मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Bill for These Things Are Coming. Big Time.

Americans can poke fun at their armed forces without looking over their shoulders.

Over weekend of April 11-12, 2008 I watched "the Daily Show with Jon Stewart". He ridiculed mercilessly American army general's testimony. Witness umpteen number of hilarious "The Simpsons" episodes. Or delightful famous-last-words-"I'm cumming!" Private Benjamin (1980).

Indians are not that lucky. One is a traitor if he does so.

Therefore, if you are not the one who starts waving Indian national flag on hearing the word military, you should read Praful Bidwai’s “Military overdrive” (Frontline, April 11 2008).

I was growing up when India fought three wars- 1962, 1965 and 1971. My father wrote a Marathi novel – तुम्ही पराक्रमाचे पुत्र (You Valour's Sons)- inspired by the wars of 1962 & 1965 and Erich Maria Remarque's novels.

At our Miraj home, we had a large poster of army recruitment pasted on a wall. I still remember the caps and the shoes from that poster. One of my most favourite figurines was that of an Indian G I.

Bofors scandal changed all that.

And more came by. Most men from military I met- both serving and retired- had many accounts of corruption to tell.

I realized that Indian defence establishment was no different than Indian police. It was just much bigger and richer.

“…military spending will probably turn out to be Rs.140,000 crore or even higher, of the same size as India’s entire combined public spending on health and education.

This is surely unconscionable. A society that spends such a huge proportion of its scarce resources on the military when it cannot even feed all its people or overcome the chronic malnutrition prevalent among half its children is very, very sick. Its pathology is all the more troubling on account of three factors…

… the military typically uses hopelessly inefficient or outdated systems – whether in transportation and personnel management or in weapons procurement and inventory control…

… there is rampant corruption in the armed services. The numerous recently reported scams are probably the tip of the iceberg. Bribes are apparently exchanged for all manner of things – purchase of everything from eggs to airplanes, under-supply of vitally necessary material (for instance, nutritious high-energy meals or snow jackets in Siachen), in the ordering of inappropriate or low-value equipment, and diversion of funds from sanctioned and legitimate activities (for instance, counter-insurgency operations) to unnecessary or questionable procurement (for instance, buying freezers and chapatti-making plants).

Corruption is not unique to the armed forces but thrives in them because of a lack of public oversight and accountability. These factors alone explain why the DRDO gets away, and indeed is rewarded, with a budget of Rs.3,400 crore despite its failure to complete any of its major projects in time; why the Indian Air Force has lost over 200 aircraft in accidents within a decade; why the Army in the 1980s procured supposedly new combat engineering tractors, only to discover that they were second-hand British rejects; and why the Navy went in for the USS Trenton – which the Comptroller and Auditor General says, is a lemon, a 37-year-old ship, which has already outlived its service life – without “proper physical assessment” and technical evaluation of its seaworthiness.

The armed forces and the Defence Ministry are in dire need of reform and accountability. Even minor improvements in their functioning will save the nation tens of thousands of crores. Many years ago, the Arun Singh Committee, appointed to examine the scope for cost-cutting in the Army, reportedly concluded that a 15 per cent reduction was achievable without loss of effectiveness. The government must release its report and have it widely debated so that an independent and objective assessment can be made of what is achievable today.

We simply cannot afford to have unaccountable agencies burning up Rs.140,000 crore of public money year after year. Lack of oversight and proper auditing is not merely undesirable in itself. It is an affront to the spirit of democracy.”


Artist: Richard Decker The New Yorker 7 November 1931
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