mid-day editorial: We need facilities, not ribbons and coconuts

We accord so much importance to inaugurations that often these little frills, usually meant for gathering credit points, overshadow the reason behind those events. Yesterday, this paper reported how two different politicians inaugurated a school, in the span of a month. The report st­a­ted that a Congress MLA went ahead with the bhoomipujan ceremony of a Kurla school, which was inaugurated by a BJP neta a month ago.

They blamed each other for trying to take credit for the school and plenty of accusations and counter accusations were exchanged. However, given our leaders' penchant for capitalising on anything that can be milked for publicity, this is not an isolated incident. We have witnessed numerous instances when inaugurations and ribbon cuttings have become all-important.

There are multiple gardens in the city, which are ready and awaiting ‘clearance'. And by ‘clearance' one does not mean permission. The garden is kept inaccessible to the public until some legislator or minister may find the time to come inaugurate it, in a gala display of power. Forget the fact that the space crunch here demands all available spaces to be made available to the public. Ribbon cutting is indispensable.

Inaugurations are also often delayed over the vital issue of names - what should a structure be called, or whom it should be named after. Not surprisingly, it leads to an unnecessary fracas between those trying to name it and the opposition.

Instead of stressing on inaugurations, we need to shift the focus on the efficacy of the structure, the need for it to be built or opened to be public. We should analyse it if will serve its purpose. Let us concentrate on meaning and usefulness rather than the ribbons and coconuts leading to those Kodak moments.