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Tuesday, 24 May 2011

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Fire cracker tragedies crying for remedy

The death of a five- year-old girl in a fire cracker blast recently helps focus on a problem that has been growing surreptitiously and steadily. Gone are the days when firing crackers was well and truly child’s play. Today, one could be playing with one’s life when one lights a fire cracker and what’s worse one could be exposing the lives of others to grave dangers too by doing so.

The sad and tragic death of little Avindathi Thatsarani who was only a bystander at an occasion where fire crackers were lit, proves the point. In fact the victim was some 30 metres away from the explosion.

It is plain to see that what passes off as ‘innocent fun’ could have very grave repercussions. How did this come to be so? Years ago, children could with relative security engage in firing crackers on festive and other relevant occasions.

There were the occasional mishaps, of course, but there was no question of a person paying with his or her life for indulging in these understandable childhood thrills. Today, the consequences could be very grim for a person giving in to these pleasures.

However, a further issue to be addressed is whether even an onlooker of these once harmless engagements could any longer consider himself free of risks. Apparently, the material out of which these crackers are manufactured today is so lethal that even onlookers cannot consider themselves safe. For instance, Avindathi was only an onlooker of the revelry and she was several metres away from the action. There is certainly an explosive charge in some of these fire crackers which is devastating.

This is food for thought for the authorities. How is it that fire cracker manufacturers are now in a position to churn out these deadly wares with what seems to be a high explosive charge? Are they in a position to engage in a manufacturing process which has grave repercussions for humans? Could they manufacture these fire crackers without reference to any standard safety requirements?

These questions should engage the attention of the authorities and other responsible sections if tragedies of the kind which befell Avindathi are to be avoided. We believe the entire fire cracker manufacturing industry should come under closer supervision of the government to ensure the safety of the people. These manufacturing concerns must be required to measure up to specified standards which render their goods harmless and not destructive of life.

Besides, a legal regime should come into existence to ensure that those who act in violation of these standards are taken to task and rendered accountable for their actions.

We believe the time is ripe to bring back the ‘innocence’ to the childhood thrill of firing crackers rather than make it an activity which is fraught with grave risks for the human and other living beings.

Over the years it may have been noted, that fire crackers are being used extravagantly, carelessly and irrationally. They are used with hardly a care for public safety on every occasion that is considered ‘big’ and this is a disastrous trend that needs to be arrested without further delay. We wonder whether the occasions on which fire crackers could be lit could be carefully spelt out by the state? There is certainly no need to make the metropolis and towns ‘volley and thunder’ with the sound of fire crackers on every ‘big’ occasion.

More human-friendly and civilized ways of celebrating these occasions should be devised. This should be particularly so, if the events concerned are of a political nature.

There is an unfortunate tendency among the more unrefined and uncultured in society to go in for loud celebrations and such occasions are marked by the nonchalant firing of deafening fire crackers, which, one suspects, carry an excess of explosive material which could endanger human and other life forms.

Over the past couple of decades these practices have increased in frequency and dangerousness. We need hardly say that no festive occasion is free of fire cracker casualties. Therefore, the time is more than ripe to bring the fire cracker industry under closer state scrutiny and regulation. The public interest should be considered prime.

Reform and reconciliation in Sri Lanka

Let me begin by thanking the High Commission here, and the Consuls in Sydney and Melbourne, for inviting me to Australia and hosting my programme. I should also thank all those, in particular the Sri Lankans, Burghers, Muslims, Sinhalese and Tamils, who have come to meet me. I am more appreciative of this because, given distances between places in your towns, and the weather, I think getting out for such meetings requires considerable effort.

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The dimensions of success and failure

Eduardo Galeano is one of my favourite authors. He writes things that can be read over and over again. They are always fresh and they always offer new perspectives. ‘Walking words’ is one that I particularly like. I’ve not read it ‘cover-to-cover’. Some books are not meant to be read like that. I read it random-page by random-page.

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Buddha’s teachings inspire humanistic and universalist politics

The first entails the notion that the West is the preserve of philosophy and the East is the domain of exotic cultures, and that ‘universality’ originated from and flows from West to East. Counter-posed to this Eurocentric vision is its inversion: the Eastern idea of the West as the site of a mechanistic materialism and a tawdry consumerism, whereas the East is the realm of the metaphysical and the spiritual.

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