Our public works minister, Mr H D Revanna, has released in the media the financial demands made on the state government by various agencies in the name of Dasara:
Mysore City Corporation - Rs. 5 crores (for road works and improvement of public parks)
Tourism Dept. - Rs. 1 crore
Horticulture - Rs. 1 crore
Chamundeswari Electric Supply Corp. - Rs. 40 lakhs (for roads illumination)
Heritage sites renovation - Rs.2.25 crores
Public Works Dept. - Rs. 12.85 crores (for repairs on 25-km stretch of city roads)
Dasara Celebrations - Rs. 2.25 crores.
The figures add upt to Rs. 24.75 crores. Not a big deal, perhaps, for the government. But I don't suppose anyone, least of all the departments concerned, expect the government to meet their demands fully. And we can expect, at the end of the day, a blame game to be played out, in which we can all blame the governemnt for being tight-fisted in releasing grants and giving us too little, too late.
We don't hear much about contributions from the economic beneficiaries of Dasara celebrations - contractors, city shopkeepers, tour operators, hotel owners, auto-drivers etc. They all have associations. Could we expect them to persuade their members to plough back part of their season's windfall into a permanent trust fund, devoted to making Dasara a festival to which tourists would want to come back , again and again ?
When are we, if ever, going to change this mindset - of celebrating Dasara on sarkari dole ?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Some of us cannot understand why you do not use an appropriate Kannada version of "MERA MYSORE MAHAAN". Most of us, the potential bloggers scattered around the world would like to see Kannada culture expressed through the web site which in minimal terms means at least an aspirational greeting instead of the above which to us Kannadigas seem insulting to our intelligence. We can well understand that perhaps you spent the best part of your career in the Hindi belt, and tend to be comfotable in that language.
The fact that it is relevant can be explained. The mad expansion of Mysore along Bangalore lines is partly due to the
fact that Karanataka welcomes with open arms enterpreneurs and those who can add value to the culture. It has been doing since the days of Krishnaraja Wodeyar. When the industries and the masses who work in them arrive it believes that the guests should not take out more than what they put in, expects local talents to be nourished and local culture respected. It is not happening. Your web site has responsibility to highlight this and dicuss this in forums. Hence a first step is to pick issues that matter to Kanandigas. Please do not give us the pep talk of globalised world, language should not be an impediment etc.. etc.. We Kannadigas have a lot to learn from Tamilians and Tamilnadu. If your web site ignores the issues that we have alluded here,the blogs keep looking and sounding irrelevant (we can see that you are not doing well in terms of contributions)and MyMysore.com will simply fade away.
http://jokes4children.blogspot.com http://adsense-g.blogspot.com http://wowbangalore.blogspot.com http://ourmysore.blogspot.com http://blog4people.coz.in
Post a Comment