Though I ascribe to SAMBADA, the largest selling Odia daily as junk, I still can't desist reading it every morning. There was exclusive coverage of the results of the Indian Civil Services, arguably still the most cherished job in India. The widespread coverage of the results and rank holders of the Civil Services exam was not just limited to the print media, it was all over the electronic and social media as well.
Not surprised in a feudal state where Babus rule the roost. The ruling party in Odisha BJD which stands for Biju Janata Dal can very well be christened as Babu Janata Dal - for per grapevine the state administration is completely controlled by Babus not by legislators from the ruling party.
Can't think of any Babu contributing to the economy or generating jobs. But their routine transfers are usually talk of the town and page 3 material on the newspapers. I have many entrepreneur friends who sweat their ass in generating employment and contribute to the local economy. Rarely they are considered as page 3 material.
Last week an IAS officer in Delhi was charged of depriving athletes practice time after 7 PM because the Babu can walk his dog in that stadium. Hue and cry followed. Soon the Babu got a so called "punishment" transfer. Ideally he should have been suspended or even fired. Not sure why this transfer is called punishment as it could rather prove rewarding to him as he will be away from the toxic Delhi air, breathing fresh air in pristine Ladakh. Now he will be living in salubrious climes and in a picturesque environment. On top of that there will be ample of space in vast Ladakh to walk his dog. The so called "punishment" transfer is hogwash.
Reminds me of the experts from a book "DM's Dog" I read not long ago written by a retired Bureaucrat. Once in the early 1980s the author as a very young IAS officer who went to meet the Collector-cum-DM at the later's Residence office to introduce himself. All of a sudden the D.M.'s dog ran towards him and got hold of the bottom of his trousers. The young man, a cynophobic kicked the dog away out of self defensive reflex action. The furious Collector retorted back - "How dare you kick D.M.'s dog". Profuse apology from the young officer didn't hold any water. From that day the D.M. kept a grudge on the young man. Had the dog kicking officer was not from the elite Civil Services he could have lost his job.
My take on this is very simple. The day we stop giving prominence to the results of Civil Services and routine bureaucratic transfers we can proudly proclaim of having come out of feudalistic mindset. Babu worship is the sine qua non of a feudal society. Lesser the no of Babus and more the no of entrepreneurs, the more advanced a race is.
When in the summer month of July, 1902, a 25-year-old engineer from New York named Willis Carrier invented the first modern air-conditioning, little did he know that his invention would be so indispensable in future. During my childhood days when the outside air was hot and humid, I didn't run to the comfort of Air Conditioning - because like most from my generation we didn't have AC in our home in the 1970s, 80s and well into the 90s. Now every middle class home in Bhubaneswar has at least one wall mounted AC installed.
I rarely felt the pang of heat, even during the hottest of summers in India. For me the exposure to AC was limited to its cooling comfort wafting inside the Computer Lab in NIT, Rourkela during my student life. No more, no less. A few restaurants and movie theatres had AC, but they regularly cut corners to save money by switching it off now and then. The owners cheated their customers of Air Conditioning which they thought as a luxury rather than a necessity and the hapless customers should be robbed off from this comfort, easily taken for a ride.
Urbanization and rapid growth of concrete jungles has made our cities hotter than before, but over dependence on AC makes us feel and complain more about the heat. As the saying goes in Odia - MANISHA SABUTHARU BADA SUBIDHA BAADI PRANI (Humans are creatures of comfort). Now that I have the comfort of AC, every now and then I look forward to it.
Without access to Air Conditioning we can adjust to the environment, vindicating Darwin's theory of the survivor of the fittest. Humans being intelligent animals readily adjust to the situations and cicumstances. That's why we survived whereas the dinosaurs, mammoths and mammoth number of animals part of the fauna couldn't.
Same applies to most from our parent's generation who grew up in villages. After living in the cities for decades they can barely spend more than half a day in their native villages which do not provide the same levels of comforts of the cities. My grandmother who lived more than two third of her life without electricity was so much addicted to AC that she won't leave her room which was a cool 20 degrees cooler than the outside world. She was too tuned to AC and refused to visit her native village in summer where she lived lived happily for the better part of her life.
During the World War II at the time of relentless Nazi Bombing on England the British Royal Air Force fought bravely against the air blitzkrieg of Germany's Luftwaffe. Winston Churchill, the then British war time Prime Minister said about the Royal Air force - "Never in the History of mankind so many were dependent on so few", a tribute to the contribution of the handful of pilots who stubbornly defended the entire English population from the Nazi onslaught.
Same can be attributed to AC - "Never in the history, so many humans were dependent on a mechanical unit". More later...
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