May the MCC be given a respectable burial

With so much being debated in and out of mass media, the Millennium Challenge Corporation proposals have baffled the average citizen, perplexed two governments and engaged the scrutiny of a team of intellectuals.

It was Ikin in his Pageant of World History who compared the ancient world to a ‘melting pot’ but didn’t foresee that the modern world would be the same. Any serious attempt to unravel the ramifications and implications of the MCC and suggest its feasibility or otherwise must engage a successful student of history, both modern and ancient, both Eastern and Western, in addition to the dynamics of current politics together with its major forces and directions.

There have been instances where the

MCC has worked smoothly but the vacillating and deeply unpredictable nature of the treatment to some of our Asian neighbours by the seemingly benevolent donor has been, in the aggregate, displaying not only divisive and aggressive form but an invasive propensity mainly due to its own history of its consistent inability to control either rising inventories of military arsenal or its unscrupulous arming of populations of all age groups.

More than all such similar negative characteristics, the behaviour displayed towards our own independent nation in more recent instances as, for example, in its transportation of military arsenal through our sea and airports into a war zone of its own creation, and in which we were never a party of, has severely damaged the scant regard with which it was previously held. By such irritating acts of disrespectful commission its diplomatic stature is unconsciously and invisibly diminished.

To deal with its objectives of alleviating poverty, one would be justified in asking how developing urban transport infrastructure could improve poverty which is concentrated in the rural population! With such incompatibility one is prompted to suspect whether the inclusion of such impossibility as the primary objective has been contemplated to clothe its more incompatible, sinister projections.

However, it is patently clear to every level-headed individual that the problem of land tenure, inventorying state land and regulatory documentation is an entirely parochial and internal concern which has already seen some progress with the inauguration of the ‘Bimsaviya’ programme.

It would require only a blind imbecile to consent to its application and to suffer its subtle and coercive implications! May the MCC be given a respectable burial if it refuses to be cremated and be reborn in another of the six heavens or the seventh.

To quote half a quartrain from Ogden Nash,

“Losing your face is no disgrace, But losing your poise is final.” (with due recognition to limitations in

plastic and reconstructive surgery.)

- Dhanu Via email