UN's 'gala' season

As every year in September, the world leaders are now assembled in New York on the pretext of attending the UN General Assembly's sixty-third session. The annual event marked by "fun and frolic" comes and goes every year without changing anything in our turbulent world. For leaders from across the entire globe, however, the GA session brings a "global carnival" season in the "capital" of the world bringing its normally pulsating life to a chaotic standstill.

For nearly two weeks at this time of the year, the "Big Apple," as the New Yorkers like to fondly call their city, is paralysed with extraordinary traffic "logjams" and security "gridlocks." It also becomes a "big bazaar" where lot of official and non-official money is flushed out in the name of world's poor and peace. The United Nations is the centre stage of this carnival where the world's kings and caliphs, princes and sheikhs, sultans and emirs, democrats and dumbocrats, as well as autocrats and dictators of all sorts and scale congregate in a gala "funfair" mood trying to take a break from the worries of their state life back home.

This year, nearly 90 heads of state and 39 heads of government are attending the UN's "gala" event. Their programme normally kicks off with a breakfast hosted by the UN secretary-general at the UN headquarters with a lavish "global" menu of all sorts other than 'bread and butter'. A series of luncheons, receptions and banquets, and "bilaterals" then keep them busy with each other. Six to seven course dinners are hosted for them in top-class seven-star hotels of the city in the name of world's poor and hungry. How caring on their part!

The only UN-related official engagement of world's leaders is the 10 to 15 minutes statement that each one of them is called upon to deliver from the UN GA's podium. The statements so made are in their essence a rehash of the same old "words of wisdom" that world leaders have been delivering at this forum for years on "major" international issues. At the end of each leader's statement, the fellow delegates line up outside the GA Hall to congratulate him on his "eloquent" performance.

During these days every year, the world hears a lot of good things about our future in terms of peace and prosperity, and for freeing the mankind of all sorts of evils and menaces. While reaffirming their commitment to fundamental freedoms and values, our leaders also speak of their "resolve" to reshape the UN in conformity with the "realities" of the changed world and "the needs and circumstances" of the new century. How thoughtful on their part!