Lucknow Ke Nawab

We keep on hearing about the perfect recipe for the current financial crisis, every body has there on theory on the perfect solution to the perfect financial crisis. Basically there are 2 schools of thoughts

1.       Spend money to boost economy basically trying to follow Keynes

2.       Cut expenses to bring down debt and asking for sacrifice from one and all.

A fierce debate is on throughout the world as to which approach is  correct.  While we will discover only after a few years which approach is correct, it reminded me of an incident in the history of Awadh, or UP as it is called now.

During the times of Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula of Awadh there was a severe draught and farmers could not till there fields. Now as the legend goes Asaf-ud-Daula was worried and wanted to do something for his  subjects, but he did not wanted to give free money to the people as he felt it will not be the right thing to do. So the project to build the Bara Imambara and adjoining mosque and some more monuments were built to give employment to people. Now one may wonder what is so special about same? Well this is where the generosity of the king as per the legend comes in picture. Since the construction project was not enough to give employment to  a lot of people,  the Nawaw sahib will keep on ordering the demolition of the building saying he did not liked it so that it could be built again and more people could get work. This continued for a few years till the monsoon gods smiled again on the kingdom of Awadh and the peasants could go back to their primary job of farming.

Though I am not sure how authentic the tale is the beautiful structure of Bara Imambara and adjoining mosque and markets etc. Are for all to see and enjoy.

As they say history repeats itself as things change the more they remain the same so may be we should take a few lessons from the rulers of Awadh and work towards generating more employment for the masses.

Thanks for reading.