60 years and floods

For anyone who has been reading the newspapers of late, the coverage of and run up to the 60th year of our independence has been nauseating, with one paper even claiming to lead india from its morass of problems...be that as it may, but the irony that was tucked into those pages should not be missed......as everyone knows already, floods continue to ravage a large part of our land, and many people have lost their lives as well over the monsoon season thus far...crores have been lost...whole villages have been marooned and many are fighting for air dropped packets of food.......on august 15th an update of these floods just got, about 150 words, that too in the indise pages, suffocating for space in a page crammed with ads extolling our glorious freedom struggle...how ironic and deeply disconcerting....that's the state of teh nation for you....if you want to read about the real india, just pick up this issue of outlook, skip the bal thackeray bits and get to true stories of how little india is reeling, variously, under naxals, malnourishment, starvation et al.....no 9% growth will percolate fast enough for the man who will be dead in a few days due to lack of food.