A week of mix baggage for Mumbai

In Mumbai, it was a week of mix baggage. A week of diagonally opposite factors - creation and destruction, pleasure and sorrow, ahievements and failures. Though it was a mix baggage, the negative side dominated the week due to very serious nature of the untoward incidents like rising indiscipline in police force which even resulted in policemen killing the boss or the family and himself.
But, before turning to that, first the good news.And believe me it is very very creative. Students of the Industrial Design centre of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) organised an exhibition of their models of improved designs of different gadgets, vehicles etc. The visitors were zapped by the creativity of these students, who exhibited their 26 projects under the categories product designing and visual communications.
It included a new design of Maruti 800, a tractor and even a mobile phone. Students of visual communications presented animations giving the watchers an experience of being a part of some famous humorous stories written by legendary Marathi writer Pu.La.Deshpande and introduction to our heritage of art and culture.
When Mumbai IITians are busy in preparing models of gadets and visuals, students of a management institute are busy giving a helping hand straight to United Nations to reduce their paperwork. Nine students of Mumbai Education Trust''s Management Institute have created a software for reducing paperwork. Its demo was given when the UN''s NGO committee met here in March. And from April 12 these students began working in UN for the implementation of the project. The project will be completed by June 7.
And now the bad news. After creation and achievements, it is turn of destruction and failures. Everybody saw it on TV live when the security at the Mumbai Airport was held at ransom.
As everyone knows, R Namdeo, a CISF jawan posted at airport killed his commandant and took five of his colleagues hostage. What became topic of discussion in the media next day was the smile on Namdeo''s face indicating no remorse, after his arrest, which was clearly visible in the pictures printed in newspapers. A Marathi newspaper had come out with a theory indicating that Namdeo''s action of killing his boss was related to his love affair in the department. His commandent tried to desist his fiancee from getting involved in such an affair. This resulted in the incident.
In another incident next day a police officer of Mumbai Police killed his wife, son and then himself. He was reportedly fed up with the ulcer, which was causing him lot of trouble and suffering. These incidents had again initiated the discussion of workload on police lack of weekly offs, leaves and fixed duty hours etc. Whether anything positive will come out of it is a big question.
Frequent bursting of pipelines supplying water to Mumbai, causing water shortage in different areas is also becoming a major problem in Mumbai. Three such incidents were reported in just one week. Many of these water mains are very old, laid down by Britishers. One water main which developed some problem recently was laid in 1870. Mumbai Municipal Corporation will have to prepare a plan for their proper maintenance and replacement if necessary, considering the loss of thousands of liters of water in these days of acute water shortage.
Shiv Sena, which has once again given a battle cry of sons of the soil theory after a gap of over 20 years, is trying to project that it means business. When its activists came to know about mass copying at railway recruitment examination, they went to the examination centre and disrupted the exam.
Noted social worker and champion of anti corruption movement Anna Hazare arrived in Mumbai on Tuesday. Now Mumbaikar are waiting eagerly to see what fresh salvo he fires at the ministers, embarrassing the government. It is a different matter that the governments and ministers, nowadays, rarely get embarrassed by the corruption charges made on them. Still Mumbaikars are eager to see what comes out of Hazare''s bag.