Thursday, May 01, 2008

State of the Nation

So this is what it has finally come down to. All signboards in Marathi and 80% jobs to locals in Maharashtra. And this is coming not from the ill-famed Raj and the other Thackerey's but from the Finance Minister of the erstwhile state.

Its headlines like these that make the idea of economic prosperity and social progress in India look like a joke. On my visits to Chennai and Bangaloroo I was irritated when I saw signboards entirely in the regional languages of Tamil and Kannada respectively and thanked Mumbai's powers to be for not following suite. But it seems that's gonna change pretty soon. I hope sanity prevails and they still keep the Hindi/English sign boards as a back up.

I would like to see the reaction from the various business houses in response to the second headline though. In a hypothetical situation if I had been one of the influential industrialists , I would have initiated a drive to stop any further expansion plans in the state of Maharashtra and start working on a blueprint to phase out the existing installations as well. The problem with this diabolical plan is that it would end up hurting the general populace of Maharashtra who effectively had no say in such arcane plans of the government. That's pure politics for you. The current crop of politicians is no better than the British. Its still "divide and rule".

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