Skip to main content

Whose country is it?


Courtesy: The Indian Express
Thanks to the media, a Dana Majhi or a Salamani Behera makes a brief appearance in the history of the country.  Who are they?  We will ask that question tomorrow.  We will forget them.  Because they don’t belong in history.  It was merely a freak chance that put them there.  Dana Majhi entered by carrying the dead body of his wife on his shoulders for a distance of over 10 km.  With his teenage daughter walking beside suppressing her grief.  The picture would shake the conscience of anyone who has a conscience.  Salamani Behera was an 80 year-old woman whose dead body was broken at the hip in order to fold it into two so that it could be packed and carried on a bamboo pole. 

How much is a human being worth in this country whose Prime Minister is hopping on and off airplanes in order to carry the greatness of his nation far and wide?

History always belonged to the rulers and their minions.  Pick up any history book and we will read about kings, queens, and wars.  History belonged to them.  History now belongs to their contemporary counterparts: Presidents, Prime Ministers and their minions. 
Courtesy: The Indian Express

I wish our Prime Minister could actually materialise at least a fraction of what he promises.  I wish the cess we are paying for Swach Bharat, for example, was made accountable.

I wish the Prime Minister was accountable.  If ten percent of politicians were accountable, Dana Majhi wouldn’t have to carry the body of his wife for kilometres.  If one percent of politicians were accountable, Salamani Behera’s body wouldn’t be broken into half like a twig and packed in a sack...



Comments

  1. I had read this in the news somewhere and went numb for a while. However, reading this post brought out the full import of the tragic situation! I want to curse the people and government for these scenarios, when death isn't accorded its due dignity, just because an individual cannot afford it; but I don't have the heart to do that as well.

    Now comes the funny part... The bereaved will be visited by our honorable politicians and will be given some fund. Media will cover social figures weeping and trying to stem their tears while going through the wretched existence of their huts and lives. Then, everything will be fine and we will focus on the next T20 match... till we are again jolted out of our artificial euphoria by another heinous act...

    We are awesome! :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. As you have said we forget these incidents too soon. Another sad part is the people responsible will wake up only after the incident has created some furore.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We will wake up only to go back to sleep, Durga ji.

      Delete
  3. I have disagreement...sorry...for every incident that happens we can't blame the prime minister, the report that i read was that the man took his wife's body without informing the hospital as he wanted do perform the last rights before sunset. Yes the Prime Minister is doing foreign trips but the number of beneficial changes in policies are not seen. Also in the past two years compare the number of scams that surfaced with that of the past governments. The congress has done such a damage that it will take years for any government to make it neutral keep aside seeing progress. Apologies for my honest opinion but in a country of 1.2 billion we cant hold the prime minister for everything. Apologies once again sir.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are most welcome to disagree, Shweta. There's no need for any apology whatsoever. I respect your right to your view.

      The Congress was absolutely corrupt. That's why the nation booted them out. The nation elected Mr Modi because he had raised its hopes and dreams. Remember his promise of Rs 15 lakh in every Indian's account? In the end we ended up having empty accounts. Remember the umpteen promises he made and continues to make with pomp and style? Nothing happens. Empty rhetoric. That's what I'm questioning. I mentioned one example: the Swach Bharat cess we are all paying. Crores have been collected. What's being done with that money? That's just one example. Mr Modi has made Ambanis and Adanis richer. The poor man has become poorer. That's my point.

      Delete
    2. Shweta Ji. Scams do not come out within a short span of a new party's (or coalition's) coming to power. Hence please don't be in a hurry to applaud the present government for absence of scams. They may surface after a few years. The problem is with the mindset of the present premier of India whose line of thinking and action is in favour of the capitalists and not the commonfolk.

      Jitendra Mathur

      Delete
  4. Why Orissa always came up for wrong reasons..though there is large quantity of minerals in the state..! Social system should be retrospected ..!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A very valid point, Murthy ji. Where does the wealth of the state go?

