DOCTORS!! (I)

Aamir’s show today was on health care and health care professionals in India. And the tone was justifiably negative.

Pathetic – the one word that can define the state of affairs. There have been raging debates on the issue; there would be volume-loads of literature being written in the future, but what would be the point to begin that would bring the change had the answer in the show itself. The answer has been all around, much debated and discussed but not able to find takers at the top-most policy-making level.

Aamir was reacting on every small fact, known to millions and already in the public domain, in a way like it was a bombshell. And that is exactly the problem.

Now don’t we all know how the many doctors are cahoots with the marketing machinery and the human exacerbated greed?

Most of the doctors in the government hospitals complete writing the prescription even before the patient finishes his account of the problem. Private doctors are not within reach of the majority. Those, from this lot of majority, who approach such doctors, either take loan or kill their savings.

It is next to difficult to convince most of the doctors to write medicines easily available at all chemist shops. It is almost impossible to ask a doctor to let you follow the diagnostic centre that is convenient to you.

Doctors sustain lives. They are supposed to be next to the god. They why this?

Go and experience it.

Recently, I had ligament tear. After trying self-healing, I approached a nearby hospital run by a charity governed by Delhi’s health minister, Ashok Walia. The doctor recommended X-ray and asked me to come with the report. The X-ray guy was probably in some other world as he clicked for wrong part of my foot. I had to get it redone. After it, when I approached the doctor, he had serious expression on his face and some heavy words ready for my problem. He explained it as length like I was having some serious fracture. He wrote three days of medicine and advised to consult again. When I tried to purchase the medicine from the shop I am regular with, I couldn’t find it there, not even at any other shop in the area. Some of the shopkeepers advised me to approach the pharmacy of the hospital. And lo! I got it.

But see what I got it. These were generic salts marketed by some unknown Delhi based company but with almost equal price tag as the branded medicines. They didn’t work on my pain and I left taking them after a day. Anyway, my problem was gone three days after visiting the doctor when I had an enjoyable 4 Kms walk back to my home.

Now if this is the state of affairs of a charitable hospital associated with a name that is Delhi’s health minister, we can easily imagine what is happening all across.

Magnifying the problem, writing medicines not really needed, and writing highly-priced ineffective versions of medicines – indeed a crime.

I can say I have come across multiple such examples even with the famed doctors indulged in such malpractices. (And I am sure, there would be many like me.)

Another bad patch is the excessive charges being levied on. You can easily find the sky-high differences in the cost of diagnostic tests of different labs. Last year, my sister had a mild fever but the doctor at the Max hospital wrote medical tests for almost everything with bills running into Rs. 20,000 plus figures. My sister recovered after three days and had no need to follow the medicine regime advised for 15 days. Doctors get huge commission on the medical tests recommended, even at the big hospitals like Max and Fortis it seems.

And the commission system really kills. Your hard-earned money goes into nothing. Extending the tyranny is the unaccountable costs incurred on hospitalization. When I had met the doctor for knee-cap replacement surgery of the 76-year old Mrs. Mehta, I was given a cost-estimate of Rs. 4 Lakh. The total funding generated was around Rs. 5.5 Lakh. And though it was an acclaimed hospital run as a registered charity, the final bill amount crossed the Rs. 5.5 Lakh limit. Okay there might be genuine additions, but what I observed about the attitude of the support staff was not different to that of the corporate hospitals and other notorious one/two doctor nursing homes.

The focus was on maximizing the bill amount irrespective of the need.

There are good and bad people in every profession, but certain areas, owing to their emergency nature and poor access to the public in India, creates an easy ground for manipulation, and health services in India is one such area.

What aggravates the misery in India?

Almost half of the population illiterate (with even greater share of medically illiterate lot), over 65 per cent of the population below poverty line, an ever-increasing urban slum population, lower number of even the allied health professionals working in the rural areas and the restricted availability of qualified medical professionals to the large sections of the population even in the urban centers are the telling signs of the malaise. I don’t need to write the statistical base for all this. Most of us are aware of these.

