Rumi Nations

Here's a random list of things. 1.             Indians sometimes prefer to abort a fetus if they find out that it's female. (Or they just kill the new born baby after it's born.) 2.             There are more than 20 million babies born in India. EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. 3.             Child labor is so commonplace in India that few notice it or consider it out of the ordinary. Kids work as waiters or dishwashers in roadside restaurants. Sometimes, kids ferry tea to the local police station from a nearby roadside tea stall. 4.             Massive numbers of kids and younger and adult women are employed as maids in middle class to rich households. Middle class houses might pay 200 rupees to a female who comes and washes the dishes. Rich houses might employ women per...

I am against death punishment too. But I am in favor of death punishment for gargantuan-sized criminals such as Kasab, Raja, and Kalmadi. Let me see if I can explain that. Death punishment for Kasab seems to be such a no-brainer that no one would really give it a second thought nor would there be any need for writing columns about it. The usual homilies would be paid about the due process of law being followed and that would be it. That was my impression. And in due course, India being India, Kasab’s case would go to President Pranab and then perhaps the Congress Party will try to do Muslim pandering as it habitually does and Kasab’s fate might be left hanging like that of so many others’. And on each 26/11 anniversary, we would see the usual debates on the TV channels about why Kasab is still alive and blah blah. But no. That’s not how this has panned out. The against-death-punishment brigade has come out! Now THIS is something that I had not expected. I am not opposed t...

No well-known person or personality would perhaps say what I’m going to say here. It’s merely stating the obvious to say that the world of Kabir Bedi does not exemplify the life of the average Indian. I am all for live-in relationships. Some talked about ‘blowing the brains off’ of the perpetrators. It’s worrying to see such over-the-top reactions. Is it too much to expect that people react calmly and in a measured way? What gave the incident prominence was clearly the fact that it was caught on video. We do not have video footage of those incidents of rape in moving cars and elsewhere. Imagine what the reaction would be if there was. Much killing of various sorts happened in Punjab in the 1980s and in Kashmir in the 1990s. But none of that was captured on video. Unmarked graves and skeletons are all that still give mute testimony to some of the chilling reality of Kashmir. The lack of video footage from inside the death chambers of Auschwitz and elsewhere do not...

In the midst of the plethora of problems afflicting India, there is one problem which stands out. It is the problem of child labor, of kids working as rag pickers. Just yesterday, as I was out on a walk near my home, I saw a little girl standing on the side of the road crying with a sack on her shoulders. It turned out she was not lost or in any great danger. Her 'home' was quite close ... one of those roadside affairs. But that image has stayed with me ... I think it is the greatest failure of Indian society that we are willing to tolerate such injustices. I wish I could or would do something for that kid, for her education. What would she grow up to become????????????????????????????????????? How does it matter what car or bike we drive or how big our home is? How does it matter how big our refrigerator or TV is????????????????????????????????? Life has got to be bigger than that. Let's do something about these kids!!! I hope my conscience will prick me enough that I will...