There have been demands from various quarters that the Adarsh Society building — that 32-storey monument to corruption, nepotism and bending of rules in the name of the martyrs of Kargil — should be demolished.
The environment minister, Mr Jairam Ramesh, has said that it violates the Coastal Regulation Zone restrictions. It has been said that it could pose a security risk to the Army base next door, and could serve as a watchtower for terrorists. The civic authorities of Mumbai, long somnolent, have suddenly woken up to cut power and water supply to the building and withdraw its occupancy certificate.
To be sure, that is the ideal punishment for the builder, the defence officers and bureaucrats serving and retired, the politicians ruling and former, who bent the rules to wangle apartments meant for the families of those who gave up their lives at Kargil. But step back and look at it again: Should we demolish the building at all?
Flats in the Adarsh building can be the most ideal gift we can give to the martyrs’ families. Instead of a small six-storey building, doubtless crammed artlessly for dozens of families, shouldn’t the nation gift the martyrs’ families the luxurious, spacious and well-designed flats — the scamsters would have given themselves nothing less — free of cost?
It is such a waste to order the demolition of the building, an order which the shameless corrupt will drag to court where it will lie for years. In disputes of this kind, and given the way the corrupt operate the system, the building will stand forever... and perhaps be occupied by the self-same scamsters “pending further orders”.
From a monument to the venal ways of our society, we could still turn it into a fitting memorial of how we can short-circuit the wheelers and dealers, how the poor, deserving and the dispossessed can be benefited.
As for the unethical and dishonest officers and politicians, let them face the fullest force of the law. Their faces have already been blackened by their involvement in this sordid affair.
To quote the Kargil martyr, the young Captain Vikram Batra, but in entirely different circumstances, “Yeh Dil Maange More.”