Editor,
It’s a wonder how traffic administration in Shillong during VIP visits is so smooth and free of hurdles, given that the city is otherwise choking. The tax-paying “cockroaches” deserve little of this efficient traffic management in their everyday existence. Such enforcement of traffic norms seems to depend solely on VIP involvement.
On the other hand, the government seems to have found “employment” options in allotting parking franchises to the burgeoning urban unemployed who manage such spaces according to their whims and fancies. The stretch between the Assembly Press and the Wards Lake has become a nightmare for residents and passersby, as this space has been transformed into an undesignated Tourist Car zone, with multiple lines of parallel-parked cars making access difficult. Even when huge NO PARKING signs are posted, I was told by parking attendants that the area is a paid parking zone, and they seem to wield more authority than the traffic police.
As a resident of the area, I am not allowed to “park” in these spaces, even for a few minutes, while waiting to pick up an aged patient from the doctor’s chamber in the Police Bazar area, which was “cleared” due to a VIP visit to the Marriott.
I do appreciate that urban congestion is a major problem, but transforming major public access roads into undesignated parking spaces with titular attendants acting as autocrats is only a temporary workaround. More importantly, allowing parking autocrats to define and designate parking spaces is a clear sign of institutional failure.
Yours etc.,
R. Dev,
Via email
India’s Digital Revolution Ends with the LPG Cylinder
Editor,
The world is solving increasingly complex problems. Robots are performing factory work, artificial intelligence is writing codes, and autonomous systems are transforming industries. Yet many of us still struggle with a far simpler challenge: getting an LPG cylinder delivered on time. Recently, I tried booking a refill only to find the server down. A previous booking had been cancelled. What should have taken minutes became an exercise in repeated calls, uncertainty, and frustration.
Why can’t LPG delivery work like modern food delivery or e-commerce platforms? A simple app could allow customers to track deliveries, view available stock, and even choose an express delivery option by paying a small additional fee when urgently required. Such a system would not only improve convenience but also create jobs for delivery personnel.
If we can process billions of digital payments every month and discuss a future driven by robotics and AI, why are we still making people wait and wonder about something as basic as an LPG cylinder and waste so much of time (time is money)
Sometimes progress is not about solving the most complex problems. It is about fixing the simple ones that affect millions every day.
Yours etc.,
Shekhar Singh
Shillong
Controversy over Mohenjo Daro’s Dancing Girl
Editor,
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) recently found itself in the eye of the storm when it digitally sanitised an image of the iconic ‘Dancing Girl’ for use in a Class 9 arts textbook, justifying the change later by saying it was “not age-appropriate”.
Historian Michel Danino pushed back, arguing that if that was the case, then children should be banned from the National Museum, New Delhi, where the original has been on display since 1947.
Discovered in Mohenjo Daro in 1926, the tiny but spunky, 4,400-year-old bronze sculpture has been the face of the Indus Valley Civilisation since Independence. It has also been celebrated in NCERT textbooks for decades in its authentic, confident, bare-torso form. So when the new Class 9 text-book featured a digitally shaded version that obscured the anatomical details of the Dancing Girl’s upper body, effectively drawing clothing onto the figurine, historians and archaeologists sharply criticised the change, likening the modification to censorship rooted in Victorian morality.
The outcry eventually forced NCERT Director Dinesh Prasad Saklani to announce that the Council would restore to the text books the image that had appeared on their pages for more than a quarter of a century ago.
This is, however, not the first time that this historical artifact’s appearance has been modified. In May 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the mascot for the International Museum Expo at Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam till then known as Pragati Maidan, which was an over-five-feet-tall “adaptation” of the Dancing Girl, roughly 15 times the size of the original.
On that occasion too, it had immediately invited a backlash from historians. Unlike the original dark-skinned, largely unclothed bronze statue, the modern mascot sported a lighter complexion, a shocking pink blouse and an off-white waist-coat, displaying simultaneously the government’s colour complex, sense of aesthetics as well as prudery not to mention its disregard for authenticity and history.
In a country where over 15 major temples including the famed one at Madhya Pradesh’s Khajuraho depict erotic sculptures, why does a tiny little figurine, striking a confident pose, evoke such a shocked response in the government?
However, as the figurine was depicted unclothed, the NCERT clothed it, ostensibly because it would be viewed by children of an impressionable age. A similar concern was raised in May by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta during the Supreme Court’s suo motu hearing on the presence of cartoons in some NCERT textbooks. The Solicitor General said that while there was no objection to cartoons in general, their inclusion in school textbooks raised concerns as they would be viewed by children of an impressionable age. On the surface, the anatomical depiction of the figurine, on a standalone basis, is too trivial an issue to discuss nationally. However, if the tendency to alter the past to suit the present becomes the norm, it is too serious an issue for the country to ignore
Unlike the Victorian style, Indian sculpture had, for millennia, been quite open in its pictorial depictions. If the NCERT had its way, a student studying Indian heritage and culture would be seeing India through a Victorian or an Arabic lens — two cultural traditions that do not allow open portrayals of the human body. Education helps people think clearly and solve problems. If children are fed incorrect information, they will arrive at incorrect conclusions, which will undermine the very purpose of education. Governments and other entities responsible for education should therefore allow children access to unfiltered knowledge and enable them to develop into well-rounded individuals
Yours etc.,
Yash Pal Ralhan,
Via email
