FINGER ON YOUR LIPS

LIFE AS IT GOES

How does this man on the street come to terms with life in our country is my basic doubt? The fortunate ones and the reserved ones may have access to a few things which government doles out as schemes. There may be some with some source of income. Some may have a job. Not everyone is so privileged. How do we understand the underprivileged is the question? How it all starts and what happens is what I am going to conjecture? My perception may be grossly wrong though.

A typical ministry functions on a fixed format. Neta (representative of janta) feel the need not the other way around. He gets it approved & gets budget allocated. He already has planned how to spend it. He has his bureaucrats to monitor it. The tendering process is initiated. Now it is the look out of that contractor with the lowest bid to get things moving. Contractor hires labour to do the job.

It is the labourer on the ground that is making India. It is this man with a tool, with sweat on his forehead, grime and dirt on his clothes, living in the open. The mantri and the tantri ji  work in air conditioned offices, taking decisions to raise diesel and petrol prices, leaving prices of dal-roti spiralling. This man has to suffer in bad hygiene and sanitation conditions, without medical support for his pregnant wife, to fend for his kids and suffer at the hands of the contractor for no fault of his.

This man has no access to education for his children who may ultimately live a life of a scavenger or a drug addict, living on the roadside, in make shift shelters to be physically and mentally abused and then we expect him to become an honest & law abiding citizen of this country.

This child sees a ball lying outside your house which your child has left after his game, expecting his servant to fetch it for him. You pass by and see that ball with this kid and raise a hue and cry, slap him and warn him not to be seen near the house. This boy never came into your premises to steal. You find it as an act of trespass.

These children watch your child going to school in a school bus. Imagine the thoughts churning in his mind. He grows up in your vicinity without an opportunity, without an identity. His only access to a shouchalaya is the nearest railway track and thus he is bound to become a vagabond. You beat him, the police beat him, the drug peddler beats him & his own parents beat him, for reasons which he doesn’t understand.

NGOs come in, philanthropists come in and all sorts of institutions come in to help this person. They start with his de-addiction and rehab programme. Then they try educating him. This young boy now is taken to another shelter where he meets inmates with similar or near similar backgrounds. Chances of him remaining an urchin are fifty-fifty.

The politician will step in, all sorts of berozgar yojnas are created and money flows like water. This boy joins the politician’s bandwagon somehow. He learns to drive, gets a drivers job in the fleet. He behaves, is obedient and becomes a “confidant”. He transfers bundles of money for his “malik”. He is rewarded well to keep his mouth shut. He prospers and marries, has children who get admission in a school. He dies in an accident. His children are back to where this man came from. The cycle is now complete.

This man doesn’t fall even in the “reserved class”, he is just a labourer, who was born to be one and died doing labour and probably his wife too died in labour. Out of 130 crores at least 30 crore fall in this category. Rest are trying to make two ends meet. Mantri ji has his own issues and so have the tantri’s. Religion has its own issue and now is the key to all “political labour”.

If humanity in any country is not important but the systems running humans is, then we need to think. If the politician is most important then something is amiss. If the bureaucracy will decide a system which the politician has legislated with umpteen loopholes for the money to be siphoned off then we are going in the wrong direction.

Suffice to say that we as a country have a large human capital. I, the common man am at the total mercy of my “Mai-Baap” and his thought process. He decides what is good for me & I don’t. Every Neta has to think beyond his Kursi, every Bureaucrat beyond the rule book. How can we do it? I wonder!!!!!!!!!!!

JAI HIND

© Noel Ellis