Unawareness on health care rights and poor government spending on healthcare amenities by the government at the cost of promoting private enterprises coupled with the problems mentioned above create the monster.

I have been working with doctors and activists. I have come across few good doctors. They are really serious about bringing the change. But I can say I have come across more bad doctors. The condition is frightening in rural areas.

Continued..

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

'Life & Time' Interdependence: How it defines us..

My reflections on life – in quotes (XXI)   

“Life and time interdependence has two pivots.

Time goes by its own scale, and,

We traverse the time on our very own scale.

Balancing the two is the game we play with the existence.

How we go about it defines us.”

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

WHAT MAKES COMBINATION OF GANGA AND VARANASI SO SPECIAL?

(BANARAS CALLING)

Ganga symbolizes eternal flow. Its religious sanctity owes more to its spiritual halo.

Ganga is probably the only river in the history of human existence that commands spiritual aesthetics, right from its origin in the Himalayan Mountains (the Gangotri glacier) to its final destination in the Bay of Bengal.

From Kedarnath to Ganga Sagar, if Ganga is a sustainability factor for millions of lives and evergreen religious business activities, it is also precursor to a mystical tradition of spirituality. The major religious Ganga cities, i.e., Haridwar, Allahabad, Varanasi, Mirzapur, and Kolkata, have elements of spirituality associated with the religious significance of Ganga but the spiritual halo gets its full radiance only in Varanasi, the city of illumination, as one of its ancient etymological terms, Kasa, says.

What makes combination of Ganga and Varanasi so special?

What imparts its ritualistic religiosity such a brilliant spiritual discourse?

Varanasi is as much the city of Ganga as it is synonymous with Lord Shiva, one of the three supreme Hindu deities (the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh).

Shiva creates. Shiva destroys. Shiva is a yogi and lives a life of sage at Mount Kailash, Hindu scriptures say.

Shiva brought Ganga to the Earth.

And Shiva is the other name of supreme spirituality in the Hindu tradition and mythology.

Lord Shiva, Ganga, Varanasi - The Spiritual Trinity 


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Varanasi is among the oldest continually inhabited places and its association with Shiva and Shiva’s association with Ganga was always the magnate to ensure generations of civilizations to continue.

Ritualistic religion is always susceptible to changes and attacks by time-oriented generational transformations leading to the elimination of many overtly religious centers. But association of Lord Shiva with Varanasi has given the city a continued spiritual pedigree, and this, in combination with the ‘ablution and salvation’ aspect of Ganga, has helped the ritualistic side of religion, too, to survive and thus the city. Also, the sustained spiritual quotient has helped the cultural tradition of the city assimilate the changes and get along with what the transforming moments ask for.

One basic aspect of life in Varanasi is the discourse on death. Death is something that makes one free of all bonds, a point where materialism goes into oblivion, even for a moment. It evokes spiritual vibes naturally then.

Varanasi has seen generations built around this tradition. The city has been flowing the way history has been written but has been able to sustain the course of spiritual discourse that pertains to the questions of life, ways of living and ethos of existentialism.

Like Hindu scriptures and mythology (or like in any other religion), there have been good and bad aspects; positive and negative elements, and life flows on in the spiritual capital of the world.

Lord Shiva and Ganga make the ‘Spiritual Trinity’ complete with Varanasi. 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

IS MR. MANMOHAN SINGH STILL THE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA?

Sources say Jaipal Reddy, the honourable Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas in the great democratic republic of India was not aware of the petrol price hike. (Is he aware that he is still an Indian minister?)

Now it is like Barack Obama saying he wasn’t aware of the Navy Seals operation that killed Osama bin-Laden.

