Obama’s Nobel and open defecation in Kavthepiran

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize won by the new US President Barack Obama has got an intellectual but indirect connection with the open defecation in Kavthepiran, a village in western Maharashtra in India.

Kavthepiran won the Nirmal Gram village award in 2006 for having eradicated the widespread public habit of discharging their body waste in open, public places.

Look at this matter with a ‘developed’ eye, and you will perhaps say this: “Bloody Indians! An award is given for having made sure that people shit in their toilets.”

What a pity, right? But the award committee set the stage in Indian background and determined this kind of an initiative had got a distinct value as it dealt with getting rid of a malicious habit that was entrenched in the society as part of a common living style.

Coming back to US president’s story, there’s a difference in characters and the background, but the theme is almost the same. Here, Kavthepiran is substituted by Obama, Nirmal Gram award by Nobel Peace prize and open defecation by open bloodbath or international intrusion, or anything of that sort.

Obama’s predecessors were literally living like the world police. They lent a ‘helping hand to Israel for encroaching parts of Palestine, played a major role in throwing Iraq’s internal security into chaos, showed the world the re-incarnation of the Nacist Hitlor by setting up the notorious detention center at Guantanamo, bombed to pieces many innocent Afgan women and children, kept amassing nuclear weapons and at the same time threatened the other countries even from doing nuclear tests, encouraged wars from one side and sold weapon to the other party, and always floated on the surface with a look that they run the world.

Gradually, it became a deep-rooted assumption that an American president who does not get involved in some wars and cause inconvenience to the world economic minority is a misfit. So this was a common living style for many US presidents, and they grew numb to any call for compassion, besides losing their ability to discriminate between what is good and bad for the world community. They tested all the world matters by setting it against their business prospect, and whichever promised profit, were considered good.

The world countries have now grown accustomed to seeing these cruelties and have stopped having objection on their conscience to granting impunity to the world police. In short, it has been alright for US presidents to get involved in all filthy matters, and benefit whichever way possible.

That is why when Obama indicated a paradigm shift in his policies through some nice speeches (of course, not via actions) at some international forums including the one at Cairo, the Norwegian Nobel Committee thought it was something ‘extra ordinary’.

It is a pathetic degradation of the Nobel Prize that it sends out a message that anyone can win this recognition by doing some lip-service in a short span of 9 months - because Obama assumed office in January this year.

However, in these nine months, Obama, who was well known for his strong and charismatic speeches, dared to make some verbal overtures to the Muslim world. There are a few deplomatic advancements in Iraq and envirounment front. But they are still not worth a recognition like Nobel as concrete steps are still awaited.

And now I think I should respect the Nirmal Gram village award more than I should the Nobel Peace Prize.

The reason: Kavthepiran won the award for having completely stopped the open defecation in the village, while Obama won the Nobel for having made some announcements that just indicated there would be a cleaning up of the US foreign policies of all the so-called filth.