Boo boo in select company

Boo boo in select company
Something to say?

Wednesday 11 January 2012

This Other India

I am still reeling from the Hungama (sounds like a festival) news yesterday. One in three children dying from malnutrition is Indian. I can't get past that. Where do you begin? Where is the government? Where are the NGOs, the charities, the other lucky Indians with full stomachs?
   And India is meant to be shining. Right. Shining for whom?
   The middle-class that rushes to satisfy every whim of their offspring, can they imagine what it is to a mother to see her son or daughter withering away, a heap of bones diminishing daily? What it is to know you cannot change that because there is no money to buy food?
   India should be cringeing, this incredible (Yes, very difficult to believe.) India of ours. Food security is coming, we are told, but it is coming from a long way away (to the tribal lands in the North) and many children will die before it reaches them. Before the Government is finished with the Lokpal and much else and turns its attention to the children.
   We have got our priorities totally wrong: that vulgar display of the first Rolls Royce driving into Kochi, the District Collector (who should know better)) getting in and driving it. What's wrong with this lot? Maybe he should drive down to the waste lands on which the migrants camp and take a look at their existence. Sans sanitation, sans clean water, sans food at times. That Rolls is going to do them a lot of good!
  The last time I witnessed starvation in India was when the refugees from Pakistan flooded into India and dribbled down South just after Independence. There was a beggar every few minutes asking to be fed, making that universal humiliating sign of hunger, hand to mouth. The household saved the starch from the rice, threw a handful of rice into it, but it was always too little. These Hindi speaking families did not know the languages of the South and were totally bereft.
   I thought all that was over forever. But here we go again! Ethiopia is encoaching into certain parts of India!

2 comments:

  1. This the blog we write. This article is on poverty in India

    http://abcfindia.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/is-india-still-under-poverty/

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  2. I am glad you and your group thought about this. However thinking is just the priming of the machine. Now - what do you intend to do? Be specific. Get down to details. Which NGO, how, when??? I am willing to be part of this if you start something.
    Anand

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