Thomas Mann to Ludwig Lewisohn

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German essayist, cultural critic, and novelist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929, Thomas Mann can easily be termed as one of the most enlightened intellectuals of the Nazi era. Thomas Mann moved to Switzerland in 1933 shortly after the Nazis had come to power and begun a campaign of abuse against him. He was formally expatriated in 1936. Among Mann’s most famous works is Buddenbrooks, which appeared when he was 26. In the following letter written to fellow writer Ludwig Lewisohn, Mann laments the death of his friend Menno Ter Braak.

September 30, 1940
Dear Ludwig Lewisohn,

Your book has arrived, has occupied me a good deal, and I would have written to you sooner were it not that my morbidly swollen correspondence, the product of these times, some days keeps me from my own writing. Today I received the news—or rather the confirmation of a report I had not yet brought myself to accept—that a good friend of mine, the Dutch writer and eminent critic, Menno Ter Braak, took his own life when the Germans invaded. It’s heartrending. Two other important Dutch writers have likewise fallen victim to this new variety of world history. The very best are those who are destroyed—which I suppose is only natural when ultimate baseness is victorious. Much trash has found refuge in America because such people raise a ruckus, while the nobler types go under silently. Your book, now: I read it some time ago, very quickly, almost at one sitting, and understandably with keen interest, for American as it is, it breathes in, if not out, a most European atmosphere. In literary terms it is close to the French, English, German spirit, so that I felt at home with it. In addition there was the emotion aroused by the human document—a somewhat mixed emotion, I will have to add, inclining toward the side from which, evidently, a state of being filled with one’s own ego, one’s own fate, one’s own errors and own happiness, one’s own loving and being loved, which antagonizes people—not only out of ill-will and a petty insistence on discretion, but also out of an irritated pudeur. And at least in times of great public tribulations, when there is a certain justification for that feeling. I might put it this way: The book really needs the shield and protection of posthumous publication. Let us assume that your considerable literary achievement were crowned and completed by a few more powerful works; that after you had become entirely what you are, you had departed this earth and friends had published these pages from your posthumous papers—in that case not only would there be nothing to be said against them, but they would be a real contribution. But as it is now, coming out in the midst of life, the book does constitute, if you will (I don’t “will” at all, but others do, so it seems, and I cannot entirely blame them) a kind of imposition, an act of naïveté, which to be sure is probably a condition for your productivity and without which your works (for this is scarcely a work) probably would not have been written—and yet the nakedness does, after all, have something disturbing about it.

As you see: interested, moved, but not entirely in agreement—that is how I feel. A public statement of mine on Haven would necessarily turn out somewhat tortuous, and since I have reservations about the book’s public existence, I have even more about my giving a public opinion on it. Thanks for something so personal had better remain personal. The occasion for my testifying once more to your literary gifts will come again—I prefer to wait for a new work cast more objectively, confident that you will not make us wait long.

Yours

TM

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2010.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Water woes intensify

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When it was predicted about a decade back that the next World War would be fought for control of water, sceptics dismissed it as a mere hyperbole. Now, with killings over water being reported from across the country, the spectre of the past is becoming a scary reality. The TSI team of Anil Sharma, Raju Kumar and Nishant Bhadreshwar takes stock

RAJU KUMAR AND NISHANT BHADRESHWAR

Water woes intensify It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in want of a wife must be a good provider. However, what the word ‘provider’ encompasses has acquired a new meaning in Rajasthan. Here, a man must be able to provide water to the family apart from other things. Sounds like a leaf out of Ripley’s ‘Believe It or Not’, but the acute water scarcity in the state has made a lot of people wary of marrying off their daughters in villages where women would inevitably have to trudge for miles everyday to fetch some water. “Often, women have to walk for miles to collect water. Many people are reluctant to marry off their daughters into such communities,” says Rameshwar Chaudhari, a resident of village Chopra Dhotra in Jodhpur district of Rajasthan. His village is facing severe water crisis.

Rajasthan, spread over 10.4 per cent of the country’s geographical area and sustaining more than 5.5 per cent of the human population and 18.70 per cent of the livestock, has only 1.16 per cent of the total surface water available in the country. This year, the ground water situation has turned alarming in the state with only 30 water blocks out of the total 237 left in the safe zone. With increase in the population and subsequently the demand for water for various purposes, the state is already in the middle of a terrible water crisis. The per capita annual water availability in the state is about 650 cubic meters against the minimum requirement of 1,000 cubic meters. “I am 60 years old and have never seen a situation like this. We get water only once or twice a month and even that comes with low pressure. It takes over half an hour to fill a bucket,” says Kamla, a resident of Naulakhi in Sri Ganganagar district. The crisis has also become so acute in Atru in Baran district that the water department—in spite of spending Rs 20,000 daily on the supply of water—is finding it difficult to meet the local demand through tankers.

