For India's rich, a new motto: To have, but not to hold
GAUTAM BHATIA | Jul 20, 2014, 05.58AM IST
Along
a small secluded stretch off the Yamuna Expressway outside Delhi is a
24-storey apartment block billed as the future of hyper luxury. With one
private residence to a floor, each 12,000-square-foot flat is
equivalent in area to the main hall of Vigyan Bhawan. Its eight
bedrooms, dens and entertainment rooms come fully furnished along with a
30-foot pool, six servant 'residences' and a car lift that raises your
Jaguar to your floor. Conceived by an Italian designer, furniture is
manufactured in Singapore, with air-conditioning and kitchen equipment
from Germany. The apartment is encased in a sophisticated solar shield
and protected from the harsh summer sunlight with louvers that rotate on
a computer programme. The sale, naturally, is by invitation only.
If you stand on the high parapet on the 24th floor and look beyond the place, your vision will quickly take in the temporary encampments and tarpaulin slums that rise in the near horizon; human forms moving about in the mud are the thousands who made the luxury apartment possible. Such extremes encourage a growing divide: the air conditioned school that mollycoddles the child with weekends in London, at one end, and at the other, a broken ruin of a public school with no teachers, and no toilets for girls; the glass shopping mall with tinkling water fountains pitted against the decrepit municipal market; the luxury hotel with multiple restaurants and spas, and then, the seedy hotel in Paharganj. The private hospital that promotes health tourism where Dubai sheikhs check-in for luxury health overhauls, or the Medical Institute where families lie in corridors waiting for up to three months for an emergency operation. How do you even begin to reconcile these unfortunate extremes? For the most part, the poor in our cities are treated as residue; they live in leftover spaces under flyovers, over city drains and sewers; their needs of health, education, commerce are performed by an undergrowth of spurious services and half-baked professionals who see profit in the large numbers. But in cities segregated into private and public, and a government run for the rich, they have little choice. That private institutions have forsaken responsibility for the poor is evident from the vast number of hospitals, schools, and housing projects given land subsidies by the government on the condition they cater to low income groups as well. In most cases, however, the urgency to profit was too great to ever bother with niggling moral responsibilities. Businessmen and industrialists merely returned the favour by directing themselves to other more elitist efforts -setting up a university in their own name, saving a monument, or endorsing an already successful public scheme. Mahindra World College, Shiv Nadar University, Fortis Hospital, Raheja Towers are all symptomatic of self-promotion and image management, and say little about the organization's social intentions. Doubtless many among these big names are doing laudable charitable work through foundations, but none among them have directed their focus on the awkward space of India's institutional middle ground. When private ambition is directed to shameless and excessive publicity, the real state of well-being languishes without standards. Where are the schools without air conditioning but with teachers; where are the health clinics with committed doctors; or housing schemes that innovate for the poor? Without basic facilities, the concentration of wealth into a single act of philanthropy becomes sadly misplaced. Instead of Mahindra World College and Azim Premji University, why not Mahindra Pathshalas and Shiv Nadar rural education schemes? Besides the Raheja Towers and Ansal Plazas, shouldn't there be Ansal low-income housing colonies, Raheja slum sanitation programs, or indeed Fortis village clinics? Bereft of ideals, perhaps it is it the rich who need rehabilitation? After the industrial revolution, the health of most western nations evolved in cycles of shared wealth. Irrefutable proof from there says that collective prosperity became possible only when private funds were directed -through philanthropy or taxation -to benefit the poor. Sweden's high taxes funded health care and education. Having made his millions, American Andrew Carnegie promoted public libraries. Many other private industrialists stretched their largesse to a belief in the rightness of shared experience and became invested heavily in civic infrastructure, contributing to the social, cultural, physical health of their less fortunate fellow citizens. The museums, galleries, hospitals, theatres, gardens, colleges and libraries that emerged out of private intentions grew quickly into valuable social resource for everyone, and made the city a better place. If the Indian city is to gain anything from private largesse, tycoons and business houses will need to open their eyes to the more difficult conditions of urban reality, and direct a more compassionate gaze to their less-fortunate citizens.
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Wednesday, July 23, 2014
For India's rich, a new motto: To have, but not to hold - By Gautam Bhatia - The Times of India, Mumbai
Chronicles of war
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Asif Khan <massif@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 11:21 AM
Subject: The Hole Story of Gaza
From: Asif Khan <massif@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 11:21 AM
Subject: The Hole Story of Gaza
Chronicles of War
Warning: Many of these photographs are graphic in nature.
