Name Games
Why do public utilities have to be named after politicians?
Even before the much-awaited Bandra-Worli sea link was thrown open to the public, the name game had begun. At the inauguration of the bridge, NCP chief Sharad Pawar proposed that it be named after former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Chief minister Ashok Chavan snapped up the idea immediately. As if on cue, the Shiv Sena objected.
The Sena argues that the foundation stone for the bridge was laid during its tenure, when Bal Thackeray had apparently announced that it would be named after Veer Savarkar. Christening the bridge as the Rajiv Gandhi sea link, the Sena unsurprisingly says, is a slight to Maratha sentiments. Polls in Maharashtra are a couple of months away, and we can be sure that the last word has not been said in this controversy. This is not new. Political parties often create and concentrate on frivolous controversies to deflect attention from real issues.
The case of the sea link is not out of the ordinary. Our political class has a penchant for naming public infrastructure after personalities from the past. Why is it that every bridge, road, airport, railway station, bus stand, roundabout must be named after people, who often happen to be political figures? Politicians, no matter how great their stature, are public servants. Why then must they be deified and immortalised by naming utilities – which lie in the realm of the commons – after them? There are few big cities in this country that do not have a road named after Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru. From airports to metro stations, Rajiv Gandhi’s name is a popular choice. In Mumbai, a few years ago, most major public buildings were given the same name, that of Chhatrapati Shivaji. It’s pretty much the same case in Kolkata, Bangalore or Chennai for that matter, where local personalities have been roped in to identify roads, parks etc.
Is our political class so unimaginative that it cannot think beyond its own set for a choice of names? Or is it because it serves the narrow ends of whichever dispensation is in power to put up nameplates of its favoured ones? It’s time we put an end to this practice. It would be far more sensible to pick names inspired by geography or local culture, which would reflect the essence of the unnamed entity in question. This would also spare us from differentiating between many roads or airports that go by the same name.
Source: ET
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