Now it is like Manmohan Singh asking where the 7-Race Course Road is. (Though, Manmohanji can ask it, in all his wisdom; the way he was faking ill-deeds of his government as windfalls for the ‘aam aadmi’ on May 22, on completion of three pathetic years of the United Progressive Alliance -2 government.)

Now it is like Digvijay Singh asking if he really speaks too much of a trash.

Now it is like Mamata Banarjee asking who the current railway minister of India is.

Now it is like the BJP asking what led to its political downfall in Uttar Pradesh, the state that gave it the political ground to begin.  

Now it is like the Indian media saying it was not aware of the name of the new member of Amitabh Bachchan’s family.

Now it is like Rajinikanth saying he isn’t aware if his stunts are performed by body doubles or magnified by special effects.

It is like Mr. Jaipal Reddy asking if Mr. Manmohan Singh is still the prime minister of India.

It can happen only in India.

Mr. Manmohan Singh has one grand tagline – his government is not able to check the negative trends – prices and so on (obviously sighting variegated reasons, from coalition compulsions to foreign government hands in anti-Kudankulum nuclear plant protests.)

The steepest rise in petrol prices came on a day when the global crude oil prices were at 7-month low. We all know it were factors like elections or Budget Session that led the government to keep on postponing the price hike, but only to make a bigger dent in our pockets later.

But don’t we deserve even the cushion to absorb the shocks – like hikes in intervals and not in one go?

Many politicians currently ruling us are shamelessly shameless and audaciously baseless. They said government didn’t control oil prices though it did not allow the prices to go up for 6 months. Government’s lie was nailed today when the oil marketing companies told had they got the government support, the prices wouldn’t have gone up. One major oil marketer said government does intervene in oil pricing.

What is the logic except the silly political interests in holding up the prices and raising it on ‘whims and fancies’? Yes, what else can we say that ‘whims and fancies’ after last day’s price rise when there were causative conditions existing for six months?

Now don’t we know all this! Yes all of us know it like ever-increasing price rise figures in our democracy the Mahatma had once envisioned being a ‘Ram-rajya’.

It tells us one thing.

Politicians who had already become insensitive to the needs of the country but were somewhat shy of letting the public know of their schemes are now a brazenly ruthless lot.

They don’t care about what the democracy would think; how the common man would adjust with the means already beyond his reach.

And so they come with audaciously shameless justifications for their unwarranted bravados most visible in statements like Mr. Jaipal Reddy being not aware that the petrol marketing companies were going to hike the price.

Mr. Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India is supposed to be an efficient executive leading the country of over billion people to the future of growth and prosperity and not just be the favourite outlet for satirists and jokes.

Unfortunately the later prospect looks to have gained the ground now.

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

Oh, that expression..

Oh, that expression of anger

Those moments of admonition

They are so dear to me, now,

That I look back to see what,

I have lost, what I crave for

That fresh air in life created,

Set of emotions I had never felt,

Before I met you, though I feel,

Sorry sometimes if I made you,

Angry though I never intended

In my privileged life built on,

The perception of being the,

Perfect-one, you brought me,

The emotion that made me feel,

At one with the rhyme of creation

How much I miss it I cannot tell

But I know there is nothing else,

To foretell, just the reminder of,

My longing for the moments gone

But eternally imprinted on my soul..

May 23, 2012

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey

EMOTIONS (THE CARING ANGER) BY RAGINI

CATEGORY: DIGITAL PAINTING

 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

THAT 42-HOUR JOURNEY..

LIFE - COLORES INFINITUM (6)

First journey down south. A whole wild month that began with an interesting train journey. 15 years ago.

AC-2 compartment of the train to Chennai. The thrill to be alone on a journey began soaking the soul as soon as he stepped out of the house. Pure joy – the air was so fresh that even the luggage load looked so charming.

10 minutes into the ride – he was comfortably in the 64-passenger coach. There were around a dozen who had come to drop the fellow who had his first solo movie outing to a theatre during his +2 schooling days.

