GANDHIAN FIELD TRIPS

Every Gandhi jayanti,i find myself wondering if i should add my two bits to the reams of commemorative comment that gandhijis birthday inspires.Usually i resist the temptation.the tone of my so called blog pageis irrelevent and since i get into trouble everytime,i mock lesser politicians with the name of gandhi,i tremble at the thought of writing one word about our only political mahatma.this time,though,when i saw Rahul ghandhi ordering his troop of neo-gandhian to spend the night of gandhi jayanthi in dalit homes in the filthy,fly blown villages of our utter pradesh,i found myself unable to keep from saying something.At the very least it needs to be pointed out that the mahatma would have been mortified by this political field trip disguised as gandhian virtue.

Since most of our younger politician are sons and daughter of rich and older politicians ,it is a good idea for them to find out how the average dalit family lives.the only time they venture in to mofussil is during election campaigns and then they come in convoys of air conditioned SUVs equipped with botteled water and packeged food and have no need of local refreshment or accomodation.so if rahul gandhis intention is for these spoilt princes and princesses to get a teste of how the poorest of indians live,then it is a good one.

Let them sleep on some cowdung-plastered floor in a windowless hovel with mosquitos filling the air and people covering the floor.let them wake at dawn and find some secluded spot to perform their morning ablutions and let them drink the poisonous water that the average indian villager drinks. but remember that had the mahatma been on his field trip he would have exchenged his fancy bungalow in Lutyens Delhi permanently for the village hut.he would have done this in the hope of learning how to better the lot of those whu have nothing.at the end of the gandhi jayanthi excursion,if every politician on the trip is asked to make a commitment to improve the village he spent the night i,it would be something.otherwise it would be an exercise in hypocrasy,like almost everything else that is done in the Mahatmas name.politicians must realise that what is there origin,they must not forget the principle of democracy that they are in the rule for the people,by the people and to the people...