Bangalore : Remember Mo.Ka. Gandhi and his Dandi Yatra on foot in 1930? If you were not born then, go and participate in Siddaramaiah’s Bellary Yatra from Bangalore covering a distance of 300 kms. Where it will end, no one knows, because Sonia Gandhi does not reside there, K.C. Kondiah does, and he may take you walkers all to an iron ore mine (which makes headlines these days all over India). The Padayatra lasts for 15 days, from July 25. Siddu will not be spared by heavy rains.
Between Dandi and Bellary walks, many leaders have walked fantastic long walks and miserably small distances inside Bangalore. S. Chandrashekhar and actor Sunil Dutt have walked from Kanya kumari to Delhi via Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh over weeks. Later Sunil Dutt, father of Sanjay Dutt, walked in Japan at Nagasaski for world peace and against nuclear bomb droppings. Acharya Vinoba Bhave walked all over India in the name of ‘Bhoodan’ movements for 12 years. He got some useless and non-agricultural land, which made him angry and abusive of land lords. He had come from Kerala to Mangalore, stopping at Ullal for a night halt. These walks have always inspired students, the youth, the inquisitives and even the old, besides foreign visitors.
Now what will Congress opposition leader in Karnataka do with a 300 km walk? He was a shepherd and perhaps walked miles with a flock of sheep, before he became a lawyer and then Dy CM. now there is an oracle that he will be the next CM. so the walk may give him strength once he takes over state administration say, in 2014. He is unlikely to topple the BJP govt, between now and 2014. What can be done through an Ordinance, is taking endless delay, in protecting mineral wealth in India. It is a drama, not a walk.