Alert citizens can help prevent mishaps in city
Mumbai’s civic services are in a mess thanks to lack of civic sense which results in fatal accidents be it due to building collapses or trees getting uprooted mostly during monsoon seasons. A stitch in time saves nine and precautions are always better than cure. Trees needs maintenance as well and needs to be trimmed regularly to prevent mishaps of getting uprooted and dangerous ones need to be axed. Depleted buildings in very poor conditions need to be vacated urgently and government should prioritise their redevelopment with alternative arrangements.
Disaster Management Services are missing in Mumbai which needs to be revived. Safety of citizens should be the prime objective of the government and agencies or departments to look after people’s grievances should be made accountable for their work. Privatisation of such department may cost government some extra sum but would bring in efficiency and accountability. Citizens’ cooperation too is a must and people too need to take precautionary measures such as proper repairs of their homes as well as surroundings that would help minimize mishaps. Mumbai has the wealthiest civic body and its revenues should be spent optimally so that the city is free from mishaps.
S.N. Kabra
Demand to re-spell Delhi justified
It refers to justified and logical demand raised by BJP Parliamentarian Vijay Goel in Rajya Sabha for re-spell British-distorted spelling of Delhi as Dilli. Even Dilli is the distorted name. Many other countries like Bangladesh and China have already respelled names of their capitals as per actual pronunciation.
The central government should also accept resolution by West Bengal state-assembly to re-name the state to remove confusing pre-fix West and to have a name in Bangla rather than English. Only old-timers know that since western part of pre-independence undivided Bengal came to India, the state was named as West Bengal, and East Bengal turned into East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Proposed name will be one-worded and will not be able to be abbreviated like double-worded names UP, MP, HP, AP etc.
Constitution should be amended whereby names of all institutions including High Courts named after states or cities may be auto-changed with change in names of state or city. Names of Bombay High Court and Madras High Court still remain the same despite renaming of respective cities as Mumbai and Chennai decades back.
There has been gradual change in names or spellings of cities with the process still incomplete despite seven decades of independence. Distorted spellings of Jullender and Simla by British rulers in India as Jalandhar and Shimla has been rectified. Bareilly as per actual pronunciation is still to be modified. There are too many Rampurs and Bilaspurs in India which require renaming to avoid confusion. New names can be after heroic characters of Ramayan and Mahabharat.
Union Government should also adopt single name Bharat for the country abolishing British given name as India, in tune with unanimous resolution once passed by UP state-assembly. It is senseless to have two names for a country. Sri Lanka and Myanmar have already done away with such British legacy when these countries are no more known as Ceylon and Burma.
Madhu Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
