TOURISM AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Sickness at altitude
The flash flood has brought devastation, and also a warning to Ladakhis not to build indiscriminately, ignoring earlier
generations' knowledge about where water was known to flow, writes
Dilip D'Souza.
THE NEWS IN PROPORTION
21 JANUARY 2020
Opinions : Dilip D'Souza
OPINION
As a believer in the promise of democracy first and above all, I long for the checks and balances of competing ideologies.
Yet for too long in this country, we heard only, or largely, the voice of the left, and the right that did emerge eventually was
itself flawed, writes
Dilip D'Souza.
OPINION
Is it enough for me to go travelling to various parts of this country and write
about my experiences? Does it really help those I write about, in any meaningful
way?
Dilip D'Souza
writes about the gnawing question.
OPINION
The idea of world class highways in India, runway smooth, takes some
getting used to. There is the Golden Quadrilateral from Delhi to Mumbai,
and then there are the 70 kms of rubble between Disa in Gujarat and
Sanchor in Rajasthan.
Dilip D'Souza
drives into the New Year weekend.
OPINION / CASTE
The mob came from three different directions. Each group was preoccupied with its own murder. Bhayyalal's wife and daughter had their skulls
smashed in, and his boys were beaten to death with sticks.
Dilip D'Souza
listens to the 'background' of yet another caste murder.
OPINION
The tsunami is not forgotten, but in Keechankuppam the fishermen have weighed the risk of another tsunami against the prospects for finding safer
housing further inland. And so their huts are back again on the once-ravaged beach, as though the tsunami never happened, writes
Dilip D'Souza.
OPINION : 7/11 BLASTS
For too many of us, the killings of terrorists have come to characterise an
entire religion, and taint everybody who follows it. In the Muslim areas of Bombay,
residents deal with the feeling that an entire city, an entire country, maybe
the whole world, sees them as responsible for terrorism, writes
Dilip D'Souza.
OPINION: RECORDING GRIEF
We visited Barshi-Takli because we heard about a farmer who had killed
himself there, and then we found out about another farmer suicide there. We made
futile little consoling cluck-clucks with bewildered widow, then a weeping mother.
Dilip D'Souza
visited grief-stricken families in Vidarbha.
MEASURING POVERTY
The first step towards eradicating poverty is to understand just how many of us are poor, and what that means.
Thus far the government's measurement of poverty has simply been a self-serving one, and it's time we adopted a more
honest calculation, writes
Dilip D'Souza.
OPINION / THE JUSTICE SYSTEM
What's the difference between hearing a case, and merely setting a date for hearing it?
Dilip D'Souza
isn't quite sure, after yet another day spent answering a court summons.
Justice, he learns first-hand, is riding on a prayer, and is often at least one more hearing away.
OPINION / UNDERTRIALS
It's bad enough that you can pay bribes to officials who are very willing to take them; bad enough that ill-gotten gains
are nearly a birthright today; bad enough that values are to laugh at. But corruption is about more than these.
Corruption breaks down the very rules we live by.
Dilip D'Souza
remembers his court appearances.
OPINION/HOUSING
"This building is dangerous. It may collapse at any time. Enter at your own risk." So goes a warning sign
at the entrance to a building in Mumbai. Buildings that crumble are an old tradition in this
city, with at least one cause being the Rent Control Act.
Dilip D'Souza
says the pernicious law must go.
Tsunami relief in Tamilnadu may have taken on an altogether
unexpected colour. Some villages escaped the giant tides, and yet
in Shanmuganagar, villagers destroyed their homes, when the tsunami itself did
not. Why? "We were scared, and they promised us a new house," finds
Dilip D'Souza
.
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