Spare A Moment

Sailen Mukherjee (India, 26/02/06)

Right from my adolescence period I am in the habit of observing plight of underprivileged children, women and aged.

As advised by the doctor now a day I have resumed morning walk. One day during my morning walk I saw a woman residing in slums thrashing her one and a half years old child ruthlessly. The reason being her kid was insisting on answering nature’s call holding his morning breakfast (Sukha Roti) on one hand and her mother was averse to this. The poor family somehow manages their livelihood, doing labour job. Poor lady seemed to be tired with her struggled life. She herself was brought up with hardship and therefore unable to appreciate the bond between the child and his precious roti. Fearing that her hard earned chappati might be wasted if the child carries the same during toilette she got impatient and started mercilessly beating the child.

This is one of the instances how a few million children in India are beaten up, tortured, starved because of our negligence. We are not bothered about developing the conditions of our society/community. Poor people have no means of enjoyment. For any entertainment they need money which is not easily available. There is no environment for education (which is the only way for betterment of their status) and they are dark about its fruition. Obviously they don’t get interest. Only form of enjoyment is fulfilling their biological need, which is easily available. That is why every poor couple has got 3-4 children in their family. They are hardly bothered about family planning. The children grow up devoid of care, proper nourishment and lack of education.

We, so called middle class comparatively financially sound people, do not have any single moment to think about these destitute. Our maids, servants, sweepers are coming to our doorsteps for giving us daily services. We hardly bother about their welfare. One day if they are unable to come for work, we get anxious not for what happen to them but for how to manage the work in their absence. We never give them importance .We never ask them about the welfare of their children. Never we teach them the importance of family planning and how to live comfortably adhering to the small family norm. We may spare some time to coach some of their children for their betterment. Earlier I used to see my grandfather, uncle imparting education to the children of our caretakers, milkmen along with us.

They used to convince the poor parents to send their children to school. Now a day a gap does exist between the master and servants or maids. This has resulted in lack of formal/informal education amongst poor children belonging to slums. We are not at all bothering for them and so-called local politicians, MLAs, Municipal members are not willing to do something concrete for the development of these slum areas. They know more the populations, more the votes and the same can be expected only from the slum areas. Here, the people are so poor they can be bought easily for vote bank with the help of a few bucks or a bottle of booze. Thus as per politicians’ theory, general awareness or upgradation of poor will not be in their favour for the purpose fighting electoral battle. . If one child dies due to malnutrition, second one will take birth in the next year. Providing them shelter, food and education will be detrimental to the theory of vote bank, as they will be in a position to judge right or wrong. The politicians therefore feel let the children be suffered, starved, tortured by their parents and let the vote bank be kept intact. But we should not forget that one-day these poor children would grow up as bad elements of the society and make their livelihood by resorting to stealing/pickpocketing or other antisocial activities. The police will put them behind the bar for no fault of their own but for our faulty social system and apathetic attitude.