An ungrateful MPian

Some banners sprung up in Bhopal last week, proclaiming pride in being an MPian. The MPian is an altogether new coinage.

The banners obviously followed the State Government’s call to citizens to take pride in having been born in Madhya Pradesh.

The call coincided with the MP’s 53^rd foundation day. This is Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s latest fad, which ludicrously manifested itself in his utterance recently in Satna that jobs in MP belong to sons-of-the-soil and not to some outsider Biharis.

That he immediately retracted the statement hardly takes away tomfoolery of the singularly parochial statement.

One surmise has it that Shivraj Singh deliberately did a Raj Thackeray in Satna to preclude his chances for BJP national president post.

Be it as it may, the government has –perhaps less wittingly than otherwise-- sought to start a dangerous trend.

I strongly reject the MPian campaign. I too am born and brought up in Madhya Pradesh but don’t see any reason in the fact to be proud of. This is just a geographical accident just like my being a Brahmin is a biological accident.

What is so great about being born in a particular region or in a particular caste? The very idea, in fact, is obnoxious.

And what do I be proud of? The egregious fact that MP continues to top in the country in infant and maternal mortality rates? The ignominy of being born in the State where rapes are highest in the country? Or, where more than 68 percent children are appallingly malnourished?

What has the Shivraj Government done to mitigate the sufferings of the poor children and mothers to qualify in asking me to be proud of “ an MPian?

All these talks of false pride are red herrings. When the government cannot or does not want to address real issues, it resorts to such a gimmick. I refuse to buy the gimmick.

Before any one declares me an incorrigible cynic, let me categorically state that I would most certainly feel proud if the government shuns hypocrisy about removing corruption, dedicates itself to core issues of mitigating poverty, re-priorities its policy for the poor and deals sternly with communal elements, stop mollycoddling the mafias and power brokers.

Then and only then might I say I am proud of being an MPian.