Independence Day

My dear daughters and sons,

You all celebrated the day of my independence from the colonial British Raj with great enthusiasm. How old have I been now? 67 years old? I will always be thankful to your ancestors for giving me a new lease of life and freeing me from the autocratic rule. I had hoped that I would flourish, make lots of progress and see India emerging as the super-power, but alas, my dreams are shattered by the sad reality.

Girls are still killed in their mother’s womb. Even after it is scientifically proved that the father is responsible for determining the gender of the baby, the mother of the baby is cursed and looked down upon if she does not bear a baby boy. Women of all ages, from age 4 to age 80 are under constant fear of losing their honor by a handful of men who have twisted brains and are hungry for sex and lust. Still the person who rapes my daughters gets scot free and my daughter loses her dignity and is reduced to a status of a rag in the house. My daughters always have to make a compromise, be it in the house or at work, with kids or without husbands. They constantly have to prove themselves. Why they are still not treated as human beings? This pains me a lot and I cry every time my daughter is inflicted pain in any corner of the country.

India has always been an agricultural land, but the irony is that the farmers who form the backbone of this economy are the poorest and the troubled souls. They are stuck in debts and many of them have committed suicide just to free themselves from the vicious circle of debts and loans. They leave behind wailing families and what happens to their families? No one really cares to give it a thought. Modernization and technical development should actually help boost the crops and give high returns to the person who breaks his back in the fields, but he is given peanuts as returns and the money is lost to the chain of dealers and contractors and what not.

We have a fairly good educational system. It prepares a person to dab into many fields. People who can afford and are intelligent enough manage to get into great institutions like IIM and they get their degrees and fly out of the country looking for greener pastures. What do I get by investing so much money and time in them? They work for countries which provide them more money and stability and luxury. Poor people can’t even send their kids for proper education, which is actually the birth right of every kid born in India. 

The basic amenities like water, electricity, roads haven't reached the remotest village yet and we boast of being the largest users of mobile phones in the world. There are no schools in may villages and my kids have to cross rivers and forests to reach schools. Hospitals, medical care are far fetched in may parts of the world, but there are STD booths and televisions in most of the houses.

My kids are divided on the basis of religion, caste, states and languages. They fight amongst each other on the basis of that. They do not unite for making me the super power in the world as I am the youngest democracy and I have the very potential and the resources to become one. There is always some hatred simmering in some community about the other and they lash it out in the public and the other community feels marginalized. Some of my own kids give information to the scheming neighbours and bring about blasts and riots and try to weaken me and my other wards. Why would anyone betray their own mother? Just for money, more money? Would anyone really do that? From the recent examples, I have learnt a hard lesson and I believe money plays in the hands of only a few privileged kids and the other kids starve in poverty and die there.

Why can’t everybody come together and fight against corruption, poverty, and communalism? Why can all my kids decide to contribute little of their time and efforts on an balanced development of all the states? Why can’t the sex ratio be at par with each other? Why can’t my children once stop thinking of personal profit and work towards collective profit? Why can’t we be an example of cleanliness and charity as we once were? Can the greed for money ever be satiated and will all my children be treated with respect and dignity by one and all?

These questions haunt me every day and I fail to find answers to them even after 67 years of my existence.

Do you have answers to my questions, dear kids?