This piece was written in response to an NDTV program aired years ago. The situations are unchanged though time and tide have come and gone.
We have a large landmass, but most of our people do not have a square foot to call their own.
We have legendary rivers and waterways, and yet our people struggle for a drop to drink.
We have historic and famous monuments, but people have no shelter over their heads.
We are the melting pot of the world’s religions – people come from all over the globe to study our philosophies, but we still have caste and gender intolerance.
Our citizens make a name for themselves in the fields of science and medicine, yet there are daily deaths from lack of timely and relevant care.
We have large and prosperous business houses, yet we have unemployment to a degree where people are driven to suicide.
Private (and public?) millions are poured into cricket, but we do not need to look far to find rampant poverty.
We are an agricultural nation, yet people starve to death.
People come to the big cities, leaving their wide open spaces to live cheek by jowl in unsanitary hovels. Villages are dying, cities are suffocating, but who cares?
Our first President was an eminent educationist and we honour our first Prime Minister by commemorating his birthday as Children’s Day. Yet we have child labour and the majority of our children lack basic education.
We are told India is shining, yet we step into the darkness of corruption every moment of every day.
We can choose to look at reality or turn the other way. Which will it be?
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