Erecting statues answer to Maharashtra's problems?

The debate over the proposed Shivaji statue in the sea off Marine Drive is getting tiresome. The project, which was first envisaged by an embattled Vilasrao Deshmukh when he was chief minister in 2004, is clearly a decoy employed by politicians to pull the wool over unsuspecting citizens’ eyes and hide their failures.

As, indeed, is the proposed Amdebkar statue off Chaityabhoomi, Dadar, which too has been hanging fire since 1990.

Our leaders talk as though the mere act of erecting giant statues is enough to make Mumbai a world-class city or rid Maharashtra of all its ills.

In reality, if you put the current crop of Dalit leaders under the planet’s most powerful microscope, you will be hard put to spot a single trait of Babasaheb or his lofty ideals in them. Similar is the case with those who use Shivaji for political gains.

These politicians, who never miss an opportunity to use Shivaji’s name to stoke the embers of chauvinism and parochialism, would do well to remember that the Maratha king was an administrator par excellence. Had they aspired to be even half as good an administrator as he was, Maharashtra would not be in the mess it is today.

Politicians must understand that the days of manipulating people’s emotions by invoking icons from the past are over. All that matters to the average Maharastrian today is what the government of the day has done for the state’s betterment. On that count, our leaders cut a sorry figure.