Do this, don’t do that. Keep straight out of experimenting with language. Don’t speak much. Take loads of snapped moments. Don’t be extravagant. Eat and sleep sincerely. All the blessings, every variety of advice and soon it was time to leave.

It took some minutes for the train to leave the platform for the 42-hour journey. He was there, at the compartment’s entry; they were there, at the platform, till they could see the waving hands.

Sensed with the feeling of being away from home for so long and fueled with the curiosity of exploring a far region, he settled back to his seat, the lower berth. A passage walkthrough told him the coach was almost filled with South Indian passengers except the coupe he was in. The other three passengers in the coupe were members of a North Indian family settled in Bangalore.

Luck was smiling. It was really a good beginning, for he had a North Indian family from Varanasi with over three decades of life in a major South Indian city. No language problem in the immediate neighbourhood. 42 hours of time to go - mobile phones were not in vogue. The family head was a businessman who had migrated to that part of country in his 20’s and had come to Varanasi to take his daughter-in-law with him. There was another one with them, an assistant.

Though he was reserved in talking, the long hours of journey had good enough sessions of conversation, especially with the family head. Given the age-difference and realization that it was his first visit to the South India, the major focus of the conversation was do’s and don’t for a North Indian in South Indian cities. It was mostly fatherly advices that helped him a lot in the next 30 days. There were occasional sharing of eatables, music records and books and magazines.

If he was attentive to the advices of the North Indian family head, the pantry car vendors were the typical elements of noise. The call to ‘Pongal Vada’ (made from ground pulses) that began soon after the Varanasi station continued till Chennai. The old man had advised against it and his own experience affirmed it. Also, the trademark coconut oil cooking was just pathetic (anyway Indian Railway pantries seldom serve human meal). During his whole visit, he tried to steer clear of the coconut oil South Indian delicacies.

The old man had advised him not to use words like ‘Pagal’ (mad) or other North Indian slangs popularized by the Hindi movies (Hindi movies is the reason many South Indians can understand Hindi even if vaguely).  he also said of keeping it to simple English. He could see later on during his visit to different places why the old man had advised him on it.

The old man had said commuting between Chennai and Bangalore was like mapping Varanasi to Allahabad and for many it was a routine thing. The old man had said regional rail network and road transport were far more efficient in South India. All, that he could feel later on.

But what he enjoyed most was sitting at the door-steps of the coach for hours lost in the amazing beauty of the landscape. What he says virgin natural beauty of the areas of Andhra Pradesh and Nagpur region of Maharashtra on the train route are still fresh in his memory. It was amazingly imprinting – the curves and turns of the hilly, sandy, sparsely green red corridors of uninhabited miles.

The one highlight event of the 42-hour journey was the ‘lost and found’ event of his wallet. Incidentally, he had left his wallet on the wash basin of the washroom and had forgotten about it. After around half-an-hour, someone in his late 20’s came looking for him. The gentleman could locate him by the reservation ticket in the wallet. It was a shockingly welcome development for his wallet held the key to the next leg of his journey. The wallet had important documents like driving license, reservation tickets and a sum of over Rs. 2000 and then the wallet itself. It could have been really tempting. But the luck smiled once again. He had simply no words to thank the person.

The next good thing in the beginning of the 30-day journey was the train arrived in time in Chennai though delayed for over four hours till the 60 per cent of the train-route. It solved what could have been a Chennai riddle for him in the days to come. After exchange of courtesies, they said goodbye. The old man invited him to his place in Bangalore.

The North Indian family boarded the train to Bangalore while he stepped out of the Chennai railway station. The air breezed still fresh. The luggage load still felt so light.

First journey down south. And thus ended the 42-hour beginning to the next leg of his 30-day journey.

 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

NERO’S AUSTERITY

There could not be a better day than this for the sharp attack of wit by P. Sainath. His article ‘The austerity of the affluent’ on the editorial page of the Hindu (May 21, 2012) tears into the cacophony of the likes represented by Montek Singh Ahluwalia and it comes on a day when we saw some more sham acts by the parliamentarians and the government.

