This week I meant to bring you tales of horror from India that is Bharat. Tales that urban hacks like me garner only when there is a general election and we are forced to travel where we usually fear to tread. Tales of village schools in which no teachers teach. Tales of primary health centres filthier than public toilets. Tales of towns in Gujarat that make the slums of Mumbai look like Malabar Hill. But, on the day that I returned from my travels came the story of the little girl who was tortured to death by a teacher in a Delhi school and I realised that the horrors of our ‘great’ country are everywhere.
What is there to say about conditions in rural schools if an 11-year-old girl can be killed by a teacher in Delhi? Last week the horror of what happened to the little girl affected us all. TV channels reported the crime in horrifying detail, social activists demanded that the teacher be tried for murder and the Chief Minister of Delhi condemned what happened in strong words. By next week we will forget and the child’s parents will be left alone in their fight for justice. That is how it always is.
When the hurly-burly’s done and our political leaders fly back to the comforts of their palatial homes in Delhi and Mumbai and people like me ask them why such things happen in India they will say, ‘It’s the same everywhere. These things happen.’ I have heard those words so often that if I had recorded them every time someone said them I could have made a full-length feature film. If we want to change the evil, ugly realities of our dear Bharat Mata we must begin by accepting that these things do not happen in other countries.
... contd.