It weighed in with the first offer of aid that was studiously ignored. As the magnitude of the tragedy unfolded day by day, the Congress was graced with the official attentions of the prime minister and the foreign minister, the scholastic attentions of Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and the spiritual attentions of the Dalai Lama. The strangling of basic human rights in practice makes these rights invisible. Making nuclear weapons is a political decision that can be reversed. Violating human rights is a moral decision and cannot be reversed.
Accountability is the sine qua non.
It was left to one of the country's proud and successful high software-company executives from Bangalore, in Karnataka State, to put some sparkle into the picture the next day. Rajan Bharti Mittai, of Bharti Enterprises, told of an Internet linkage of eight previously isolated communities in Pondicherry with some very visible impact. With this, for the first time, the fishermen in one village can anticipate the tides. Students have seen new job opportunities. Peasant women can start a mushroom farm, and a community of these villages has been established where one never occurred before.