En route Chennai to Trivandrum sitting beside the grilled window and beholding the beauty and splendor of vast tracts of lush green fields, swaying coconut palms, set in the backdrop of the fading golden embers of the tranquil sun dipping in the horizon; it ought not to be a surprise that I slipped into a reverie. But I was not to enjoy the leisure of it for long as my thoughts were brought back to the present by that familiar jingling of coins, that loud cacophonic drum beat and that familiar strained voice of a busker, without all of which it would be an oddity to claim a travel in a coach of the Indian railways. Of course there was nothing seemingly unusual or striking or to say the least saddening ,about an emaciated boy of hardly 14 in tattered and torn rags performing stunts, none of which could be branded as brilliant but all of which were definitely being sympathized upon by the commuters,which they were appreciably showing by generousily tossing coins into the tin that the girl held. The girl accompanying the lad’s feats with her music , seems to have perfected it through years of experience,by singing the same strain over the years to meet the bare minimum requirement of coin collection to be given to their masters.
But what caught my sight was the choker which the boy had on for the choker had a one rupee coin affixed in place of the locket (as economic as they come isn’t it?) ,and that seemed like nothing but a badge of office that asserted his allegiance to the elite, endangered group to which he belonged-the mendicants, the alms-seekers or more commonly the beggars.
Not that this was an one-off account of a typical Indian lad , who hardly knew of, what his rights were, what his liberties were, the injustice he was being subjected to, the things that he was entitled to, the spate of bills and proposals that were being debated and laid on the table of the parliament in his name, which 572 representatives oblivious of what and whom they were representing, vainly debated, demanded amendments , and at best passed a trivial fraction of those which they claimed to be for the well being of the 400 million similar , poor of our country, who cared for anything but one square meal a day, but this made me rekindle my thinking.
What was the result of 64 years of right to life to every Indian in this country? What was the result of the ambitious dreams of a free India that our leaders and so called visionaries saw then? Had the freedom fighters sacrificed their lives just to see the Britishers out of India, only to have another analogous regime which barely brought about the slightest change in the wretched lives of the downtrodden, impoverished and the famished? Has India in fact shaped out as our leaders and visionaries dreamt of a free India?
All of us undoubtedly do ostensibly sympathize for the poor and impoverished. But how many of us actually take a step, the most important first step towards finding out the root cause and trying to rout out our common enemy that seems to be eating into the vitals of our society - poverty? What we do at best is to lob a coin at the spread towel or the battered utensil which the alms-seeker keeps by his side in the street. But what we all fail to realize is that in effect what we are actually doing is making sure that he remains in a perpetual state of poverty ensnared in that vicious cycle out of which there seems to be no escape for him. The generosity of a few people ensures him a good square meal which makes him more than complacent with his humble means of living - beggary. But is this petty means of beggary indeed enough to fill the stomachs of his entire family? To send his children to an elementary school? To ensure at least a leak proof roof overhead at best?
The answer is a plain flat no, but the questions to this seems to be far out of perspective for a man who barely knows to write his own name, and who has no time to cogitate about anything but his struggle for survival.
Our amazing intelligence seems to have outstripped our instinct for survival and interred our love for our fellow beings. We are so obsessed, fanning our own nests and delimiting our thoughts to that of good fortune of kith and kin that we never ever do find the little time required to think of the needy and try if not help reduce their travails. Even if the citizenry of the country feigns ignorance and tries to justify their inability by whatsoever ridiculous means, what answer do the politicians, bureaucrats and the learned statesmen of our country have? Where on earth do we have a government spend $3 billion to build a new terminal for an airport the roof of which leaks while they are unable to ensure a leak proof house for their citizens?
The government and the `con-men’ wealth games organizers are sloshing away money in the name of organizing the `best games the world has ever seen’. Will it be as good as they claim it to be or will it be a disheartening but hardly surprising failure remains to be seen. However the fact remains that while treadmills are being hired @ Rs 9 lakh, air Conditioners @ Rs 4 lakh, toilet papers @ Rs 3,757 per roll and umbrellas @ Rs 6,000 per piece, survival looms as a large question mark for the poor who are left to deal with it on their own. Imagine the number of hungry stomachs that could be fed, the number of lives that could be saved which otherwise would have gone down in the records as yet another death due to malnutrition, the number of students whose education could have been secured and much more with a quarter of the money that is being squandered in the name buying toilet papers and other such frivolity.
Promise is a word which has long lost its meaning but something that retains all its significance in Indian politics for even now the politicians bilk the poor, instilling in them a false sense of hope that all their travails will meet an end overnight when the new government comes to power,with nothing else but victory in the next by-elections in mind. The politicians here seem to be amazing con artists, dressed in splendid white, feigning false austerity, trying or in effect successfully masquerading all the devilish intentions. The most perfect one seems to be the victor.
It won’t be out of place to cite the spending spree upon which BSP supremo Mayawati has so effortlessly embarked. At a public function in Lucknow, she was garlanded with a special garland crafted and brought all the way from Bengaluru made of currency notes worth Rs. 5 crore! Take that for austerity! The source of the money – unknown. What happens next? The judiciary orders a probe which eventually gets absorbed in the labyrinth of the hoary Indian judicial system where it is left to bubble and ferment for eons to come, while Mayawati merrily goes around unveiling her colossal statues, notwithstanding the innumerable stay orders issued by the courts.
While the government continues to debate, on bogus million dollar questions as to whether to export iron ore to china or to protect the rights of the people living on it and while huge quantities of rice and wheat continue to rot in vast FCI godowns across the country, what we seem to be failing to realize is that we are running out of time.Even as we speak the loop of poverty and hunger seems to be closing in on us. The rest of the world is outstripping us slowly but steadily and it won’t be long before we realize that our country, once foreseen as the world super power of 2050 is being regrettably led astray, and like the ordinary citizens that of Hitler’s Germany, we will soon begin to realize the smarting, patronizing gaze of our fellow beings. We too will find ourselves unable to look our own children in the eye for the shame of what we allowed to happen, and what we did not prevent from happening. Change must happen, after facing the direst of consequences or realizing long before a terrible downward spiral of things. It is upon us to decide. So choose and choose wisely, to lead our country into a new era , an era - sans poverty, sans corruption and sans all those things that we are deplorably infamous for, to ultimately make india the haven that our great leaders and visionaries once dreamt it would be.
May He help us, transcend this hour of darkness. Jai hind!
