Tuesday, 23 May 2006

Principles or violations?

Gaurav quotes Pratap Bhanu Mehta in his (Gaurav's, not Mr. Mehta's) take on the Arjun Singh interview by CNN-IBN.

The portion quoted was:
They (government) have violated four cardinal principles that institutions in a knowledge-based society will have to follow: they are not based on assessment of effectiveness, they are incompatible with freedom and diversity of institutions, they more thoroughly politicise education process and they inject an insidious poison, which will harm the nation's long-term interest.
The reservation/affirmative action issue aside, one wonders about this kind of sentence construction. I would've expected the four cardinal principles to follow the colon, and not their violations. Only a couple of blinks later, one could understand what was being said by Mr. Mehta. Tsk tsk.

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