State of the Nation

Today is Diwali. A festival, which everyone in India wants to celebrate. Although the origin of Diwali stems from our grand old mythological tradition yet it continues to be one of India's universally celebrated festivals. I said [one of the] because India and its natives celebrate a ton of festivals and Diwali is one of them. There are many connotations of this festival but the most agreed upon and widely accepted one is that this comes after some 14 days of Dussera [yet another widely acclaimed festival] celebrated by burning the effigy of Ravan [Once King of Lanka]. Why do they burn the effigy of Ravan? What's the context. I will just explain it in as less words as possible and will then get on to my real message in this blog. Ravan was the ruler of Lanka [probably today's Sri Lanka] and he was a devil. He abducted Lord Ram's [one of millions of gods in India] wife Devi Sita while the latter was in exile for 14 years. Now that's all to explain Ram and Ravan. When Ram killed the evil spirited Ravan, Indians celebrate that day as Dussera. And after nearly 14 days of it, comes Diwali, which denotes the home coming of Ram after killing Ravan and finishing his exile.

That was Diwali of pre-historic age. Cut short this story to today: It's still considered to be a festival of victory of good over bad. But the meaning, rationale, the way how it is celebrated and its whole design has undergone a serious change. It is now a festival, which still every Indian, tries to celebrate only at one condition: If his pocket allows him to. The level of commercialism it has been assigned to is beyond explanation. Welcome to the state of the nation on this day.

For past over a fortnight, I have been thinking to write on this grave issue 'State of the Nation' and I want to remain focused only on a particular aspect of this otherwise very vast and open subject. The thing that disturbs me the most and which shakes my entire conscience is the poverty and unequal distribution of wealth. I see this everyday on the streets of Delhi. On route to office from home, I cover a distance of nearly 35 kilometers and in this patch I confront with almost 12-15 traffic signals, where I get to know the real sense of what India is all about. People who seemingly have not taken a bath for more than 10 days, with a real maze in their hair, torn clothes (sometimes very less of them), very dirty and stinking people rush to the swanky cars when they come to a halt on a stop signal. A lot of them do different acts including raw begging. One message that I want to give upfront though this particular blog is that when they approach towards us, there eyes say just one statement: "I want a share of your wealth." "I need a small portion of money to live today." "I am hungry give me money to feed myself and my entire grand family." Along with every adult (and sometimes even with the infants) there is a small kid who may be as young as a month to as old as 1-2 years. Children above that age are helping hands - they themselves start earning small portions to help their family live.

There are a tons of such people whom I see everyday. I see certain anger in their eyes when people don't react to their requests. Without much hesitation they have now started knocking the doors of the cars to register their presence. They lean on the front window to make us feel so very vulnerable. This is the state of my nation.

Now look at the flip side. A minor crash in the Stock Exchange of India, the place where the wealthy people multiply their money and the middle class try imitating the act of their wealthy and rich cousins, creates havoc. The impact of this havoc is so evident that even the Finance Minister and Prime Minister of the country come running to the rescue of these wealthy few. We have been hearing this every day that the top 5 or 10 or 20 wealthiest corporate and their proprietors lost trillions of rupees. Every day one of these wealthy peoples creates furor in the media to ask for a probe as to who is responsible for this treason and coercion of their wealth. These wealthy few are so highly unsecured that they can't even resist one big blow their wealth. Not even for a second these wealthy few think of the plight of the poor and those who sleep without eating even one meal of the day. This is the state of our nation.

Once while having lunch in our office, one of my colleagues very casually made a passing remark: "The poor deserves to be poor because they don't want to progress. Everyone is responsible for his/her own destiny and we should not blame the government for everything." Although I interrupted him immediately and refused to accept what he said but that made a really deep rooted impact on my mind. If an average middle class Indian thinks like this, what do we expect from the wealthy few. This is the state of my nation.

The very fact that we (the economy of the world) are on the brink of an economic collapse once again after some 75 years, reminds us to be such vulnerable and poor. This all comes alongside the detachment of ideology from politics. We the nation don't have a people-centric and pro-poor ideology. Our political leadership overlooks these masses on the streets who sleep hungry every night. The layers of dirt on their think skin, their innocent hungry eyes and even their bare bodies shivering in cold do not invoke any reaction in the minds of our system which is bothered to know why this Diwali markets have no buyers. This is the state of my nation where the system is shaken to the call of these rich businessmen but the same system turns its back on the call of people ridiculed in the abject poverty.

The state of the nation is so sad that the headlines of the newspapers don't report the death of common man due to unavailability of food and bare minimum resources to live but they do report the closure of the banks in America and its ripple effect on the economy of the nation. The state of the nation is so very weak that it doesn't bother about the unavailability of health and educational resources to the masses but yes it is bothered about the fight between the two wealthiest brothers who control a major part of business for this country.

Next time when you come across these glaring eyes of the beggars on crossings, look at them from my perspective and realize that this is the state of nation, in which the system gets panicked if the Growth Rate shows sins of decline but remains totally ignorant and unmoved if these unnamed natives of India die on the road.

Is this what this nation is made of?