Those blinking lights
Whichever road you take in Chennai you cant miss them – the ubiquitous red lights (MM, November 16th) on the roof of every make of car. I always was under the wrong impression that those lights were supposed to be for emergency and so only the police personnel, fire engines and the ambulances should have them. They really need to rush somewhere to protect the citizens of Chennai when they are needed. Right? Wrong! They may have started that way, but more and more people needed to show they are way above the hoi polloi.They are used by almost every one now.
I still haven't figured out why the Governor, the Chief Minister or other ministers need them – they have the outriders on motorcycles and police in jeeps preceding their cavalcade. Most of them even have commando protection – so how does the red light add to their stature or security? What about the Judges and the Vice Chancellors and all other servants of the Grand State – what do they need them for? Is the rush with those spinning lights for delivering speedy justice or putting the education system on the fast track?
Obviously it does bestow some super natural power, for even the ordinary man hankers to have one, and a black market has been created for it.
There will soon come a day when one will be proud to have a bare roof. After all, if every one wears a Crown then the one who goes bare headed must be King!
Geeta Madhavan
geeta.madhavan@gmail.com
What secrecy?
MMM, (December 1st) had an item titled 'No photos, please'. Reading the note, I was reminded of my expereince in the 1990s.
I had a research project funded by the Department of Environment & Forests (Government of India) to evaluate and characterise the biological diversity of predatory and parasitic arthropods that inhabited social forest plantations in the then Madurai-Dindigul-Pazhani belt stretching over a few thousand hectares. To design my several hundred kilometre-long transects, I needed the most recent district maps and, in that context, I approached the respective District Collectors' offices.
No one will believe the hassles I had to go through to secure a few maps; finally, the Collectors' office staff, with profound reluctance, sold me the maps (not expensive, I should acknowledge) that were cartographed 20 years earlier – saying that they were the most recent ones. Because the Pondicherry French Institute's natural vegetation maps were not of any use to me in my specific study context, I could not use them.
This experience dampened my enthusiasm, and in one of my desparate and disgusting moments, I shared this awkward experience with an Indian biologist-colleague, then teaching in a North-American university. Would you believe it, in the next four weeks I received maps of extraordinary accuracy and scale of my research area, via air mail – marked 'gift'! On the reverse of those high-quality maps, dated 1990, was the stamp: 'For use by … Navy'!
I still cannot understand why our governments are so finicky with photos of buildings, when accurate and 'zoom'-able images are available in easily accessible web pages (e.g. Google Maps, Google Images)!
Nothing can be sillier than the attitudes of our officialdom.
A. Raman
University of New South Wales
Orange
Australia
Right picture?
The photograph with 'The doctor who sought justice' (MM, December 1st) seems to be that of the late Dr. S. Gopal, the eminent historian, unless there is the most unlikely possibility of such close resemblance. Are you sure you have used the right picture?
H.R. Pandurang
Trishul, 10, 5th Avenue
Besant Nagar
Chennai 600 090
Editor' Note: That's what the Web offered us. Whether it is that of Natesa Mudaliar or not, we cannot say with any certainity, but it certainly does not look like Dr. Gopal in our view.
|
