Deepak Laad
The incompetent epicurean Caesars of Rome kept their poor masses enticed in the Colloseum with free food and daylong spectacles of circus, animal fights and gladiator duels so that their attentions were diverted from Caesars’ inefficient and corruption ridden administrations.
The scholastic senators calling out the Caesars’ misrule were branded as enemies of the State.
Those diversionary tactics are practiced to this date.
The Modi government didn’t have much to show in terms of achievements. So during election time, the janata was bombarded with Modi propaganda blitz.
A dedicated NaMo channel sang paeans 24x7. Others showed Modi as a statesman ordering aerial Balakot strike and as a visionary sending ‘Star war’ type interceptor missile in space.
There was a full length movie on the surgical strike that Modi has been credited for.
Later on, Modi alone won the Lok Sabha elections hands down because most of those three hundred odd faceless BJP MPs had begged for votes in his name.
Presently he is being portrayed as a visionary launching lunar exploration and as an adventurist venturing with famed Edward ‘Bear’ Grylls in the wild.
Modi and his cohorts have always been projected as patriots and nationalists. Their views and policies as sacrosanct and deemed taken almost always in the interest of the nation.
Scholars, thinkers and intellectuals are branded as urban naxals, terrorists and anti-nationals if they even dare question them.
With successfully firing Star war type interceptor missile and launching lunar mission Chandrayan-2, India has become fourth member of the exclusive Club.
India’s celestial enterprise is being hailed as a giant leap in opening newer vistas in scientific researches for the goodness of mankind.
Question is, has the government fulfilled its earthly duties towards residents of our own part of the planet earth? Agreed, the budget spent on lunar project is low - almost half of what Hollywood spends on movies like Avengers: Endgame, but in comparison to USA figuring at 8th place among 187 nations in the per capita income ranking chart published by the IMF, we are way down at 142nd place. The other two club members China And Russia are comfortable at 67th & 60th positions respectively.
Moreover, for the first time in the nation’s history, the government will step out to sell sovereign bonds in order to raise funds to fuel investments in the economy. Government is also bullying the RBI to part away with large chunk of its federal reserves to shore up investments. It shows the Government is short on funds needed for investment and has failed to reach desired level of income generation on its own.
The time spent by the top scientist community on space projects could have been well utilized on inventions that are immediately beneficial to our poor- accounting for thirty percent of population- of which seven crore eke out livings below poverty line.
Our scientists are busy trying to locate water on moon and here our sixty crore Indians, almost half of the population, are facing water scarcity. Water is being transported by railway tankers to Chennai city, presently in the throes of unprecedented water crisis.
Twenty cities in the country may suffer similar fate in the near future if remedial measures are not worked out in time.
Today in the list of ten worst polluted cities in the world seven are ours.
Capital Delhi off and on tops the list. The topmost priority of the day is to ensure lungful of clean air to our people. The scientists need to work on ways to reduce the emissions of greenhouses gases on our planet ,rather than beating their brains out searching oxygen in moon’s atmosphere.
We are the largest defense importer in the world. We go out shopping right from fighter jets to firearms and bullets. What stops us from indigenously manufacturing our own defense equipments, our own stealth fighter jets the kind USA and China has, if we can build Chandrayan? That would save precious foreign reserves too.
A small nation like S.Korea has developed 5G and has opened registrations for users. We are still struggling to stabilize 4G in vast areas of the country. Poor folks in interior areas have been denied monthly rations as their biometric identity could not be accessed due to bad or no connectivity. So some go hungry for days and some starve to death.
Sixty-one percent of our rural population depends on agriculture and allied activities.
Smaller nations like Japan and Israel that have limited land resources have scientifically developed genetically modified(GM) high yielding remunerative varieties of cereals and fruits.
Our Government has been banning use of high yielding GM varieties for more than a decade and half now, but has failed to come out with plausible scientific explanation to back its claim- that they are hazardous to health.
There is need to expand scientific research in agricultural sector to make farming and allied activities profitable to curb farmer suicides.
The priority should be to fix human lives-related issues on earth and that could be the reason why nations like France, Germany, Israel are not in space or lunar exploration in a big way.
