The Hindu Business Line : A blip that is worrying

I belong to the generation that went to school and college in Andhra Pradesh in the 1960s and the 1970s. The State was a laggard and hardly existed in New Delhi's scheme of things those days. Not until a man by the name of NTR came on the scene in the early 1980s and gave it a new image. That was a different story anyway. As my own State failed many parameters, I began admiring States such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala — high profile, always in the news and carrying much weight. I became fascinated more by their achievements in the field of education than anything else.

Cut to the present. A small piece of information that I read last week set me thinking. It was a mere blip, yet, not to be dismissed all the same. The recent findings on the aspect of security by The Hindu-CNN-IBN `State of the Nation Survey' contained a small, intriguing detail. The survey report published in The Hindu (August 15) deals, among other things, with `Awareness about Mumbai blasts'. It says: ``Security anxieties have been aggravated by a widespread awareness of the Mumbai blasts. Our survey shows that 60 per cent of the respondents spread throughout the country have heard about the blasts. Interestingly, many States recorded a greater awareness than Maharashtra (Delhi 93 per cent; Kerala 87 per cent; Gujarat 80 per cent; Tamil Nadu 73 per cent; Maharashtra 69 per cent; All 60 per cent)."

A State with a literacy rate of 77 per cent, which is higher than Tamil Nadu's 73 per cent, is seen short on awareness! It was bomb blast that killed hundreds of train passengers, not elsewhere but within the State, in Mumbai!! Is there no correlation between high literacy levels and people's awareness of what's happening around? At the end of the day, I tell myself that it's only a survey done on a small sample; the story could be different if the awareness poll covered more people. Even then, it's been nagging at me: The blip would do Maharashtra's image no credit.

K. A. K. Reddy

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