The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
Sometimes major events completely disconnected may be data points for the plans of the different powers around the world. The challenge is to discern what purpose they serve? More critically, what are we moving towards?
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
Sometimes in the face of extreme adversity comes extreme courage.
When I read about the girl in Delhi who was the victim of gangrape and what she is going through as well as her love of life and strength to fight back despite of what she has left with her of her life – psychologically, mentally, and physically – I have nothing much utmost admiration and love for her.
As per the police, she was very forthcoming about giving her statement to the DCP Chhaya Sharma as well as to the Magistrate. She is breathing on her, without the ventilator, so soon after her operations.
This is despite the inhumanely brutal rape by those 6 guys in a moving bus and later the impact of that on her body. Those animals had inserted an iron rod in her and the force of taking it out was so much that the intestines also came out along with it. So damaged were the intestines, that they had to be taken out completely. Now, she will have to live her life with no intestines, which is a very damning state to be in. For her entire life now she will not be able to eat anything.. she can only take intravenous food that doesn’t need digestion.
This is what happened right after the incident as she stumbled upto a PCR in a battered body but alert mind.
“Please don’t tell my parents,” she had begged after three Delhi Police personnel came to her rescue. The PCR had to wail its siren incessantly to be able to steer through the throng of onlookers staring at her ruthlessly assaulted body. As dozens of men merely looked on, her battered body was covered in a green sheet by her 28-year-old friend and the police officials.
“While her friend was able to limp onto the PCR, the woman had to be carried and carefully put inside. She asked them not to tell her parents about what had happened to her, spitting blood every time she moved her mouth,” said an officer. The PCR staff, struggling to come to terms with the sight before them had to muster courage, a source claimed, to look her in the eye and give her a false reassurance before she fainted. She was told she needn’t worry and they would tell her parents she had been in a very bad road accident.
Minutes later, an officer said, the vehicle pulled into the Safdarjung Hospital and the victim was conscious as soon as she was laid on her bed. “I’m a physiotherapist,” she the doctor. “I’ve done a four-year course and I’m interning at a hospital, too,” she had said before fainting again, claimed the PCR personnel. (link)
We are seeing the scenes of so many people out there in Delhi protesting at Jantar Mantar and Raisina Hills so enthusiastically. But I wonder if such an incident happened in front of any of them, would they still be onlookers as so many men were when this girl stumbled upto the police van.
The problem with our society is that it keeps looking on in times of extreme situations that others are facing. The community feeling, where someone else’s kid is as precious as my kid is just lost. I was struck by how the Newtown community has come together to join hands and support the parents who have lost their kids. How those kids now belong to everyone in the community.
This girl – and all those in Delhi – should be adopted by the communities throughout Delhi as their own daughters. As precious and as vulnerable. The vigil and the concern they would have for their own daughter should be extended to others’ daughters as well. Only when there is large, voluntary and mutual community feeling of love and concern.. when we are a parent to the whole city, will Delhi have a chance to bring up normal women.
This girl didn’t have to go through such hell, which she is somehow, with her courage and grace converting into a blessing for herself and countless others as she shakes the conscience of a nation single-handedly. But her work, her fight and her pain will go in vain, if at the end of her ordeal, her trauma doesn’t make all of us into community parents. Make us be parents to the city.
The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
This visit of India left me with many questions. Many observations and inputs from different people and sections. Food for thought that I have tried to contemplate on and make sense of. Sharing all that with you.
When you analyze the last 60 years of the economic miracles of Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia versus the continued impoverished Indian economy, you get very interesting lessons. Can Indians have the wherewithal in them to do in one generation so that the coming generations may rise?
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