The Left front, me the dog and Amartya Sen

I'm a dog (now don't give me that I-knew-it-all-along look) and I'm very very hungry. I'm looking for a bone to chew. If I don't get one, I would eventually starve to death.

There were a few men who were playing a game. They had to make me run after them for as long as they possibly could. The person who could make me run for the longest distance would win a prize of 7000 crore rupees. The event was being sponsored by Ramalinga Raju.

So it began. They individually approached me. Some of the men tried to coax me into running, but lazy that I'm, I refused to lift a ear. Some of them promised me gifts and treats, but I didn't budge. One person proposed a 50-50 split of the prize money, but I could clearly make out that he was fibbing. Others tried to bully me, but their brazen attitude only succeeded in attracting a few menacing snarls. Nobody seemed to understand that I was desperately hungry and I needed something to satisfy my hunger. Then, out of the blue, along came this person. One look at him, and I knew that he was different. He seemed to be an intellectual, a very mild mannered and reasonable person with genuine concern for everyone. From his backpocket, he pulled out a really juicy piece of meat bone and dangled it enticingly above my head. I couldn't believe my eyes; I had something to hope for at last. He offered me a deal. He said that he was going to run with the bone in his hand. If I could catch him, the bone would be mine. This was an offer I couldn't refuse. Deal sealed, he said. He started to run, me in hot pursuit, tongue hanging in anticipation. It was only a matter of time before I caught him, I thought, and then I would have the bone all to myself. There was something, however, that he didn't tell me. It was that regardless of my speed, he could always match it. So that I could never really catch him no matter how fast I ran. I, ignorant of this fact, followed him obediently. When he turned right, I turned right, when he veered to the left, I did the same. This went on, on and on. I didn't stop because this person seemed to be a Messiah, my only hope; only he could give me what I wanted. He,of course, didn't want to stop because he wanted to ensure that only he pocketed the lucrative prize. We're still running, even to this day. Nowadays however, we only run in circles.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has recently said that he was disappointed with the Left Parties, after they withdrew support to the UPA. “I wouldn’t have regarded this to be as important as it has been made out to be", he said of the deal, "I wouldn’t have thought it is a life and death issue. I would not have thought it is a reason for pulling a government down." He then went on to add: "I really expect the Left to have a bigger role than it has had in keeping an eye on the prize, which is to remove the massive deprivation of the poorest in India.”
It seems that the Left wants some part of the population (specifically, their vote bank) to remain in a state of deprivation. If there isn't a hungry dog, no dog is going to run after the illusive bone which they are offering.

A passing thought

Imagine, you have invented a time machine. One fine morning, you hop inside your marvelous machine, hit the ignition button and zoom into the past. You arrive in Rome as it were in 50 B.C. and decide to take a look around. Don't know how the ancient Romans would react seeing your spooky gadget (the time machine) or how they would interpret your clothes and mannerisms; but let's not bother about that. You've heard that the Colosseum is the most happening place in town and so you buy a ticket and go inside.

The Colosseum was basically a sporting arena. It was the place where gladiators, hardened criminals and wild beasts used to impose upon each other in general, and this was a form of sport/game. Most of the casualties were human beings, primarily because hungry lions, who were trained to develop a special affinity toward human flesh, were slightly difficult to overpower. Bloodshed, torture and gore were the USPs of this sport. All of this happened while the Roman Emperor along with the mandarins relaxed in the special VIP enclosure and thousands of Roman citizens inside the Colosseum screamed for more violence and bloody deaths. It was a part of their culture and all of them were proud of it.

If you were to witness this kind of an event today, you would be horrified, terrified and what not. You would think that people who set up this kind of an activity should get capital punishment immediately. Obviously, there is a lot of difference between your value system and that of a Roman of 50 B.C. With time everything changes, so values and ideals should change too. Therefore, 1000 years hence, people would have a value system which would be radically different from that of ours. Probably they would read about us in their history books and would snicker at our insensitive and illogical way of doing certain things. So what are some of our deeds/thought processes that they would find particularly obnoxious ? I think these two (among others) :

i) Our drive for "success (alternatives can be wealth, power,love) at any cost". The American financial institutions wanted to make money at any cost. So did Ramalinga Raju. China wants to gain control of Tibet at any cost and a certain political party wants to go on an industrialization drive at any cost. The cost of human life being too little, it doesn't figure in their calculations. Nations want their economies to grow at a breakneck speed at any cost, hence they don't think twice before wiping out forests, exhausting the earth's natural resources, polluting the atmosphere and displacing helpless people from their homes.

ii) Our insatiable thirst for revenge. Al Qaeda takes out the twin towers, in reply U.S.A. destroys two nations (Afghanistan and Iraq) and prepares to destroy a third (Pakistan). Hamas fires rockets into Israel, so the Israeli army goes into Gaza and mutilates an entire community. Georgia irks Russia so the Russians must send heavily armoured tanks into Georgia and start shelling unarmed civilians (who else). The LTTE and the Sri Lankan army must kill each other. The Myanmar junta can't stand protests, so the only option is to beat the recalcitrant monks within an inch of their lives. Although a sagely Gujarati once tried to explain that "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind", nobody listened.