Administration during the reign of Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar, spanning the first half of the last century, has been extolled in all quarters, relating to the many pro-people measures credited to the king and his illustrious advisors. In total contrast, the rating of administration in the State and the profile of honchos at the helm in successive governments is none too flattering .Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), third President of the USA (1801-1809), Founding Father who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence is credited with the saying people get the government they deserve which should make India’s citizenry sit up and ponder over their current choice of political leaders holding the nation and its diaspora to ransom, barring some exceptions.

Political pundits have underlined the role of opposition in a multi-party democracy and the importance of dissenting form the powers that be on issues of policy, programmes and plan of action bearing on governance. However, given the present chaotic scenario marked by high-decibel voices berating the government with no holds-barred prompts one to invoke the phrase method in the madness from Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) play Hamlet.

If the top brass in the governments at both the Centre as well as in the 36 States and Union Territories, with a co-operating milieu, functioned by conforming to the idiom There’s method in madness, the torrent of vociferous calls to save this, save that from individual’s and groups committed to sustaining order in society would not have been heard. Urgency marks the tasks of saving 1)Rivers going dry, 2) Lakes being vandalised across Karnataka, 3) Environment fouled by the land’s people themselves on a massive scale, 4) Heritage trees such as the Big Banyan Trees and green cover in urban spaces, 5) Fertile lands meant for raising crops yielding place to space for other purposes in the name of development, 6) Denizens of forests heading for extinction being eliminated by poachers, 7) Children forced to marry in childhood, 8) Mangroves such as Sunderbans and Bengal, 9) Traditional Crafts such as Channapatna toy-making, 10) Jobs being lost-due to large-scale lay -offs in many sectors such as IT-enabled establishments, 11) Education infrastructure such as Mysuru-based Maharaja’s High School facing neglect, 12) National Research institutions such as CFTRI witnessing internal unrest, 13) Academic institutions such as University of Mysore, 14) Water table from indiscriminate drawing of ground water, 15) Archives with ancient texts with valuable literature about different areas of knowledge, 16) Society from the clutches of rogue elements committing heinous crimes and so on.

The foregoing partial list of the tasks to save this and save that is expanding by the day alongside full-throated sloganeering by all and sundry to create awareness and no perceptible action to address the nation’s decline on all fronts.