Monumental mess over memorial

Not one political party worth its name has so far objected to the grotesquely expensive Ambedkar Samajik Parivartan Sthal...

Not one political party worth its name has so far objected to the grotesquely expensive Ambedkar Samajik Parivartan Sthal Ambedkar memorial, BSP chief Mayawati8217;s colossal dream-project that8217;s under construction in Lucknow. As political analyst Uday Yadav explained, 8220;Opposition parties can8217;t risk taking on Mayawati on this project because whichever party raises its voice against anything being built in the name of Ambedkar would be seen as 8216;anti-Dalit8217;. Now which party would want to lose such a big chunk of voters?8221;

So all political outfits drew parallels between Ambedkar and their respective party icons. But no party objected to the way the ruling party lavished money on a concrete structure. The few voices that were raised were so low and weak that the government pretended not to hear them.

But a written petition by a nondescript local Resident Welfare Society, the Jan Kalyan Samiti, succeeded in putting the construction work on hold, at least for the time being, and did what Opposition parties could not. The High Court took cognisance of the petitioner8217;s complaint and directed the government to stop any further construction. The matter was so grave that even the Supreme Court refused to give any relief to the Mayawati government. Instead, it asked the government to make only temporary arrangements for the Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations on April 14, which Mayawati did with much fanfare.

Mayawati also thought she was perfectly justified in having her own statue along with that of her mentor Kanshiram and Dalit leader Ambedkar and his wife Ramadevi. She said, 8220;The monument will now stand tall for centuries and work as an inspiration for Dalits.8221; She also hit out at the Congress, 8220;When they spend crores on Rajghat, no one said anything but when a similar honour is being given to a Dalit leader, everyone is against it8221;.

None of the Opposition parties objected even when the project got a prominent mention in the housing department8217;s budget. What they did was to simply walk out of the House when the budget was being tabled, making it convenient for the ruling party to walk away with it. Since then, the government has been secretive about the project. No one in the government is willing to share any information-nobody even knows who designed the monument this time. In 1997, when the project was conceived for the first time, it was designed by renowned artist Satish Gujaral.

Even the specially constituted Right To Information RTI cell in the Congress failed to use the vital statistics it got of the project. After Mayawati formally threw the memorial door open to the public on Ambedkar Jayanti on April 14, nobody had anything to say on unnecessary expenditure.

UPCC president Rita Bahuguna Joshi, who took exception to Mayawati8217;s statement that 8220;Nehru and Gandhi did not make any contribution to the upliftment of Dalits8221;, only said: 8220;Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar were complimentary to one another and they were leaders of the nation irrespective of caste and community.8221;

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