First Pranab Mukherjee presented the 108-page long attempt to cover-up and justify the lame progress (or regress?) of the government initiatives on the black money issue. As if this tirade was not enough, he ended up proposing a Lokpal on black money issue on a day when the real Lokpal issue was again pushed to oblivion. The Select Committee is expected to report back on the Lokpal by the last week of the Monsoon Session and we know ‘such’ committees never work on time in India.

It came on a day when the Rupee touched the historic low breaching the Rs. 55 threshold to the US Dollar.

What the government is doing? Nothing except the parliamentary eloquence!

Our dear finance minister, in his immense wisdom, recently proposed to introduce austerity measures while claiming that fundamentals of the economy were strong and the current phase was basically due to Greece and Eurozone crisis.

The Rupee has already seen a 22 per cent fall in last one year while, according to a Bloomberg report, currencies of other major emerging economies like China, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, have all maintained with just around 1 per cent of slide, if the Eurozone has really been any factor.

There seem, are enough reasons with his reasoning (of course in his insight) that his austerity measures would be able to iron out the rough spots in the economy and there is no need to press the panic button.

So blame the silly Greece and remain in the comfort zone (lest, this attitude become the Greek phenomenon for our economy!).

Now don’t we remember the austerity saga part-1, in the follow-up of the 2008-09 global busts?

Don’t we remember the crude pomp and show like some leaders travelling by trains (Rahul Gandhi) while some more enjoying five-star hotel accommodations (S. M. Krishna and Shashi Tharoor)?

Sainath’s article is an interesting read on this ‘austerity joke’ by the political elite. And he has chosen a perfect character, Nero of Manmohan Singh’s regime, Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Like always, Sainath is to-the-point with precise background information and statistical filtering. He unleashes his whip on Montek’s tyranny of poverty politics in pure P. Sainath style.

Take this: As the Chairman of the Planning Commission, Mr. Ahluwalia was on foreign tours for 274 days (mostly to the US) excluding the travel days during his seven years of tenure (till 2011). This was when his nature of job doesn’t require much travel. His four trips between May-October 2011 cost the exchequer Rs. 2.02 Lakh a day. This was for a person who takes pride in elevating the life of the Indian on the street by pushing him in the darkness even deeper. He proudly sticks with Rs. 32/29 (Urban India) and Rs. 26/23 (Rural India) poverty line figures. So most of us are rich. Isn’t it?

P. Sainath doesn’t stop at it. He goes on to find other interesting characters of polity’s austerity theatre.

The recent events gel with the write-up while you read it. A report on Bhaskar’s English website says some 20 crore was paid for the print advertisements on Rajiv Gandhi’s death anniversary. Couple this with the massive public money waste by Jayalalitha and Mamata Banarjee governments on completing one year in the office. Expect more misuse when the UPA government tries to paint the town in red (and pain us even more) on completing lackluster three years in the office tomorrow (May 22).

So many Nero(s) and their fake concerns! It, too, happens in India!  

/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/©

COCKTAIL OF WHILE ELEPHANTS: LOKPAL AND WHITE PAPER ON BLACK MONEY

The treadmill is on but as usual nothing is going to happen than another session of the Parliament somehow passed and some more fodder to the airwaves for writing and airing on the riddle that we all know has lost all the mystery.

For months it is being speculated that the Lokpal Bill is to be tabled in the upcoming session of the Parliament (the present one or the Budget Session). For months, the anti-proponents are saying the government is going to stall it further by sending it to the Select Committee or the Joint Committee of both the houses.

Anyway, does it really matter now, after a toothless Bill prepared by the Standing Committee (with no stands on its own) to be further watered down with some 185 amendments proposed by the political parties?

The country (if we mean the ‘country’ for the political ‘elite’ of this otherwise poor country) had stood a silent victim to the drama that unfolded in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house, in December 2011? After a marathon debate, the session was abruptly terminated sine die at midnight of December 29, 2011.

