DYING OF STARVATION IN TODAY’S INDIA?

There was till date one image from recent times which haunted the mind – the 2-year old Syrian child who drowned on a Turkish beach during the refugee crisis in 2015.

And now one more image, more disturbing - that of the 2-year old toddler pulling at his dead mother’s cloth, trying in vain to wake her up at a station in Bihar.

Children are the helpless victims of circumstances created by politicians with their selfish, self-propagating, illogical policies.

More than the corona virus, at least till today, this is one image which will come to our mind every time we talk about these times in the future. The plight of the migrants as such seems to be never ending and to top it off, this picture of a woman dying of hunger and dehydration has shaken us all to the core. 9 migrants are reportedly dead for want of food and water on the Shramik trains.

This is the most shameful aspect of this corona crisis – people dying of hunger and thirst. On one hand, we have tall talks about economy, development, atmanirbhar and then on the other, we have citizens who are dying because of starvation? Agreed, there is inequality in every society but so much difference? What happened to the Rs.2 lakh crore stimulus? If it had gone to the right places at the right time, maybe some deaths could have been averted.

Why does our PM have this panache for “breaking news?” Demonetization was so poorly executed and this is worse. Every country, before announcing a lockdown had given its citizens 3-5 days to get things in order. But here, in four hours, getting the entire country to shut down, asking people to stay where they are? This has been the biggest fallacy of this entire lockdown saga. And after almost 2.5 months of lockdown, are we anywhere close to flattening the curve at all? Maybe the Govt did not anticipate the migrant movement but even after it was known, nothing was done, worsening the situation further. For all the positive press which the Govt earned for the lockdown, it’s all down the drain with this complete mismanagement of the migrant crisis.

The country wants to restart factories and there are no labourers. How is that problem going to be resolved? So we are just snowballing from one to the next, not even able to anticipate or having the foresight to put solutions in place.

All those who are dying are just a part of the nameless and faceless crowd of people who actually help our country run and will help in making us, the privileged, atmanirbhar. But today, no one really seems to care and thats scary - what happens if any of us, God forbid, ever gets into a situation like this?

Even as the corona crisis continues to brew, the plight of the migrants is a tragedy and all of us, every Indian should hand his/her head in shame.