{"id":211,"date":"2004-12-30T22:27:42","date_gmt":"2004-12-31T03:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/server97.snhdns.com\/~ravik\/wp\/?p=211"},"modified":"2004-12-30T22:27:42","modified_gmt":"2004-12-31T03:27:42","slug":"tsunamis-and-elephants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200412\/tsunamis-and-elephants\/","title":{"rendered":"Tsunamis and Elephants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A white elephant is something that is beautiful, aesthetic. But is of little profit besides that, and is on the contrary quite costly to maintain. Why then would so many, with inadequate resources, seek white elephants?<br \/>\nCould be an overarching sense of aesthetics.<br \/>\nOr else, merely a desire to be <i>perceived<\/i> as great and aesthetic.<br \/>\nCommon to either is the great cost.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nOne can hear the trumpets of white elephants in the Indian Govt&#8217;s decision not to accept foreign aid from other governments and the UN for the Tsunami disaster-relief. Instead, India wants to join a consortium of <i>donor<\/i> nations. This when the finance ministry is mulling a one percent cess on corporate and personal income tax. One can list the pros and cons till kingdom come, but ultimately it boils down to a show of magnanimity and pride where there shouldn&#8217;t be. And verily, our foreign-policy stable is abrim with white elephants. The Non-Aligned Movement. Chilled Relations with Israel. Yada.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m as in favor of or maybe more, as the next guy, of being proud. But not of having a false swagger. For two simple reasons really &#8211; for one it comes at a cost. And worse, it only engenders pity not respect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A white elephant is something that is beautiful, aesthetic. But is of little profit besides that, and is on the contrary quite costly to maintain. Why then would so many, with inadequate resources, seek white elephants? Could be an overarching sense of aesthetics. Or else, merely a desire to be perceived as great and aesthetic. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}