http://www.telegraphindia.comThe Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | Opinionen-usFri, 24 May 2013 18:00:48 GMTFri, 24 May 2013 18:00:48 GMTThe Telegraph Webdeskttfeedback@abpmail.comttfeedback@abpmail.comOpinionCopyright (C) 2013, The Telegraph. All rights reserved.http://www.telegraphindia.com/images/logo_small.gifhttp://www.telegraphindia.comhttp://www.telegraphindia.com/1130525/jsp/opinion/story_16933022.jspAs Muhammad Yunus, the Grameen Bank pioneer, said on Wednesday, Bangladesh's worst-ever industrial disaster was both predictable and man-made. The April 24 collapse of the eight-storey Rana Plaza in Dhaka, killing more than 1,100 people and injuring 2,500, was as much the product of greed as the Saradha money-collecting scheme, which is likely to ruin thousands of innocent investors in the Indian half of Bengal. Both testify to a get-rich-quick frenzy whose most visible symbol is the ubiquitous promoter. The vernacular dalal describes the phenomenon better.http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130525/jsp/opinion/story_16933268.jspThe choice of a role model is almost always revealing. Thus when Rahul Gandhi announces that he is like Indira Gandhi, strict on indiscipline, and not like Sonia Gandhi, who according to her son errs on the soft side, he is willy-nilly telling people something about himself. Many people will find nothing surprising in the fact that he has chosen his exemplar from within the Nehru-Gandhi family. But even within those predictable and blinkered options, he could have chosen differently. He could have, for example, chosen Jawaharlal Nehru as his role model and that would have said something completely different from the choice of Indira Gandhi. After all, Nehru was also a powerful and an undisputed leader of the Congress, and for a longer period than his daughter. Mr Gandhi has opted for his grandmother because he believes that she suppressed indiscipline with a very firm hand and did not permit factionalism. He would have done well to rethink this phase of the history of the Congress instead of accepting the conventional wisdom, even if it is part of his family's lore.http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130525/jsp/opinion/story_16933038.jspAlthough melodrama has attracted much serious critical attention in recent times, those who consider themselves discriminating spectators continue to regard it superciliously. Its populism and dependence on formulae made it so infra-dig among the self-styled artistic cognoscenti that the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines the common meaning of "melodramatic" as "exaggerated or overemotional". Why, even this reviewer normally uses the word pejoratively. Meanwhile, the proliferation of TV channels churns out assembly-line soap operas to feed the bottomless appetite of mindless viewers that make melodramatic commercial cinema look Shakespearean in comparison.http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130525/jsp/opinion/story_16912749.jspWith 70 works from 65 artists, Emami Chisel Art's recent show offered something of a random sampling of trends here. And it confirmed that traditional media and modes are in no danger of extinction under the onslaught of the new. Why that's reassuring is because the demanding grammar of figuration ' even in distortion ' remains the focus of the majority. Another feature to note was the fairly generous pick of sculpture: almost one-third of the total number. However, the slide into pleasant, common-denominator appeal in some of the works indicated a resistance to breaking free of the familiar. But then, even the familiar can be refreshed as it was in the naturescapes: of Sohini Dhar with a lyricism blending Tibetan, Chinese and miniature traditions; of Partha Dasgupta whose Emerald Sea was a subtle inflection of blue-greens; of Sujit Das in his evocation of the sensuous hum of the Bengal countryside. Kaushik Raha's unpretentious watercolour uncovered another face of Calcutta. Tapas Ghosal, on the other hand, presented Rajasthan as a tight amalgam of architectural geometry and animal shapes in a warm palette (picture).http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130525/jsp/opinion/story_16933084.jspWhat do art galleries and workers have in common? Nothing much, except that workers can easily become the theme of art work as they were in the days of Millais, of social realism in the USSR, and in our country in the splendid sculptures of Ramkinkar and also in the paintings of such practitioners as Bijan Chowdhury known for their left leanings. Ganges Art Gallery's exhibition, Shrom Shromik (May 8-31), has nothing to do with any of this. It is of such poor quality that it is futile to make any sense, whatsoever, of it. The title of the exhibition roughly translates into labour and labourer, and the gallerist certainly would not be accused of indulging in a labour of love.http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130525/jsp/opinion/story_16933059.jspLast month, a five-year-old girl was gang-raped in Delhi. The common man feels angry. Even the high and the mighty, like the president and the prime minister of India's 1.2 billion people, have expressed shock, concern and sorrow for the gang-rape of the child. Clearly, the common man of India in general and of Delhi in particular has bona fide reasons to state the obvious based on the first-hand experience and observation of life in Delhi, the indisputable crime capital of India (as on date), the presence of the seat of power there notwithstanding. It is strange that in Delhi the tradition of humiliating women and violating their honour with or without provocation continues unabated. One uses the word "tradition" here because the deliberate violation of a woman's honour began with the public disrobing of Draupadi by a battery of 100 Kaurava brothers (who were the ruling princes of their empire) and by the like-minded rape-hungry men of the durbar of Dhritarashtra in broad daylight in a location which is not too far off from the modern-day capital of India.