A Revolution in the offing!

If a country can ignore a lonely fight by a strong-willed woman for the last twelve years, who is being force fed through nasal tubes, how can we expect any change for the good? These days I keep receiving scores of e-mails from various NGOs, calling for my support for their fight for/against various issues like wild life protection, ecological issues, human rights, GM products and so many other things. I really am lost in a maze of such issues. I have started feeling depressed, because the world is only getting worse day after day and what to speak of my country?
There are so many good souls working for individual causes in a positive manner, undeterred by the magnitude of the issue in entirety. I salute them. But the majority of us get so disturbed by the way the world is progressing and become helpless and resign to the facts. For example the spiraling prices of essentials independently as also as a result of the hike in petrol prices are making the lives of the poor miserable. When middle class people are bearing the brunt of all the hikes and are struggling to maintain their lifestyles, what to say about the poorer classes? Just today I heard my maid say, ‘everything costs so much that these days, I cannot afford buying vegetables daily’, though most of the time she used to manage with just the cheapest vegetables like greens, onions and tomatoes. Her husband is a class IV Government employee but a useless drunkard, who sets aside a major portion of his income or his vice. She works for four houses as a domestic maid and the two of them have to support a family of four plus the son’s family of six, as the son earns just a pittance, as a watchman! One of her children has just recovered from TB and another is under remission from blood cancer. We took over the expenditure of the treatment of the children and education of the children. Beyond that we have our own limitations and commitments. The doctors keep advising her, ‘now the two of them are normal but unless they are taken good care of and fed with nutritious food, there can be recurrence of the horrible diseases’. From where can she feed ‘nutritious food’, when just feeding everybody with ‘some’ food is a challenge? We, the employers try to pitch in and offer her at least one person’s meal per house. But that is nothing in a family of 10! When I give her fresh breakfast, she eats it hungrily, while she used to carry it for her little son earlier. She says, ‘Now there are six children at home. How can I take this home and feed only my son?’
This is the case of a comparatively well-equipped family, as one of them is a Government employee. Imagine the state of millions of others, who depend on daily wages. I spoke to one such coolie, who has come away with his family of 5 or 6 to Bangalore (from Gulbarga), because the six-acre land there could not support all of them. The six members live in a 6’x8’ room, use the public toilets in the nearby bus stand, toil from morning to night in various construction sites and lead their lives in a contented manner. He has no complaints when I ask him, ‘How can you manage without a bathroom?’ ‘Some good soul has rented out this room for just Rs.200/-, which is all we can afford. How can we ask for more? Thankfully, the bus-stand is nearby’. What brought tears in me was when he said, ‘in our village people of higher caste will not hand me over tea cups (that too the cups used commonly by the family members also) like this directly. Eatables will be thrown to us from this height. It is God’s will. You should not be touching us’. In which century are we living? Another touching offer was when he said that back home his extended family members grew toor dal and he would get us dal when he went home next time. Who belongs to lower caste?
And here you see one Janardhana Reddy looting crores and crores of rupees and hoarding gold pots and decorating the commodes with priceless gemstones. How can such thieves be spared? As it is, we see public anger against corruption and other issues. The day is not far off when there will be a huge revolution. Elders of our times used to say, ‘Kali kaalam muthi poiduthu’, meaning things have gone beyond repair in this age of Kali. I strongly feel that is so true. Petrol prices are being hiked like it is nobody’s business and the traders are passing on the entire burden to the already bent backs of the common men. Most of the policies seem to be to favour huge private corporates and corrupt Ministers and officials, whose greed is insatiable. Cooking gas prices are being hiked in multiples of Rs.50/- at a time and to add fuel to the fire, this proposal of limiting the number of cylinders to 4 or 6 a year! Maybe this way, the Government is sending a message, ‘eat less, because the prices are very high. You can save on your LPG consumption. And if you die, you are helping the overpopulated country’. This is not the age where we can go back to using firewood and coal on account of so many other aspects like availability, pollution and the model of the present houses. So, what do we do? Buy from the greedy private companies! Push us to the walls and we will do what you like! This seems to be the policy of the Government.
Just one Anna Hazare or one Irom Sharmila or one Medha Patkar can hardly do anything. Every Indian should rise and join this revolution. If we do not wake up and fight for our rights, we will soon have to join another Independence struggle, this time against not just one company or one country but against multiple companies and our own rulers!

Sudha Narasimhachar