A much popular veteran Bollywood superstar had tweeted with much pleasure that the “whole country” will go to sleep “peacefully” at night from now (following the attainment of that statistical jugglery named “Century of Centuries” by a certain cricketing “God”)!
That means the poorest of the poor, dominating the landscape of India, were possessing only one aspiration in life — “When that elusive 100th ton would come”! Now that it has come, we can afford to “enjoy” a “sound sleep” or “sweet dreams” every night!
What a naked display of supreme inhuman indifference to the plight of millions of Indians who have to go to bed with deadly pangs of hunger in their stomachs night after night!
Or might be in the eyes of class-conscious Indians, the marginalised poor (forming the overwhelming majority in the nation) simply don’t exist or just do not matter at all! After all, the country is the “zamindari” of the privileged class only! No wonder why “subsidies” to the poor are so frowned upon; but tax breaks, concessions, free medical/travel facilities for the industrialists, corporate honchos and high salaried class are always welcomed with open arms in the name of “incentives”!
When millions are at their wits’ end how to survive the day or procure health care with uncountable children getting brutally exploited in labour market (not to speak of bonded labourers) and adults compelled to leave for civil war-torn Middle East or Africa to toil in slave-like conditions just to escape acute poverty back home; how heartlessly can an image of an exclusive well-fed much-nourished India being blatantly projected either to sweep the scars of the society under “patriotic” carpet or to simply convey that non-privileged Indians do not matter at all in “national consciousness”!
And surely this is the precise reason why despite drastic poverty plaguing millions of common Indians bereft of food, attire, shelter, medicine, education, livelihood with many of the hapless getting, trafficked and meted to inhuman atrocities; we are relentlessly made to hear that India has become “elite” after attaining Mars Orbit or that India has proved its “might” in international community through performance of mass Yoga !
In a similar vein, the privileged set of Indians religiously assert India’s “greatness” through lofty flags, gigantic statues, missile technology, Bullet trains or presence of Indians in the top tier of international IT companies; notwithstanding the fact of millions of our own fellow citizens simply gasping for breath in abject pathetic state of affairs and bereft of minimum basic rights security and dignity with innumerable children getting denied of education!
No wonder why “patriots” among the well-secured moneyed class get “inspired” to sweep all social ills of the country under the “nationalist” carpet (even the great humanitarian named Satyajit Ray also once got maligned for his “sin” of “selling India’s poverty” in international forum) and draw “inspiration” from the world’s highest statue, “Grand” temples, and glittering Vistas so as to “mesmerize” the world along with supreme indifference to another noble human being named Kailash Satyarthi as his yeoman’s service has exposed the bitter truth of existence of millions of vulnerable child labourers in this “elite” country before the entire world !
When will this society turn a bit egalitarian and learn to walk on the path of collective progress with an all-embracing attitude!
