This particular picture made the cover picture of the national tabloids.I am reasonably convinced that many of our 'breaking news' starved television journalists would have splashed this feature over and over on their channels.
I do not lay claims to be a political commentator and nor am I protecting our government at the centre. Am just a well informed citizen and happen to know that elections are due, in less than six months, in the state of this bicycle riding Chief Minister. He reckons this bicycle riding drama might just strike a chord with his naive voters - the same people who voted him and his ministers on the BSP ( Bijli Sadak Pani ) issue.Surely he must have pitched his voters to ride bicycles on the Sadak he had promised them earlier.
What am I aggrieved about? Look at the picture carefully, once again. It has been digitally mastered to electronically remove the bandobast and barricades facilitating the minister's entourage. It has also digitally erased the number of two wheelers, cars , buses and trucks waiting for the cavalcade to pass. A very elementary guess would place the idling fuel burnt by the waiting engines much larger than the fuel purportedly 'saved' by the minister. And we are not accounting for the fuel that some of the waiting on goers must have spent extra on the detour to avoid this ministerial mess.
What irks me is drama baazi. Instead of treating this as a political issue against the central government, this democratically elected and well educated minister should lead the way and rather ask his citizens to cycle for work and pleasure thus adopting not only environment friendly and economic ways of going around the global crisis of oil price surge and try help contain, if not reduce demand.
Cycling inevitably reminds me of the Netherlands. Holland is the cycling capital of the world and boasts of close to 20,000 kilometres of dedicated cycling paths. They say a Dutchman without a cycle is like a fish without water. Per last statistics made available, there are an average of 1.3 cycles per person in Holland. It is not uncommon to find senior executives riding on their bicycles to and fro work and such is the respect for cyclists that they have the right of way over automobiles. Not only is it mandatory to provide parking places for cycles in public and private places but there are multi storey cycle parking lot's adjoining most populous railway stations.
Our poor minister may not be noticed by scribes or journalists in Holland. Better let him be here or say, shall we send him to Holland?
Comments
Well observed.