Tuesday, October 7, 2008

What people need never get but what politician need will get certainly

Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."

But I will not “laugh or cry”

The fifth column Tavleen Singh says that “Half of India's children are malnourished, more than half of Indian women suffer from aneamia, we have one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the world and most deaths of children under the age of five are from preventable diseases. Can we afford to worry about smoking in public places?”

Further “the two things they need more than anything else are access to decent pubic healthcare and decent schools. It is scandalous that the Indian state has been unable to provide these two most important tools of empowerment and if you examine why you will discover that it is because we have our policies and priorities all muddled up”.

“One of the legacies of our dark decades of Nehruvian socialism is our ability to waste taxpayers' money on make believe public utilities”.

Her usual writing hits at 360 degree calices but “half-built sheds without teachers or books that we call schools. Crumbling, empty buildings that we call hospitals. Poles stuck in fields for electricity and rusty hand pumps that we pass off as water supply. The Health Minister now forces us to spend a few thousand crores more on trying to enforce a ban that may improve the personal health of a few heavy smokers but will do nothing to improve public health.”
Is that the ban is relevant or the need of the hour?

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