Mumbai Masala: Making A killing
Many members do not bother to attend the annual general body meetings. There is also large-scale corruption. With old buildings going in for redevelopment, members of several managing committees are making a killing. Builders, in their eagerness to grab redevelopment projects, are willing to do anything to bag contracts.
People are quick to blame the authorities for corruption and misgovernance. But then many of them are unable to manage their cooperative housing societies. Many members do not bother to attend the annual general body meetings. There is also large-scale corruption. With old buildings going in for redevelopment, members of several managing committees are making a killing. Builders, in their eagerness to grab redevelopment projects, are willing to do anything to bag contracts. The members of a charitable managing committee of a cooperative housing society in the eastern suburbs took several lakhs as bribes and awarded the redevelopment contract to a shady builder. The result is that the project is incomplete and the builder has stopped paying rentals. Several senior citizens have died with their dream of new and bigger flats crashed.
Where Is The Anger?
Have Mumbaikars changed? When the Nirbhaya episode took place in Delhi, Mumbaikars rose as one man and demanded capital punishment for the culprits. There were protests all over. But when an equally brutal incident involving a young medico took place in Kolkata a few days ago, Mumbaikars by and large appear to have been least bothered. The sheer brutality of the crime ought to have shaken the conscience of the city. But the people appear to be busy collecting the freebies that the state government is doling out so very generously in the run-up to the assembly election. Only doctors protested. But for others, it appears to be business as usual.
Trashing Our Environment
The reluctance of the authorities to protect the environment is to be seen to be believed. There is a ban on the use of plaster of Paris (PoP) for making Ganesh idols and other purposes. But the government and the BMC appear to be least bothered. Thousands of idols made of PoP are already ready at Pen and other production centres. All of them will be immersed in the sea and ponds, further aggravating pollution. But then who cares? None of the political parties have the guts to tell people to avoid PoP. The result is that the sea and water bodies continue to choke.
Tailpiece
A wag pithily observed: “Indian democracy gives the people a choice between typhoid and malaria every five years!”
Compiled by S Balakrishnan
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