SOCIAL JUSTICE is the paramount, imperative, immediate need in India.
Every Indian, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, is entitled to food and water security -- freedom from hunger and malnutrition, safe water for drinking, cooking, bathing and washing.
If we can get this right, other civil society benefits will likely accrue:
* Food and clean water will go a very long way to make disease prevention a reality and give us a better rate of return on investment in public health.
*I've always thought we need a Cabinet level post -- A Union Minister for Soap and Latrines, preferably Brahmin. Preferable a He.
What would this esteemed individual, paid out of public monies, do?
1.Install free public toilets nation-wide at the same frequency as STD kiosks. Learn from Pitroda.
Public defecation (usually male) would go out of fashion throughout India, every city and town would stop being a vast urinal.
2. Provide free soap to every household and school, to cut down on the proliferation of ecoli bacteria and GE-related ilnesses.
3. Conduct massive public health awareness campaigns on handwashing, inflict fines for spitting.
Ok, more to follow but you get my drift. We have to do this first b4 we can move onto questions like why Kerala and Cherapunji, and every district in the nation, has not yet been ordered by the Supreme Court to save ALL monsoon water runoff and send it underground aka rainwater harvesting. Of course, the Centre should pay for it. But the netas at the Centre have to first develop and implement a benchmarked National Water Policy. We don't have one. Our India does not have a National Food and Water Security Guarantee for every Indian. Shame on our netas.
Netas' heads must roll if the policy is not effectively implemented under their watch.
Enough India TLTL. Too Little Too Late serves only the cynical and dehumanized interests of the powerful in our unprecedented, flawed democracy.
SOCIAL JUSTICE is the paramount, imperative, immediate need in India. But is that a priority for our leaders? Recently, during the monsoon Budget session, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is quoted as having said " In order to distribute wealth we must first create it." Is Mukherjee arguing, without a shred of evidence, that India does not have sufficient created wealth that can be fairly redistributed, right now?
Spoken like an authentic privileged dominant caste Hindu. Which Pranab Mukherjee is.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
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