If the Lokpal Bill draft or the Jan Lokpal Bill as proposed by the people behind the anti-corruption movement last year was too rigid to be accepted, what the government proposed and what the 185 amendments sought was outrightly condemnable. If the Jan Lokpal Bill was not a practical version, the government’s Lokpal Bill is not even theoretical one for the needs of the Indian democracy.

After the anti-corruption movement fizzled out due to the clique around Anna Hazare, the word Lokpal has again become the football with no goal-posts drawn. It cannot be said if it is going to be presented tomorrow or the day-after in the Parliament or even if presented, going to see the voting.

For us, the Indian on the street, this bedraggled game of political skullduggery is nothing but the meaner games our politicians have been playing with us. Even if the Lokpal is institutionalized the way the political parties (and just not the government) are proposing, it doesn’t mean anything except a burden on us, the taxpayers, to carry the burden of yet another administrative while elephant.

Yet another while elephant being speculated to arrive on the scene in the House is the White Paper on Black Money. The political parties in their ‘finer spirit’ have been criticizing the government for not doing enough to bring the black money back in the country. And so our dear finance minister would take the pain to make his fellow parliamentarians aware of the so-called ‘five-pronged’ strategy adopted by the government to bring back the billions stashed in foreign banks.

In the recent times, any parliament session has not been much productive for the interests of the common man as indicated by the different analytical reports that say almost half of the time of parliament sittings were wasted owning to disruptions or walk-outs.

This Budget Session or any other is the similar stories. They don’t mean anything for the common man except the spectacle of unorganized and misdirected flow of verbose eloquence and empty promises and also some more waste of taxpayers’ money. A report said 23 days of 2010 Winter Session cost Rs. 150 crore with most wasted while another reports says every day wasted (or to say spend in irrelevant discussions like the NCERT cartoons) in Parliament costs Rs. 2 crore.

Expect the high-pitched drama weaved around the cocktail of while elephants – Lokpal and White Paper on Black Money – pushed to nowhere zone by the veiled camaraderie of our dear lords sitting in the temple of the democracy.

A PTI report headlines, “While the cost of running Parliament has gone up phenomenally down the years, so has the time lost in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha due to the `frayed tempers' of the legislators.”

So, what is your take?

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

GHAT

(BANARAS CALLING)

Ghats, they exist almost everywhere, wherever there are civilizations and the human dwellings evolved at the river-banks. Known in different vernacular terms, the term Ghat or the steps to the river (especially holy rivers like Ganga, confluence of Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati at Allahabad, Yamuna, Narmda, Shipra and so on) is used at many places across the country and abroad where significantly large Indian community is living. But the aura that this four-letter word generates has become synonymous with Ganga and naturally directs one’s thoughts to the spiritual mysticism of the Banaras Ghats that has its origin in the eternal flow of Ganga. Any Ganga Ghat in Banaras is the kaleidoscope of life Banaras has been over the ages, assimilating the changes and preserving the very notions it is known for.

BANARAS GHATS: A REPRESENTATIVE SKETCH BY RAGINI 

CATEGORY: DIGITAL PAINTING, MIX MEDIA


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©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/

CARTOONS ARE DEAD. LONG LIVE THE CARTOONS.

Kapil Sibal is just one edition of the interestingly interesting political product class – yes product, because he is a ‘made’ politician, installed to rule over us, a lord, by the other lords. So, at times, he looks confusing how to act politically sound. In his ‘exemplary’ career at the polity’s ‘top’, he has sounded more politically incorrect than it was expected to be accorded for. And he has sounded fluently absurd when it comes to reacting on rational issues that you and I consider human factors of growth.

Now he has sounded another absurdity (profound intellect in his thoughts) and nailed the cartoons in the NCERT textbooks. He is worried about their effect on the ‘impressionable’ minds.

