TO BE EDUCATED

Aristotle once said that "we are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."

Excellence does not come out of education nor even the knowledge which supports it. It is something you believe and repeatedly believe; it becomes a habit. Knowledge from books is vanity, thus said King solomon, it is like chasing the winds.

Introspection within would then be necessary. For our country men who hold the reigns of governance, the word introspection does not exist. They are like the horse which has the blinkers around its eyes.

Every day, we who live in Delhi and NCR are blasted with vivid news of how the pre Common Wealth Games activities are being handled.When I drive down the roads, I find the implementation of the plans made by those who sit in their AC offices is far fetching. It looks like the team which visualised had nothing to do with the team which is implementing on site. There were many glaring examples which are being corrected.

The Hindu of July 14, 2010 carried an article which appeared in The Guardian by Richard Williams who writes about South Africa being left with new hope after the World Cup 2010. I quote from the article:

"The South Africans gave us their vast and spectacular new stadiums, their best shot at building an integrated transport system from scratch and their kindness and consideration at just about every turn."

"In the tradition of gracious hosts, however, they pretended not to notice. Some of the commercial aspects of the tournament were grafting, or worse; from substandard footballs to exorbitant match tickets. Those phenomena, along with the theft of a Portuguese photographer's equipment at gunpoint in the early days of the tournament, were the low points....." The best of those soaring edifices lifted everyone's spirits, even when they were situated miles away from the places where the people who actually play and watch football live. As a public relations job, the 2010 World Cup looks like paying off in the intangible currency of image and reputation. Only blind or the blind drunk or the England football squad - could have spent some of the last month following the tournament at first hand and not recognised that this is still a country in which only half of all black families have flushing toilets, 43% live on about pound 1.50 a day, education is in chaos, public health is a disaster area, an imminent resurgence of the xenophobic violence seen in 2008 is promised, even middle class homes are surrounded by razor wire and CCTV cameras, and the number of private security guards at work some 300,000, is double the manpower of the proper police.

But to South Africans of all kinds, and to their guests, the tournament really was an occasion for the shared enjoyment of a simple pleasure. If the 2010 World Cup had any significance beyond football, it was to show South Africa's visitors - and, perhaps, the country itself - that it has no shortage of intelligent, capable, eager young people upon whom, if they are given the chance, a viable future can be built."