      Delete
  5. I agree with what Ms. Shweta Dave has said above. In spite of some shortcomings and pitfalls Modi Government is the cleanest this country has ever had. I, as the head of a family of four, can't always keep the other three members happy, how can we expect Modi ji to do that with 127 crores? I salute his spirit and vision..he knows what he is doing, and he is doing it well!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's too premature to term the present government as the cleanest the country has ever seen as the dirt takes its own in time in surfacing. The premier certainly knows what he is doing. And he is definitely doing well as far the interests of his party and his benefactors are concerned. He has never shown any serious concern for the plight of the commonfolk (except some lip service rendered when a danger of losing some particular vote bank is in his sight).

      Jitendra Mathur

      Jitendra Mathur

      Delete
    2. I'm ready to wait, Amit ji, to see India becoming what Mr Modi has promised. In the meanwhile, I must point out that corruption is not only about economics. One can corrupt the mindset of people. See the way communal polarisation is taking place after Mr Modi became the PM. It is an alarming trend if you see the way hatred is getting entrenched in people's minds and hearts.

      Delete
  6. I feel your pain Sir. And I endorse your viewpoint regarding the Swachchh Bharat Cess (and similar cesses). The accountability expected in this regard is nowhere visible.

    Jitendra Mathur

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Visibility is precisely the point. We get the feeling that all the rhetoric is empty because we don't get to see anything of what's promised.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Coming-of-Age Poems

Lubna Shibu Book Review Title: Into the Wandering Multiverse Author: Lubna Shibu Publisher: Book Leaf , 2024 Pages: 23 Poetry serves as a profound medium for self-reflection. It offers a canvas where emotions, thoughts, and experiences are distilled into words. Writing poetry is a dive into the depths of one’s consciousness, exploring facets of the poet’s identity and feelings that are often left unspoken. Poets are introverts by nature, I think. Poetry is their way of encountering other people. I was reading Lubna Shibu’s debut anthology of poems while I had a substitution period in a section of grade eleven today at school. One student asked me if she could have a look at the book as I was moving around ensuring discipline while the students were engaged in their regular academic tasks. I gave her the book telling her that the author was a former student in this very classroom just a few years back. I watched the student reading a few poems with some amusement. Then I ask...

How to preach nonviolence

Like most government institutions in India, the Archaeological Survey of India [ASI] has also become a gigantic joke. The national surveyors of India’s famed antiquity go around finding all sorts of Hindu relics in Muslim mosques. Like a Shiv Ling [Lord Shiva’s penis] which may in reality be a rotting piece of a Mughal fountain. One of the recent discoveries of Modi’s national surveyors is that Sambhal in UP is the birthplace of Kalki, the tenth incarnation of God Vishnu. I haven’t understood yet whether Kalki was born in Sambhal at some time in India’s great antique history or Kalki is going to be born in Sambhal at some time in the imminent future. What I know is that Kalki is the final incarnation of Vishnu that is going to put an end to the present wicked Kali Yuga led by people like Modi Inc. Kalki will begin the next era, Satya Yuga, the Era of Truth. So he is yet to be born. But a year back, in Feb to be precise, Modi laid the foundation stone of a temple dedicated to Kalk...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Triumph of Godse

Book Discussion Nathuram Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi in order to save Hindus from emasculation. Gandhi was making Hindu men effeminate, incapable of retaliation. Revenge and violence are required of brave men, according to Godse. Gandhi stripped the Hindu men of their bravery and transmuted them into “sheep and goats,” Godse wrote in an article titled ‘Non-resisting tendency accomplished easily by animals.’ Gandhi had to die in order to salvage the manliness of the Hindu men. This argument that formed the foundation of Godse’s self-defence after Gandhi’s assassination was later modified by Narendra Modi et al as: “ Hindu khatre mein hai ,” Hindus are in danger. So Godse has reincarnated now.   Godse’s hatred of non-Hindus has now become the driving force of Hindutva in India. It arose primarily because of the hurt that Godse’s love for his religious community was hurt. His Hindu sentiments were hurt, in other words. Gandhi, Godse, and the minority question is the theme of the...