Posted on 09/09/2001 6:46:25 PM PDT by dighton
PANAJI: It's back to school for the 40 members of Goa assembly. Veterans, former chief ministers and first-timers are grappling with computers, learning how to email and chat.
The newly built plush assembly complex, a dapper of a building that is noisy during the session, is strangely quiet as members drive up the hilltop where their politics on the floor of the House is ironically floored at the altar of knowledge.
The tranquil ambience of the assembly is a semblance of peace and a storehouse of knowledge that has got many times metamorphosed with the intriguing world of politics merging into the fascinating language of computers.
The politicians simply love to operate the ICE-age gizmos to interact with Netizens and officials to bring into reality e-governance.
``It is always good to learn and I find it interesting,'' says former chief minister Wilfred D'Souza. The 70-plus veteran who obtained his FRCS from London and Edinburgh mingles with Information Technology Minister Ramakant Khalap, who, too, finds it good to learn.
The email has worked out politically as well. In the politically volatile atmosphere of Goa, even during the training session, the opposition MLAs send email to the ruling party MLAs informing them about ``secret'' parleys.
Interestingly, the loquacious among the lot shun lectures insisting on ``practicals''. They are more interested in learning ``how to boot and get on with the job''.
The Goa assembly has the distinction of becoming the first in India to have electronic communication between the Speaker, while in chair, and the legislature secretary during the last assembly session via chat mode through laptop.
It is taking strides in teaching those on treasury benches to get connected to the officials in the gallery, seeking advice during the opposition vitriol.
BJP legislator Dayanad Mandrekar has set an agenda to provide government applications and the forms to his electorate. ``People have to run from pillar to post to get an application. For seeking assistance from the government in case of natural calamity, the victims approach the government offices and the panchayat in vain. My office has stored several kinds of application in the computer and we provide it to the needy. I have been doing it for the last three months. This training session has helped me provide forms personally to the public who come even after the office hours,'' he says.
Legislature Secretary R. Kothandaraman says 23 MLAs have been provided with the laptops and the rest with desktops. A five-day course, that began on September 3, has made the first batch conversant with the basics of laptop and computers.
REALITY BYTES
In its endeavour to make the small state of Goa e-conversant and facilitate dissemination of information, the ministers and MLAs have started lapping up with their laptops and aggressively learning to log on to the web world.
The legislature department will launch its own website providing details of the proceedings of the Assembly so that the people can access it. In a state where school students in large numbers studying political science visit the House in session, the website would provide a platform of knowledge.
Theory and practical in social science, perhaps, never mingled so well.
Copyright © 2001 Times Internet Limited.</font color>
What a remarkable sentence.
These poli wallahs will soon to be taking a crack at eve-teasing in the cyberspace in the fullness of the impending moment.
Most undignified.
Their syntax is totally horrid
But despite every gaffe
They give me a laugh
And to read them, well, I adore-id.
Leni
From the September 17 issue of the New Yorker:
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
11 W. 53rd St. (708-9480)—The first half of the Mies van der Rohe extravaganza has opened with "Mies in Berlin." Matching its subject's famous simplicity, the show is a calmly paced bildungsroman, tracing a thirty-year progression from Schinkelesque prodigy to modernist master. Understandably, the show's curators, Terence Riley and Barry Bergdoll, worried that canonical projects like the Tugendhat House and the Barcelona Pavilion might seem too familiar. Their decision to freshen things up with Thomas Ruff's cloying colorized photographs is the show's only lapse. Otherwise, it's easy to fall under the spell of Mies's planar vision, his integration of landscape and garden design (more suited to a Californian than a Germanic climate), and his infectious love of betonte Leere, or heightened emptiness. A complementary show (at the Whitney) picks up where this one leaves off, with Mies's arrival in the United States in 1938. Through Sept. 11. (Open Saturdays through Tuesdays, and Thursdays, 10:30 to 5:45; Fridays, 10:30 to 8:15.)
So true, so true.
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