Kusum Choppra

Kashmir is the latest flavor of the media. Everyone talks of the various political players in that field, India, Pakistan, China,Afghanistan, China, the hindus, muslims, buddhists, terrorists, mujahideens, seperatists, moderates, the Muftis, the Abullahs, the mullahs, the pandits, the Valley, Jammu, Ladakh etc etc etc. There is total silence over the key issue: not politics, not religion but economics. Kashmir does not allow non Kashmiris to own property there...a constitutional oxy moron. Just imagine the chaos if the same principle were to be made applicable in all the states of India or if Kashmiris were to be banned from purchase of property in the rest of the country! Bair haal, the issue of this piece is the economics of Kashmir. Its much vaunted handicrafts and tourist trades have yet to be resurrected after the terrorist/separatist imbroiglios. And agriculture remains nascent. For the aam aadmi, a good part of his rozi roti comes from providing goods and services to the Armed F...

How about a campaign to bring Laluji back into the Railways...is keeping a stormy petrel in absentia more important than a maverick ally who brings in trains on time and shows a profit from it too? After almost two years plus, I travelled in a train again.....it was a terrible experience for one who had gotten used to better. I remembered with more than some affection the young men who used to clean up the compartment, visible and adequate hygiene in the bathrooms and fresh bed clothes. This time, the Gujarat Mail was dirty, the Deccan Express tremendously and olfractorily unbearable. In its chair car, when the table was taken down for breakfast, the accumalated filth on the back of the chair in front destroyed breakfast appetite. Whatever happened to the routine baths given to trains at the end of each run. I wondered. Is defeating the Reds in Kolkatta's Writers' building more important than efficiency in the largest Railway network in the world?

It is indeed sad times for Indian democracy and its Fourth Estate that the electronic media is hardput to find a single positive story to report in its daily 24/7 news reports. News is full of scoundrels and scalywags, rapes, murders, scandals etc etc. Very often cricket and film stars take precedence over even the Prime Minister, while scandals dogging the stars, cricket and films and netas hog the headlines all day long. It makes one wonder: DOES NOTHING POSITIVE HAPPEN IN INDIA ANY MORE? Is no one doing anything to improve anything in this vast country of ours, touted to be the next Super Power in the world? Why is that kept under such close wraps that the media is unable to see it and report about it? Whatever happened to INDIA SHINING?