While historically Rome may have burnt as Nero fiddled, zooming closer home, one sees the irony being recreated.
The Minister of Women and Child Development watched pornography while yet another child died today of malnutrition related causes in the state.
Malnutrition is a convenient medical terminology. It masks and dehumanizes. It puts the onus of a starving child on the family and the child itself. It doggedly refuses to state that malnutrition is systemic – that it arises out of apathy, greed, corruption and serious systemic failures. What are the systems in place to prevent malnutrition related deaths in our state? For a state that is governed by power hungry men and women, what, in reality does the death of child mean? A child’s death, especially a poor and mentally challenged one, would rate as below insignificant when taken relative to pornographic orgies, mining scandals and ministerial infighting for plum posts. Does it matter that a poor family went back to its village with one less member and a huge burden of debt for medical bills that didn’t make a difference anyway?
Obscene amounts of money are being spent and swindled by the land grabbers and those vested with the plum position of power and money. Do ministers really have no heart or no conscience? Do they not wake at night and say to themselves “I have the power today to make a change that goes beyond lining my own pocket. With this power, can I prevent the death of children like Imran?”
Does the middle class not see Imran’s death as a violation? Do they rather make statements like “Muslims have a lot of children anyway”? Is India’s population so big that we can discard the majority who are poor and from minority communities? Is that what our religion and our value system teaches us? That the poor are worthless, that the Tribals and Scheduled Castes and the minority religions are of no consequence in the larger picture?
For Imran, today is the end of his one year in Chikkaballapura district of Karnataka. For the activists, it is a clarion call for the amount of work yet to be done, for the minister, it is another day as usual.................
One family mourns and the state slumbers in stuporous disregard.
Dr. Sylvia Karpagam
Read JAA-K's Press Statement here