Palestinians search for survivors Monday under the debris of a destroyed house in Gaza City.Photo by Wissam Nassar/Xinhua/Zuma Press
Israeli
security personnel look at a window damaged by shrapnel after a
short-range rocket landed near the Erez crossing. An Israeli civilian
was killed by the rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, the
military said, the first Israeli fatality in more than a week of
fighting with Palestinian militants. The Islamist group Hamas that rules
Gaza claimed responsibility for launching the short-range rocket that
struck an area along the border with Gaza. Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters
Smoke
rises from the peace activists boat 'Gaza's Ark' following an Israeli
air strike during the fighting between Israeli navy and Hamas militants
next to the beach in the west of Gaza City. (Momen Faiz—NurPhoto/Corbis)
Palestinians search for survivors under the debris of a destroyed house in Gaza City on Monday. Photo by Wissam Nassar/Xinhua/Zuma Press
Relatives of Plaestinian Islamic Jihad militant Abduallah El-Buhasi, who
medics said was killed in an Israeli airstrike, mourn during his
funeral in Deir El-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters.
Palestinian relatives of Roshdi Naser, mourn during
his funeral in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip,
Saturday, July 19, 2014. Naser and eight others were killed in an early
morning Israeli missile strike, officials said. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
A Palestinian woman sits inside her damaged
house, which police said was targeted in an Israeli air strike, in Gaza
City July 17, 2014. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly
A
Palestinian woman cries as she flees from a Gaza City neighborhood during an Israeli military operation. Photo by
Mohammed Saber/European Pressphoto Agency
Palestinians arrive at a hospital in Gaza City on Sunday.Photo by Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse/Getty
Images
Palestinians flee their homes in Gaza's eastern
Shejaiya district on July 20, 2014, after heavy Israeli shelling that
left casualties lying in the streets, an AFP correspondent reported.
Ambulances were unable to reach much of the area along the border
because of heavy fire, and emergency services told AFP there were
reports of dead and wounded trapped by the bombardment. (Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)
Palestinian medics tend to a boy who they said
was wounded in an Israeli shelling, at a hospital, in Rafah in the
southern Gaza Strip July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
A Palestinian man holds the hand of a badly wounded
woman, who medics said was wounded in an Israeli air strike, in the
northern Gaza Strip on July 20, 2014. (Reuters/Abed Abu Reyash)
Lifeless bodies of children lay in the morgue of the Shifa hospital in Gaza City on July 20, 2014. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
Children sleep in a medical center in the Gaza Strip on Monday. Photo by Ezz Al-Zanoun/NurPhoto/Zuma Press
A Palestinian medic evacuates the body of a girl from Gaza's eastern Shejaiya district on July 20, 2014. (Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images)
A Palestinian woman wearing clothes stained with
the blood of other relatives, who medics said were wounded in Israeli
shelling, cries at a hospital in Gaza City July 20, 2014. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
Netream Netzleam holds the body of her daughter
Razel, 1, who medics said died on Friday from injuries sustained in an
Israeli air strike on Thursday afternoon, at her funeral in Rafah in the
southern Gaza Strip July 18, 2014.
REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly
REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly
The aunt of Palestinian boy Mohammed Ayad, who
medics said was killed during heavy Israeli shelling, mourns as she
looks at his body during his funeral in Gaza City July 21, 2014.
REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
Family members pray in the mosque in Sajeria, Gaza, by the bodies of Amir and Mohammed during their funeral. (Heidi Levine—SIPA)
REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
A man sits next to the bodies of Palestinians
from Abu Jama'e family, who medics said were killed in an Israeli air
strike that destroyed their house, during their funeral at a mosque in
Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Palestinian touches the forehead of a member of
the Abu-Hasira family, who medics said was killed in an Israeli air
strike, at a funeral in Gaza City, July 22, 2014. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly
The body of a child lies in the morgue of the
al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on July 20, 2014. At least 40 people were
killed and nearly 400 wounded in Israeli shelling of the Shejaiya
district overnight, medics said. (Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)
The mother of Israeli soldier Tal Yifrah mourns over his flag-covered
coffin during his funeral in Rishon Lezion near Tel Aviv on Tuesday. Photo by Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
In Holon, Israel, family members of Major Tsafrir Bar-Or seen by the
coffin during his funeral on Monday. The officer was killed during
operation Protective Edge.Photo by Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images
Israeli soldier Tal Yifrah's girlfriend mourns at his grave during his
funeral in Rishon Lezion near Tel Aviv on Tuesday. The Gaza conflict's
death toll rose on both sides and the U.S. pressed the territory's Hamas
rulers to accept an Egyptian cease-fire proposal. Photo by Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
A Palestinian youth, holding a Quran, Islam's holy book, poses for
photographers as he stands in the rubble of the Al Aqsa Martyrs mosque
in Gaza City, destroyed by an overnight Israeli strike, Tuesday, July
22, 2014. Diplomatic efforts intensified to end the two week war that
has killed hundreds of Palestinians and dozens of Israelis.
Lefteris Pitarakis | AP
A Palestinian shepherd holding a white cloth flees her house with her herd following an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip July 19, 2014. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
A Palestinian shepherd holding a white cloth flees her house with her herd following an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip July 19, 2014. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
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