Re: Politics/humanitarianism in the tsunami relief effort

Welcome SSM. You deserve a cookie for this :D. Next time you come to
pune, u'll get a Kayani cookie Jar, in fact.

Onto a serious note, i read the blog from India Uncut (and I swear, I
didn't get the title of this list from here! I got it from Gurcharan
Das's book India Unbound, which I think should have been India
Unleashed, but that's a topic of another posting), and here are my
thoughts:

> To those who are worried that DYFI or the RSS might extract political gain from their work, I have only one thing to say: if you oppose them in the political arena, nothing stops you from going out to the villages yourself and working as hard as they do to neutralise the goodwill that you are so scared they're getting. That kind of competition, in doing good, would surely be healthy. But complaining about people who are saving lives and helping survivors rebuild lives is just plain wrong.

Exactly! I think the problem today is politics at the national level
is so far ditached from the grass-route work, as it is. I wouldn't
want the scenario turned into a dilemma for quassi-political setups --
damned if I do, dammed if I don't. Expecting a selfless service is
pretty much utopian -- and counterproductive. Yes, one can question
motives, and brand the work as "political" in nature, but of course
they deserve the political gains out of it! It's lot better than they
getting their political capital through meaningless rhetoric (and I'm
nost just talking about RSS).

And SSM, lol@the-flame-shield. I say, we need more flames here...

-Amit.

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:33:48 -0800, SSM wrote:
>
>
> Interesting couple of articles ...
>
> one from today's edition of Christian Science Monitor talking about
> JVP, the Sri Lankan marxist group in the forefront of relief efforts in
> that country (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0114/p01s03-wosc.html)
>
> and then, an older yet interesting post in Amit Varma's India Uncut
> blog, on separating politics from social work
> (http://indiauncut-tsunami.blogspot.com/2005/01/despatches-26-separating-politics-from.html)
>
> On one level, it seems cynical to leverage a tragedy to maximize the
> "eye-balls" those organizations might want for themselves. And perhaps
> even more cynical to connect the dots thus.
>
> But, on the other hand, I tend to agree with Amit Varma. If, at the end
> of the day, these organizations are helping to plug the holes that
> inevitably exist in govt-led relief efforts in 3rd world countries,
> bully for them. And if they do get those "eye-balls" as a result of
> their hard work, so be it - they fully deserve it.
>
> Flame-shield-on (my first post here), but I have a feeling the
> flame-shield is totally unnecessary in a community like this one :)
>
>


--
Insanity is a sane reaction to an insane world.