I had finished last bite of my burger at MacDonald’s. I was delighted as I was taking a long break from my work to visit my parents. My flight was not leaving in another couple of hours, so I decided to go back to my apartment for a hot bath. Shower was still on after I had finished my bath. I didn’t care much to turn it off until I had dried myself up. I dressed up fashionably and sat on a couch waiting for the cab to pick me up. In another few minutes, I was on my way to airport with all my luggage. I was wondering if I had switched off all the lights of my apartment, and in the next second I thought, who the hell cares?
I slept for long after reaching home, and the next morning
before I could take a deep breathe, havoc was upon me. My housemaid’s father
was terribly ill, and I had to drop her immediately to her home. Obviously, she
didn’t live nearby, and I had to drive twenty kilometers to a village. She
lived in a slum; her home was completely dirty with no proper sanitation. She
had six malnourished children who were running naked from one corner to
another. Her father was lying coughing on a cot; her husband was cooking
something on a stove. I had to take her father to a hospital in another hour,
so I decided to take a walk as I was feeling sick over there.
Though I was mesmerized by the beauty of nature, condition
of the village was very pathetic. There was hardly a building, and most of the houses
there were huts. There were no proper roads, and the villagers were totally
devoid of electricity. I talked to few people, and I came to know that the
condition was more horrible than I had thought. They were all poor and
illiterate. None of them had been to school before, and they could hardly
manage food more than one time of the day. There was no proper water supply,
and they had to go a mile to bring water for their daily usage. There were no
school in that village, and the school in the nearby village was in ruins.
Teachers hardly came to teach there as there was no drinking water facility and
no toilets. The condition of women was even worse. They had to work in fields
along with their husbands to support the house. Lack of any form of education
made them give birth to more babies. They hardly had any medical care during their
pregnancy, and the traditional methods were still in use.
When I was back to my home after hospitalization of my maid’s
father, I was lost in deep thought. What
is going on in my country? We think we are moving each step ahead towards
development, but are we? Five years ago, we had visioned to transform our
country into a developed nation by 2020. But if you ask my honest opinion after
what I had seen, I think we are far behind. 23.6% of our population is below
poverty line. 26% of our people are illiterate. If we measure the development
by looking into the cities, then I think we are totally wrong, because 70% of
our population live in the villages. The condition of our villages represent
India, and not the cities. They are the real face of our country. This is the
only reason we rank fourth in terms of GDP in the world, but we are 125th
in terms of GDP per capita. We talk about feminism and women rights, but the
people who really need it are totally devoid of it. And we are too selfish and
weak to transfer the rights to the people in need, and they are not educated
enough to claim it. Everything is just going in the wrong hands in our country.
The way we are moving
now will only make the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer. The only way our
vision may come true is, when the people who are capable, take the
responsibility of uplifting the downtrodden.
