India's financial capital and the hub of business is creaking at the seams. Infrastructure in the city of Mumbai urgently needs upgrading. The new proposed metro is already mired in controversy. The city needs to begin work on constructing a new airport (to avoid reaching a crisis situation). The state of Maharashtra leads the pack of Indian states in terms of the number of farmer suicides. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has, however, just acquired a cow and a calf. The cow that was brought in from Latur district faced some "adjustment" problems (or so the newspapers tell us) and had to be sent back. It is poised to return to its new home in Mumbai and the chief minister will presumably be dividing his time between governing the state and raising his cow and calf.
As far as cows go, the state has taken things to a ridiculous level. Residents of the city of Malegaon, for instance, have been asked to submit "mugshots" of their cattle and the state police are busy preparing a database based on this.
In Uttar Pradesh, a few days ago, the roof of a district school collapsed - after thunderstorms and high winds - on the students. Eight children were injured in the incident. In 2012, six children were killed and seven injured when the roof of the school building collapsed in a local school in Bijnaur. The then Uttar Pradesh government had even ordered a probe into the incident. The state government is, however, too preoccupied to actually do something about it. It is busy giving final touches to a plan to set up selfie spots in the capital, Lucknow, to attract tourists. Monuments and parks in the city will have such spots to give the "smart-phonography" generation a chance to get best and instant clicks and gain free publicity for the state. The state administration is identifying the monuments and parks that fit the bill.
In Delhi, citizens are struggling to find clean air to breathe. Respiratory disorders are on the rise and doctors are advising those who can't cope to leave the city. Traffic has become a menace and the number of vehicles on the road is making commuting almost impossible. Cars, buses, trucks, cyclists and pedestrians jostle each other on a daily basis in a never-ending battle for space.
Arvind Kejriwal, the state chief minister, the most combative Delhi has ever seen, recently announced his intention of setting up a memorial to commemorate the farmer who committed suicide during his rally. Why has this one farmer been chosen for such privileged treatment is not clear in a country where roughly 10,000 farmers kill themselves every year.
Ever since he became chief minister, Kejriwal has strangely been locked in battle with someone or the other (when he is not fighting his own party members, he is fighting with people outside it) and citizens are now beginning to wonder when, if at all, he finds the time to run the state.
At the Centre, the government seems excessively preoccupied with the past. One wonders why Home Minister Rajnath Singh is so focussed on Maharana Pratap (he seems to be running some kind of a bizarre competition between Akbar and Maharana Pratap in his mind). The government has decided to celebrate his 475th birth anniversary and a committee has been formed to oversee the celebrations. A massive statue of the Rajput leader has been built and recently inaugurated in Pratapgarh. This even as a 20-year-old Japanese girl was gang-raped just weeks ago in one of the city's suburban towns.
Prior to Maharana Pratap, an inordinate amount of time and energy of the prime minister and other ministers of the National Democratic Alliance was taken up by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the construction of a statue - the tallest in the world - to honour him. The Centre has also been preoccupied with B R Ambedkar and his legacy. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has even promised to find funds to purchase a house that Ambedkar occupied while studying in the UK, to turn it into a memorial.
That we belong to an unusual country was never in doubt. To find out in what way precisely, look for what is common among all these acts - they are all symbolic. Everybody wants to do things that are only symbolic, and not real. Therefore, this week's column is being positioned as a symbolic protest.
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