The myth of water bottles

Amitava Kumar links to a story in the Economist about the need to learn from this event and push for some real changes. Here's an excerpt:

Rather than politicians who waste their time on the ‘moral threat’ of bar girls (imagine if Mr Patil had given a quarter of the time he spent on them to anticipating yesterday’s blasts), we need ones ready to focus on the real moral threat from Mumbai’s collapsing schools.

Rather than trying to parcel out mill lands between themselves, we need politicians willing to take radical steps to decongest the city — like maybe moving themselves to Navi Mumbai.

We need a city administration with the power to oversee and prosecute erring contractors without worrying about their political connections. We need a government that can persuade the Supreme Court to constitute a constitutional bench to relook at its terrible verdict giving sanction to communally-divided housing which is exacerbating the ghettoisation of this city.

We need all this to happen, and since it clearly won’t happen by itself, we need to fight for it, rather than just offering water bottles. Mumbai’s spirit is not in question, but rather than wallowing in it’s clichés, can we live up to the real potential it offers?

Read the full piece here.