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| Sunday, 7 August 2005 |
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Editor, Sunday Observer. E-mail: [email protected] Snail mail : Sunday Observer, 35, D.R.Wijewardana Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Telephone : 94 11 2429239 / 2331181 Fax : 94 11 2429230 Living through the nose As individuals, as family units and as a nation we are living through the nose. Simplicity, modesty and prudence have given way to ostentation, arrogance and extravagance. For example we always talk of an impending power crisis. According to some there is a crisis already. Yet do we use power rationally? Electricity bought at a higher price and given to the consumer at a lower price is wasted on many an occasion. One could see streetlights burning during midday as if to compete with the sun in illuminating the streets. There is no restraint in illuminations for functions including political and social events. The bigger the illumination the better the show, seems to be the thinking of the organizers of such functions. Even after the price of crude oil reached $60 a barrel, import of heavy fuel consuming vehicles goes on unabated. Here, politicians and civil society leaders have set a bad example. The first act of every politician in assuming office seems to be the import or purchase of an expensive high fuel consuming full option vehicle. The higher the office, the bigger the vehicle should be is the thinking of these politicians. The same goes for so-called civil society leaders who purchase such luxurious vehicles out of foreign funds ostensibly to serve the poor better. These are necessities of modern life, they would argue. In their opinion such great leaders as Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave may look like fools who indulged in self-mortification. The bureaucrats too have begun to follow their political gurus. For all of them a vehicle is not a mode of conveyance but a status symbol, an attribute of social standing. Ironically, even those who have left the lay society in search of spiritual bliss seem to be indulging in material comfort and luxury. There are too many tamashas and too much extravagance at each tamasha. There is a trend to follow mega events of the West and spend through the nose for them. As for personal life, the New Rich is notorious for ostentation and extravagance. Even the middle classes and the poor try to follow suit. Weddings, birthdays and even funerals are taking bigger dimensions. Horse carriages and video filming have entered the itinerary at funerals. The market economy has ushered in unbridled consumerism with the help of commercial advertising. The media too has become an active accomplice in this game of luring the innocent consumers to purchase anything and everything under the sun whether such goods are necessities or not, whether they are affordable or not. This leads to the consumers mixing up their priorities. In the same way foreign prescriptions and marketing could get our national priorities too wrong. This is no call for asceticism but a call for more rational, modest and simple living. Hiroshima and Nagasaki It is 60 years since United States B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Bay dropped the first nuclear bomb weighing 4500 Kg on a provincial Japanese city Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. IT instantly killed 78,000 persons. Subsequently the death toll rose to 140, 000. Counting the death of survivors who succumbed later and their offspring the total death toll today is 237,062 from the city of Hiroshima alone. Three days later, on August 9, 1945 another US Bomber Bock's Car dropped another nuclear bomb on the city of Nagasaki killing another 80, 000 instantly. Thus this nuclear attack killed more people in two small Japanese cities than the number killed in three continents by the deadly tsunami that struck on December 26, 2004. Historians and military strategists question whether it was necessary for the United States to have used nuclear bombs at all since the decisive turning point in the victory of the Allies in the Second world War had already been reached by then. The final victory was only a matter of weeks even if the conventional war continued. The irony is that even today there are people in the United States who justify the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The dependents of the survivors are still suffering. Compared to the modern day nuclear arsenal in the hands of the elitist group of nuclear powers the Hiroshima-Nagasaki attack looks like child's play. A nuclear holocaust anywhere in the world would certainly engulf the entire planet. There would be no victors, no vanquished, no survivors in a nuclear war. Yet the nuclear arms race goes on unabated and even extends to outer space. For mankind there is no alternative to total nuclear disarmament. On this 60th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings the world community should redouble its efforts for complete nuclear disarmament and the total destruction of nuclear stockpiles. Nuclear energy should be used not for war but for peaceful purposes, to save man not to destroy him. |
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