Don't just save them, keep, show and tell
This week, Sotheby's was forced to suspend auction of ancient relics linked to the Buddha's remains after GoI threatened legal action. Rightly so. The 334 gems - excavated from Piprahwa, believed to be the ancient city of Kapilavastu, in UP - aren't just historical artefacts; they are sacred fragments of India's heritage. GoI's legal notice called out the sale as 'continued colonial exploitation'. India's demand for repatriation fits into a larger global push to reclaim looted heritage. It's a campaign India has recently pursued with vigour. Over 640 antiquities have been brought back since 2014.But retrieving stolen treasures is only the beginning. Too often, artefacts brought back home are swallowed into silence - locked in storerooms, or shuffled into half-forgotten museums. Even those on public display often suffer from patchy maintenance. The Seated Buddha triumphantly returned from Australia in 2017, and now reportedly sits outside a museum director's office. Some return for glory, others for gathering dust.Systemic neglect risks making these treasures 'lost' all over again - this time not to colonial looters but to our own apathy. Poor documentation, underfunded conservation and low public visibility remain serious challenges. It's one thing to demand the return of history. It's quite another to prove worthy custodianship. So, while GoI's intervention at Sotheby's is welcome, it must not stop there. India needs a clear, ambitious plan - to not just store relics safely but to showcase them widely, proudly and professionally, like it was done in Khajuraho during the G20 summit. Proper conservation, modern site museums and maximum public access must be the goal. Bringing our history home is just the start.
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A good portion of the levies on petro fuels is cornered by GoI via this is GoI to find the resources needed for defence, you might ask, if such cesses are also made shareable. By withdrawing its imperial expansion to state subjects such as healthcare and school education. Using central funds to paint the PM's picture on school walls diverts funds that should fund defence projects or go to the states, which bear the bulk of development only a part of Kerala's problems can be blamed on skewed federal finance in India. The bulk of the problem is internal, generated by the state's politics, which have been hostile to capitalist is changing now, with ministers of the Left government hailing Adani as a partner. Political parties must educate their student, youth and worker organisations to value and promote entrepreneurship, to respect and encourage honest failure, revising entrenched attitudes to has a growing startup community, which must be helped to grow, establishing linkages with educational institutions and established industry that is averse to in-house R& Communists organised successful cooperatives that sported brands such as Dinesh Beedi and Indian Coffee House. Why not bring that nous to bear on electronic assembly? Electronic component manufacturing is waiting to take off in India to replace suspect foreign components in infrastructure and defence, and innovate new young engineering graduates to grab this opportunity instead of migrating to AI-threatened software or flaky is time for Kerala to convert its vaunted social development into Asian- Tigerish success, shedding inhibitions about capitalist growth. 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