INDIA OF THE POOR

Gandhiji would have been disappointed with India were he here today. Look at the State India is in!If Gandhiji were here today, He’d be disappointed. That isnt really that unbelievable. What is unbelievable is that everyday, everywhere we revere Gandhiji, and yet we don’t even seem aware of the fact that we, humble children of India have ignored his every word, gone against his every belief. And yet, we hypocrites, revere Gandhiji as the Father of our Nation.

The India that lives in the villages are ignored. The India that lives in the cities, but are too poor to be to be of value to us are ignored. India is ignored except on Independence Day, Republic Day and when elections are near.

The poor go hungry. We the not so poor are too busy making sure it doesn’t go otherwise. We the not so poor are too busy matching up to the hardly poor. To those people that actually do matter in India. The elite class. The rich. The powerful.

Our education system is in ruins. Our health system does not exist. Our politicians too confused to do anything. Our number too huge for it to matter.

The poor in our country are being sidelined every day to make way for the rich, the fabulous. The ones that can pay the bribes, that bring in the money. Money that has touched the blood of the poor. Big retail stores have displaced those who need it more. In our run to make our country look beautiful, we have in fact made it ugly.

And we complian of the beggars on the street, the thieves who rob us of our blood money. We are indeed a sad lot. We do not care.

Words too often repeated. We have learnt it by heart now. And like every child in India’s schools who repeat what they have learnt by heart, without understanding, without meaning, we chant those oft repeated words. We no longer care.

We do not care about Gandhiji, we do not care about the poor. We live in worlds of our own. Unaware, uncaring. Unchanging.

We have to change the mindset of the people, they say. But how do you propose to do that? How do you change the mindset of a nation with the second highest population in the world, the largest democracy of the world? How do you propose to change the mindset of a country so diverse, so different from each other. How do you change the mindset of a people that do not care enough to choose the leader they are going to follow?

How?