The Crying Children

The child was crying loud. The mother told him to be silent. "Swamiji is giving discourse, be quiet" she told him in Hindi. But he kept crying. I called him to my side and asked him why he was crying. He said he was very hungry. He also told me that he had not eaten anything for two days!! It was in Bihar, the state which has the largest number of children going to bed hungry today. His mother cooks once in three days!! During my year-long All India Peace Pilgrimage, termed 'Desh Vandana 2007' I saw for myself the pathetic conditions of our rural people. Behind our ‘Shining India' there is a much larger 'paining India: Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are the worst affected states in terms of poverty and hunger. 62 years of political freedom has not made any difference to the poor and hungry millions in India. More than 30% of the 1100 million Indians are still living below poverty line, struggling to eat one square meal a day. 20 million children go to bed hungry every day. Almost 60 million children suffer from malnutrition. The 'black money' deposited in Swiss Bank by the corrupt Indian leaders is estimated to be 13 times the national debt of India!! What these Indian leaders have looted from our country in 60 years after the Independence is much more than what the British had looted during 200 years of their rule over India!! India is rich in all respects, but kept poor because of the selfishness and greed of the rich and the powerful, and the corruption and waste of our bureaucrats and leaders. Hunger, caste and corruption are the three major evils enslaving India today. The 'Second Freedom Struggle' for hunger-free, caste-free and corruption-free India was initiated in the concluding prayer meeting of Desh Vandana-2007 on 30th Jan 2008 at Gandhi Mandapam, Kanyakumari, from this painful realisation.