There are two kinds of development; one that is very visible and one that is not. The visible one drives pride and participation, the non-visible one drives experience. Anyone visiting Gujarat is going to talk about the great roads, power supply, Sabarmati river-front and so on. These are visible. Let’s talk about Sabarmati. People used to once call it Sabar-Matti (Mud) since there was never water in it except monsoon. Now there’s water all year round and that itself is a sight. But did Modi stop there? No... He wanted to paint it like whales and eagles like Southwest. He envisioned a massive river-front project that may now have hotels and other buildings and a great place for people. If not a sea-front, Ahmedabad can have a river-front. This much circulated image of the holy Yamuna and Sabarmati on the net says a lot about the vision of two CMs (Expense figures not vouched for). That’s visible. Sabarmati also provides water for Ahmedabad and other towns. What is not visible is that it has shut down many bore-wells in many towns. Earlier the underground bore hard-water was salty, contained arsenic and in many places had TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) of over 2500. The areas which got municipal water had TDS below 600 which is within permissible levels for drinking water. Yeah… you’re not going to hear about this. This water supply is visible to only those who use it. Even more, the improved quality of water is only experienced and not visible. I talked about the English language usage being an issue in Part-1. It was poor in Gujarat and affected higher studies, technology and global transactions. Ever heard about action on it? I doubt it. SCOPE (Society for Creation of Opportunity through Proficiency in English) is a project created by Modi. It teaches functional English to students even in Gujarati medium schools, colleges and other institutions, even commercial organisations. The programme is partly paid for by the govt and partly by the participants for students. It is delivered by private partners. Even Rajasthan was considering implementing this. This is not visible, it is experienced. It is felt in the gut! The MSM may have never noticed it but it took the Supreme Court to applaud the PDS system in Gujarat. That’s not visible, that’s an experience. It’s felt in the gut. There are many more examples which are not visible but can only be felt. mediacrooks
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 03:50:16 +0000
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