SABARI GANESH

“Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high,
where knowledge is free.
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.
Where words come out from the depth of truth,
where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection.
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost it’s way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.
Where the mind is led forward by thee
into ever widening thought and action.
In to that heaven of freedom, my father,
LET MY COUNTRY AWAKE..

The above lines appear in Geethanjali by Nobel laureate Rabhindranath Tagore. I am not sure whether in future Indians will wake up into the heaven of such freedom as mentioned above in Geethanjali.

I was remembered of these lines when I paid a visit to Pizza Hut one evening with my colleagues to have some hot pizzas. Outside the restaurant, to utter disappointment,  I noticed two old women begging for money to kill their hunger. I have witnessed these kind of activities at many places in my country where I remained calm unable to do nothing to them.

There are millions of such people still starving in my country. They can be seen at every public place. They seek shelter from sun and rain at bus shelters, bus stations and many more unhygenic places. 

The rapid industrialisation, potential to become super power, presence of energetic GenY and so on….lot more things can be said. But whats the use? There are millions still starving.

India reached 2nd spot in number of smart phone users world wide but still half of the population don’t even have a basic mobile phone forget about smart phone. Indian films reached grossing more than 300 crores, which was a steady climb from grossing 3 crore at the time of independence. But, the fact worth mentioning here is that Indian poor are depicted in the same way in these films since independence.

In India rich are becoming richer and poor are becoming poorer. From corruption to crony capitalism, there are several reasons for raising economic inequalities. But I don’t have patience right now to explain about them. Increasing income inequalities in India is a serious issue to be addressed in more cautious manner.

Former president Abdul Kalam tells about our enemy in his book Ignited Minds. Our enemy is neither China nor Pakistan. Poverty. Yes,Poverty is the deadly enemy to India. Poverty is the main threat to our progress. Fighting against it seemed very difficult for a long period of time. There was always an urgent need to alleviate poverty from India. But since Independence successive governments tried and failed miserably. Eradicating poverty was an important mandate for all those political parties before coming to power. But unfortunately their tenure gets over by quarreling in the parliament.

I can’t eat delicious foods anymore comfortably in luxurious restaurants looking at the starving people in my country. Except pitying upon them, I cannot act positively towards them.

Feature Image Photo Credit: The Economic Divide! by Nandakumar Subramaniam, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0