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The Art of Living Foundation decides to organize a World Culture Festival. The venue they choose is the the ecologically sensitive area along the banks of the Yamuna river, between Delhi and NOIDA. The space required for the event - a staggering 1000 acres of marshland along the riverbank. The stage itself is expected to have an area of 7 acres. And an 3.5 million people are expected to storm into the Capital over three days. The 1000 acres consisting primarily of shrubs and grass, is reported to have been reportedly  flattened, with most of the flora and fauna destroyed. This is in preparation of the event. What will happen when 3.5 million people attend the festival? All of them will eat, litter, use the area to urinate and defecate, and pollute the environment to an extent that is only left to imagination. What will happen to the already congested roads when the additional traffic burden related to 3.5 million additional people hits the City? This scenario brings to focus many

What happened in JNU a little over a week back, is unprecedented. In independent India, for decades institutions like the JNU have fostered a culture that promoted free thinking and speech, anti-establishment voices, protests and so on. The thought process largely was, that in a true democracy, the voice of dissent must be not only allowed, but encouraged. There are numerous instances in World history, where such strong voices forced the establish to change not only National policy but even political changes at National level. The movement against the US involvement in the Vietnam war, for instance, began among peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses. Later this movement gained national prominence in 1965, after the United States began bombing North Vietnam in earnest. Closer - at home, the Anti-Hindi agitation of 1965 in Tamil Nadu, where the Congress led Government tried to enforce Hindi as a language in Tamil Nadu, ultimately resulted in significant