Let’s see how the Webster’s dictionary (or any other) defines ‘impressionable’ – it’s an adjective that implies – subject to or susceptible of impression; easily molded; plastic.

Mr. Sibal said, "We believe textbooks are not the place where these issues should be influencing impressionable minds. That's our position. The same cartoon in a newspaper may well be acceptable but the same cartoon or a series of such cartoons attacking the political class or a community in a textbook which has a tendency to influence impressionable minds may well not be acceptable.”

A long thought vision, is that so? These students are voters of the future and let them not be aware of the satirical take on societal lapses like corruption and sluggishness that looks epitomized in many politicians of the day.

But would that work Mr. Sibal in an age of information overdose especially when these cartoons were part of class XI-XII curriculum and not of kids? (Okay, you have other plans like regulating the Internet, so you may tend to think like that - but that is as much a reality as you becoming the next prime minister of India.)

Anyway, the cartoons in question were well researched having good intent of making pedagogy entertaining. There was nothing unhealthy or vitiating in their context. But the elite mindset of the political class would never buy it.

Plastic fantastic! That’s it. Why can’t textbooks be realistic and objective?

Within a month, the NCERT books with the cartoons are to be reprinted and distributed.

So fast a purge! Why don’t they act so swiftly when it comes to the issue of reforms?

They act swiftly when it comes to raising their salaries and perks but a Lokpal Bill takes over four decades and still looks a remote possibility; Women’s Reservation Bill is again the similar story; Right to Information took around 20 years of struggle (and the political class is hell-bent on making it toothless). The list is long.

Is the political class considers us, the common Indians, cartoons? May be! Instead we should start seeing them like this if they don’t mend their ways.

We Indians are blamed to have poor memory in forgetting the ill-deeds of our politicians. But we are not like that. Okay, we do have short memory but there might be a day when we would say enough is enough. When it can happen in a Bihar where a Lalu Yadav can be shown the door, when it can happen in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, when it can happen in Liberia and Yemen, why can’t it happen in India – a protest to change the way governance should work.

The last year is still not so stale when we saw the high-talking lawyer in him (and his other colleagues) taking a beating forced to retreat in the backdrop. His face saving clicked only because of the clique around Anna Hazare that killed the anti-corruption movement.

We have seen his bravado on occasions like his useless defence of his colleague lords on issues like 2G Spectrum Scam, on empty worded educational reforms, in saving face of his prime minister during the Parliament debate on Lokpal Bill or many other scams associated with the United Progressive Alliance government.

Most of the moments, he looks so pathetically belligerent! (And he is not alone!) This is one ‘top’ when there is seldom any vacancy.

Also, he probably forgets regularly that he is the ‘Human Resource Development’ minister too. The cartoon issue caught him unawares like his other colleague lords. The cartoons were cleared by a committee of the Human Resource Development ministry. The books are in circulation since 2006 but enlightenment to one lord supreme, P L Punia, came after six years, in 2012, that it was demeaning the national figures and devoted political class. And the induction was so fast that it could infuriate even Vin Diesel by its pace.

So except one, all other lords were hand in glove. And cartoons were condemned vocally. The 'seriousness' of the issue reflects in the Parliamentary hours ‘devoted’ on the issue which raked up the House on multiple days and ensued ‘levitated’ debate.

And our Mr. Sibal had no idea what to say except to toe the line happily. The political elite in him, as well as in the most of the politicians of the day, is like this only, ready to kill the spirit of democracy on any given day. Even the last year gave us enough dose of these acts by the ruling political class, like denying permission or crushing silent and peaceful protests.

Indeed there should be catalogues of cartoons, range of books with satirical political cartoons aimed at the political product class Mr. Sibal and his colleagues belong to.

Cartoons were never really so important in India like they are today, thanks to Mr. P L Punia, Mr. Kapil Sibal and the larger product-class politicians. Long live the cartoons.

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/