow' manage in sub-human conditions, without the System breaking down at some point. These are people who probably earn Rs 3000-4000 a month - they own small TVs, even mobiles but can't afford a 200 sq ft room with concrete roof over their heads.
And as mill lands are becoming available for redevelopment, all that developers - even the likes of Manohar Joshi and Raj Thackeray - can think about is constructing more malls...
No comments:
Post a Comment