UP Chief Minister Mayawati's obsession with building a series of memorial parks in the State with statues of Dalit leaders like Dr BR Ambdkar and the Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) founder Kanshi Ram-the latest one was recently inaugurated in NOIDA, costing close to seven hundred crores of rupees-has been widely condemned as a huge waste of public funds. The critics point out that Uttar Pradesh(UP), the most populous State in the country, is the poorest and most backward in all parameters of growth such as illiteracy, malnourishment, health, medicare,etc., Instead of using valuable financial resources which are always inadequate for the heavy needs of the State, to the eradication of poverty, improving infrastructure, education, health care, rural road connectivity, etc., Mayawati has the perverted priority:To erect a large number of statues not only of dalit icons who are no more but of her own in her life time; even of the party symbol-Elephant! One can understand one or two but she does them in dozens with zero regard for budgetary constraints!
Yet, we have a non-dalit columnist like Jaithirth Rao of the Indian Express who has joined Dalit ideologues and apologists, to justify Mayawati's statue-mania! In his article in the IE(October 18), Rao ridicules "media pundits" for having "a great time taking swipes at the building projects" of Mayawati. He also pooh-poohs "self-appointed fiscal hawks" and "self-appointed defenders of the poor" for criticising "the waste of tax-payers' money" which "could have been spent on education or medical facilities for the poor". One can easily turn around Rao's arguments to question him as to why he is acting as a"self-appointed" defender of one of the most corrupt, dictatorial, Chief Minister, supposedly a "poor dalit ki beti" who has become one of the wealthiest politicians, in a decade or so?
Rao has used an extremely curious justification for Mayawati's mania, as "a central theme in human affairs" where "all architecture is political". He mindlessly compares her statues to the Red Fort and the Parliament House, forgetting that both these structures were functional as centres of governance, although built by foreign rulers. They had no parochial or narcissist symbolism.
Yet, we have a non-dalit columnist like Jaithirth Rao of the Indian Express who has joined Dalit ideologues and apologists, to justify Mayawati's statue-mania! In his article in the IE(October 18), Rao ridicules "media pundits" for having "a great time taking swipes at the building projects" of Mayawati. He also pooh-poohs "self-appointed fiscal hawks" and "self-appointed defenders of the poor" for criticising "the waste of tax-payers' money" which "could have been spent on education or medical facilities for the poor". One can easily turn around Rao's arguments to question him as to why he is acting as a"self-appointed" defender of one of the most corrupt, dictatorial, Chief Minister, supposedly a "poor dalit ki beti" who has become one of the wealthiest politicians, in a decade or so?
Rao has used an extremely curious justification for Mayawati's mania, as "a central theme in human affairs" where "all architecture is political". He mindlessly compares her statues to the Red Fort and the Parliament House, forgetting that both these structures were functional as centres of governance, although built by foreign rulers. They had no parochial or narcissist symbolism.
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