I think we are just to many of us. The last I read, one in ten denizens of this world lives in India. Maybe this is why as a nation we encourage more of our countrymen to die like dogs everyday. For a casual onlooker, it will be hard to see through this veil of English speaking media and urban middle class slumber. You have to look closer and then you will see the gross death that lurks all around us. The problem is far greater than one well covered and highlighted rape. In India, your gender does not matter, you are raped anyways.
Consider this, our roads kill about 17 Indians every hour and maims twice as many. The Gau Mata probably will account for some of these deaths and the rest are by trucks parked on highways, trucks coming in opposite directions on a the 6 lane highway to avoid taking a larger round about, drunk drivers and villages playing Russian roulette with their lives on the road etc. Some bit of death might also be due to speeding in the absence of policing and step curves around precipices without barricades. Then there is the poorly designed automobiles that use live Indians as tests subjects and Indian roads as test track.
More death happen due to gross neglect and apathy of officials in our hospitals than due to lack of facilities. The open municipality sewers and drainage breeds the same mosquitos we blame for Dengue deaths.
The pollutants from our big industries and pesticides poison our ground water and then we blame the Cola companies for contaminating mothers milk. This ground water kills us slowly, through cancer and fluorosis and numerous other exotic mutating diseases.
In this land of plenty, the food grains produced by our poor farmers are procured through an annual charade and then left to rot in open yards and leaking granaries. The poor die of cold and hunger and gross disrespect everyday in my nation. Those whom the country's elected and the bureaucrats don't kill with their apathy die out of the insult of having born in this wonderful land at this point in time.
That is so so sad. I didnt realize that until now.
ReplyDeleteWe are citizens of the world. My country's problems are your problems, and your country's problems belong to me. Thank you for this writing.
ReplyDeleteJerral
I'm staggered after reading this post. How dreadful!! How can human life have so little value when, for some, cows are sacred?!
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