The Hand that Rocks the Cradle

Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions… M.K. Gandhi.
Then the father of the nation goes on to say that we will feel our doubts melt away, profound thoughts of a great man, and relevant more so today than any other time, I read a statistic a few months ago that in the world 28 million people commit suicide every year, that is about one person killing himself every 30 seconds, that means by the time I finish this article about a 100 people would have been dead. Yes, that would be a tragedy won’t it, this reminds me of another quote,”Death of a person is a tragedy, death of a hundred, a statistic” and that is what our country has been reduced to, statistics, here are some, from 1997 to 2008 199,132 farmers have committed suicide in India, Vidharba deserves a special mention here because it has been especially ravaged by this travesty, the bailout scheme that Dr. Manmohan Singh is vastly inproportianate to the underlying causes that have led to this situation, but I’m not here to argue against the policies of the government, I’m here to comment about the irony and the apathy that I have observed, India is moving forward, well technically only the urbanized India is moving forward, like an interesting example would be the Lakme India Fashion week, the celebration of youth and glamour held with much fanfare in India’s commercial capital Mumbai, the beautiful models walking in breathtaking clothes and not 200 kilometers away the man who has grown that cotton from which that breathtaking dress has been made is killing himself for growing that cotton.
To the technologically attuned and social networking savvy, while we manure each other’s Farms in “Farmville”, the real farmers are struggling to survive in Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and Kerala. As we lead our lives of comfort worrying whether we have enough money or not, do our insurance policies cover dental, and will we be able to afford a new car in this compact market, children are having their stomachs punctured with burning pokers, to rid them of PEM diseases. While we are growing fat, inconsiderate and pathetic in the cocoon of our trivial lives, our nation is burning in the fires of naxalism, their methods I certainly abhor, but their cause is a reflection of our failure as a nation. We have grown too lazy for our own good, the biggest threat to India and its “Golden” development comes not from terrorism, but from the apathy that we have so carefully cultivated over the decades, and surely it will rise, to one day bite us, and while we celebrate being Indian by the deification of our celebrities and cricketers and celebrate national pride by holding the commonwealth games, one more hungry child is taking up arms against India. Who is going to stop this, is it the impotent elders, the self obsessed youth or the ignorant children, who will rock the cradle of India, so that we may be at peace again.