GYANESH M. KHANOLKAR forwards a celebrated picture of the father of the nation with his northwest frontier counterpart, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan.
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As our nation turns diamond, as we blame, find fault with, and criticise others; as we point fingers at and pick holes in this, that and the other, now is as a good time as any to ask: how have we lived, worked and played? And what we have done to make this a better country?
Can we, as the Mahatma prescribed, be the change we want to see, without waiting for somebody else to usher it in for us?
Of course we can! We can at least start by caring and participating. If the situation is anything but what we want, it is us, at least partially, who are to blame. How many of us have taken trouble to find out what can be done by each of us to better our situation?
It easy being a key-board warrior cribbing and criticising policitians/officers for what they are NOT doing. That accountability somehow does magically disappear when we are talking about what we have been doing.
A few of us who care and want to participate are trying to track progress of public projects that affect us and make the officers accountable. Have a look at http://bangalore.praja.in
We even have soft-launched a mysore specific site at http://mysore.praja.in I am actually trying to evaluate the online complaints system of Mysore here http://mysore.praja.in/mysore-online-grievance-readressal-review and tarlesubba is trying to propose a plan to improve gandhi square here http://mysore.praja.in/gandhi-square-mysore
I dont intend to put this as a shameless plug. What I mean to say is that it is possible for each of us to start a change with our own constraints and limitations.
Will this make the whole country a wonderful place? We dont know, but at least we are trying to find out. Much better than not doing anything!