The local administration in Akhlera in Jhalawar district, having a population of over 12,000, is now planning to engage 150 plus tankers to supply water. The only source of water in the town, Amalvada Deh dam, is drying up fast. Similar situation has emerged in Sojat Road in Pali district where the administration has demanded a special 65 wagon water train to overcome the crisis. Women in Bhilwara town of Rajasthan recently blocked the road in front of the municipality, demanding increased water supply. “We want more tube wells to be dug up so that we can get water,” says Kamla, a housewife. Water is being supplied once in every five days in the town famous for its textile industry. The scenario in the state capital Jaipur is no better, where water is being supplied once in a day, and that too only for an hour. “To add to our woes, we have heard that the government is planning to make it once in 48 hours. How would we live,” says Ashok Kumar Sharma, a resident of the walled city area.

Gone are the days when people would man pyaos to give water to the thirsty. Now, people are manning water bodies to keep the thirsty away from them. Water shortage has forced the residents of a village near Bikaner to maintain a tight vigil on the village water bodies to prevent water theft. “There is always a threat of water theft, so we have appointed watchmen to keep a vigil on our water bodies,” says Bhola Ram, a resident of Pugal village in Bikaner district.

It is feared that the availability would fall below 450 cubic metres by the year 2050. As per the international accepted norms, availability of water below 500 cubic metres is considered as absolute water scarcity. Although the Ashok Gehlot government is trying to take steps to ease the crisis, but so far the problem persists. “We are doing whatever best we can. Supplying water through tankers and running water trains. We have decided to supply water through tankers to more than 10,000 villages during May and June,” a senior official of the water department tells TSI. “We have also decided to focus on community-based water management solutions instead of predominantly engineering-based ones,” he adds.

The situation in the neighbouring Madhya Pradesh is probably worse. Brawls over water are resulting in people eventually killing each other at many places in the state. Incidents of the killing of three people of the same family in Bhopal, two people in Indore, a person in Bilkhiriya village and a person in Devas dot the 2009 calendar. Water woes intensify This year the first incident of killing over water was reported from the Bakshibagh locality of Indore on March 31. A 16 year old girl, Poonam Yadav, was stabbed to death by one of her neighbours. On April 7, Ramchandra of Alot was shot dead by his neighbour. On May 9, a few people killed 60 year old Madholal of Dhakora village in Rajgarh district following a squabble at the village well. A similar incident was reported from the Naryavali village in Sagar district a day earlier where a few people attacked with an axe and injured one Pushpabai at a well.

This is besides the daily squabbles over water in the state capital Bhopal where water is being supplied only once in 48 hours. People have to unfailingly wake up very early in the morning to fill their tanks. Others choose to keep a vigil whole night lest they miss the chance.

Water is hard to find even at 600 feet at some places in MP. Scores of rivers and water bodies have dried up. Gauri Shankar Bisen, a minister in the MP government, accepts that the crisis in the state is real. “There is acute water crisis in the state. We have allocated sufficient funds for the supply of drinking water to all the districts. We are paying special attention to the districts where the situation is more serious such as in Shyopur and Neemach,” he informs TSI.

In Maharashtra, farmers are the worst hit because of the water scarcity. “I had 3,200 trees of pomegranate on my farm. Of them, just 600 are left now. I had to cut down most of them due to lack of water,” says Ranjeet Patil who owns 30 acres of land at chakur town, 13 km off Latur. It’s not that Patil did not try to get water. There are as many as 17 bore wells on his farm but there is no water. The first bore well was 3oo feet deep and the 17th one was dug at 625 feet.

Presently, about 36,65,000 hectare of land is under irrigation in Maharashtra. The figure was12,20,000 hectare in 1960. With no considerable change in the rainfall pattern during the last 50 years, farmers had to rely on the underground water to meet the increasing need. But that too is now out of sight. Ecological Expert Atul Deolgaokar says, “According to a report by ‘International Water Management Institute’, if the use of water for drinking and farming continues in same way, then 70 per cent of the groundwater would be used up by 2020.”

In a survey done in March by the ‘Maharashtra State Groundwater Survey and Development Department’, it was found that out of 47 towns in Konkan division, groundwater level in 11 towns has gone down by one metre. In Aurangabad division it has dipped by one to three metres at different places. And this is what has affected farmers like Patil.

For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2010.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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