By RK Lakhi Kant
The poor are getting poorer in spirit, and this time
they are being stripped of their ordinary way of life,
which leaves them neither here nor there;
Why is there lack of care for the poor?
They do deserve praise for the good amount of work
on the fields and other physically demanding work.
In any public work that the country takes up,
the division of labour and the spoils are heavily
loaded in favour of the richer class, although
the poor do all the hard work,
while the rich only do sedentary work;
Try lifting a few bricks some time, to know.
Now we pay for our houses to be built, but in remote
areas, the houses are built by the neighbours,
relatives and friends of the house owner;
Houses for the common man in India
being built by paid labour used to be unheard of,
so much were community ties close and effective.
With 20 percent effort the rich get 80 percent amenities,
and want to employ the poor in this work; really smart!
The poor work physically through the day to get less than
20 percent amenities for their contribution;
With an 80 per cent poor in India,the establishment is
even despotic, the way things are going as of now.
The roads for instance in the cities,
have no pedestrian allocation, and it’s quite obvious
the poor are being exploited and not being given the
recognition for their work in other areas as well;
How to give them an even playground?
Not with loads of money, but principles to steady them.
There’s a big hu ha about money, but it’s not a
very great thing which cannot be taken care of;
Take note of the fact that Indian myths is not actually
a myth but a living history, an instance of how we live
in a state where all the so-said myths are still alive;
The Ganga for one is still the same.
Flowing down the Indian landscape for ages,
it still has the same name,
and its stories mentioned in the history of religion,
are alive today, as are hundreds of other landmarks
which have come down history,
like names, monuments, places, clothes;
In India we can be sure that the same features
that marked the pre-ancient times,
are still there, in some way or the other;
And the moral strength its purity gives
to the people is evident of the link,
even in ordinary day to day life.
The roads are injustice to the poor who are in tatters,
and nowadays more susceptible to be cheated;
Where’s the water, power, education for them;
Denying them these things the people
have the heart to live in buildings built by the poor
without acknowledging the existence of the poor.
Let’s equate not in terms of money,
but of emotional content;
A state cannot be a state, unless
the common citizenry is accepted;
Money is hardly of importance if principles of life
are to be a driving force behind any public works.