Nashik Diary

The appeal drew outrage statewide, particularly since the Jnanpith Award winner had willed that the copyright of his works remain with his publishers. The unpublished work was to be taken care of by an editorial board. Shaken, the Kusumagraj Pratisthan backtracked, “explaining” that it only intended to “compile” information on individuals and institutions interested in the poet-playwright’s works. A fee, hastened to clarify, was never suggested.

The Pratishthan would do well to remember that Kusumagraj’s works — especially his pre-Independence compositions — had inspired an entire generation of Marathi-speaking people, who quoted freely from them.

Lesson For The Future

The Yashwantrao ChavanMaharashtra Open University (YCMOU) recently held its fifth convocation, which was addressed by a former Vice-Chancellor of the Pune University, Professor V G Bhide.

In his speech, Bhide, who is known for his attempts to popularise science among children, called for liberating education from the “shackles of schools and colleges.”

Any person, irrespective of age, profession or place of residence should be able to pursue knowledge or upgrade his skills according to his convenience by using modern communications methods, he suggested.

Open universities like the YCMOU, he said, would play a major role in shaping the lives of people for the challenges of the next millennium.

A lesson here for YCMOU, where the majority of the course are conventional ones like BA, BCom and B Ed. Of the 8,224 students who graduated this year, 5,303 had taken conventional courses — 2,472 enrolled for a B Ed, 2,397 for BA, and 434 for BCom.

Nasty Spill

At the end of each year, most local self-governing bodieshave incomplete development works on their hands, which spills over to the next year, and for which a budgetary provision has to be made.

The NMC, however, appears to have taken more `spillovers’ than it can handle — the accumulated spillover has been mounting since 1994-95, and has been projected at a whopping Rs 278 crore in the budget for 1999-2000.

In 1994-95 the spillover was to the tune of Rs 15 crore which rose to Rs 42 crore in the following year and Rs 63 crore in 1996-97. In 1997-98 it was Rs 126 crore which went up to Rs 204 crore in 1998-99.

The figures, as usual, speak for themselves.

Brewing Revolt

Two years after they forced a local liquor shop to close down, the women of Vilholi, a small village off the Mumbai-Agra national highway, sent yet another effective warning, this time, to prospective offenders. And the local cops.

The closure of the liquor shop attracted bootleggers who took to secretly slipping into the village to sell the brew. The women informed the localpolice who didn’t appear to be interested. The infuriated group then took matters in their own hands, policing the village themselves. Their efforts paid off — one morning, they apprehended two unsuspecting men traipsing into the village with a stock of liquor.

They held him — and his wares — until the police arrived to arrest one of the men and confiscate more than 15 litres of the potentially deadly brew.

Tailpiece

The recent upheavals in the Congress nearly caught the NMC on the wrong foot; a planned inauguration of a school and a garbage incinerator by Chhagan Bhujbal, who had just declared his intention to stand by the mutinous Sharad Pawar, had to be called off — suppose Madam heard of it?

Invitation cards printed for the occasion were stashed away, city Congress unit president Murlidhar Mane was asked to do the honours instead, and the Congressmen heaved an immense sigh of relief when it was all over.