The fiasco at London

The hockey fiasco at London has indeed hit the country hard. Tall claims and massive campaigns launched prior to the games have fallen flat on the face and the team has set a new record, of losing every single game in its group. The only solace for the team is the equally dismal performance of its arch rivals from across the border. Yet the results are not at all surprising, keeping in view the track record of the nation in matters that have tall claims attached to them till the debacles surface.

Even otherwise the national contingent has performed far below the hoopla built prior to their departure. The current tally of four odd medals, sans gold, puts us at the forty fifth place in the pecking order. Not even a face saving scenario, considering that every sixth human being on this planet hails from our glorious motherland.

The tall expectations that the citizens end up having whenever a national contingent leaves our shores for a sporting extravaganza never fails to surprise me. Surprise because a nation that has been a rank failure in almost all spheres except that of unfailingly notching up its population with amazing speed, is expected to perform in the sporting arena. How the hell is that possible, for how can the mess be all pervasive, yet leave the sporting arena untouched. Our national trait of messing up everything under the sun in its attempt to remain almost always at the bottom of the list of nations cannot be allowed to corrupt itself, just for a few medals. And what are a few medals for the patriarchs of a nation immersed deep in poverty and corrupt practices.

A sterling performance in the sporting arena would need sustained inputs, hard work and perseverance, traits conspicuous by their very absence. The tantra that governs the nation has tied itself into knots and unfortunately has now started believing in its own rhetoric. At a much lower level, I am witness to rhetoric of blasphemous levels in the railways, an organization the mandarins of which have started believing that outputs can be delivered sans inputs and that mere advice instead of support is going to take the organization somewhere. Somewhere it would definitely go, but not forward, is what I am absolutely certain of.

Recently an ex minister said on camera that while all his former secretaries were loyal to him and are now loyal to the current minister, it is unfortunate that the loyalty of the team of secretaries is to the minister and not to the organization. How sad and how true. As long as the loyalty of the servants of the government remains confined to their bosses and not to the nation, fiascoes like the recent one in London shall keep on surfacing  with assured regularity. 

The tombstones

One of the most interesting and hilarious aspects of railway working is the penchant among officials for attaining immortality by getting their names engraved in stone plaques placed ceremoniously during inauguration and foundation ceremonies. And quite unlike the systems elsewhere in the country, the railway stones generally have names of bureaucrats who may have had nothing to do with the project, except parking their backsides on high chairs and being present during the ceremonies.

And so my divisional office had over a hundred of such plaques for as insignificant an activity as renovation of a urinal and putting tiles in offices. The one incident that really had me in splits was when one of the senior officers was found searching for the plaque carrying his name that during his tenure as the head honcho was cemented on a wall for a shoddy renovation of the control office, but unfortunately was consigned to scrap during my plaque removal drive that began with an order restricting the engraving of my name on plaques.

The matter engraved on the plaques is extremely interesting at times. While it invariably has at the top the name of the bloke doing the honors, it also has names of a couple of blokes who matter and witnessed the sacred ceremony in a dignified way, that is what the plaque generally says. And that leads me to wonder whether others including the guys who did the actual work and the rest of the invitees had an undignified presence. I would really love to be apprised of how does one make an undignified presence at such ceremonies for that is what I intend to do in the future.

Perhaps this penchant to have names carved in stone is borne out of a desire to attain immortality and recognition by future generations without even twiddling the thumb. Pseudo immortality by shady means is how a sensible guy would look at it. The rapid proliferation such acts however gives confidence that future generations of such seekers of immortality would not spare any opportunity, even those of provision of new taps, flushing cisterns or commodes to carve their names in stone.

My visit sometime back to a heritage hill railway shocked me. Massive plaques adorning heritage structures had fallen terribly short of the professed objective because the plaques glorified the officials who were responsible for putting the plaque and not those who built the structure itself. Well a hundred years later, history would stand distorted when the names on the plaque would be mistaken for the names of the engineers who built the structure. Well this act is rather mild when compared to the inauguration of dustbins and toilet blocks by ministers, even in the capital city of Delhi. Such ceremonies definitely attract a lot of sniggers, but what are few sniggers in the quest for immortality.

My occasional walk in the railways eco-park is also made interesting by the very large number of plaques that adorn the campus almost everywhere, plaques that commemorate greens, toilets and stores, besides the gymnasium and restaurant blocks. It appears that the intense competition for recognition among the various past presidents of the complex led to such a spree in the installation of plaques.

I just am not able to appreciate this great national pastime of laying foundation and inaugural stones for almost about everything under the sun. Is it not the job of organizations to provide basic infrastructure like roads, public toilets or railway lines?. Why the hell do we then lay foundation or inaugural stones for carrying out routine obligatory functions. Or is it that the Indian society has become so bankrupt of achievements that even a toilet block or a new dustbin is considered a national achievement that should be celebrated. I am however not deriding these stones totally. Definetely we should lay foundation and inaugural stones for eight lane highways, power stations, fertilizer plants, large factories or if my imagination runs wild, say a new quadrilateral for the railways. These would definitely be achievements of stature and the builders or dreamers of them would deserve immortality, but not those of toilet blocks, dustbins or boundary walls.

If my point of view were to prevail, I would place an immediate ban on laying of any type of stone other than the tombstone. Let people be known and remembered for what they have achieved in life or contributed to the society, rather than by having their names engraved in granite or marble stones for petty acts.