Thursday 31 October 2013

Lighting up lives.

People throng to the Queen's necklace in South Mumbai to enjoy  the breeze ,  sea , bhelpuri  and the Queen's necklace which is illuminated to resemble a solitaire neck-piece befitting a royal. 

Imagine the power failure disturbs and disrupts your rendezvous and the place is plunged into darkness and you are groping , trying to find your way and mind out of the blackness.

The tribal families at Awarpada, a tribal hamlet of Wankas near Dahanu are comfortable with the darkness around them , after sunset as they have never seen and experienced the joys of electrification. It is very hard to believe that this is the situation after 66 years of independence and the launch of the Mars Orbiter Mission called Mangalyaan

But 27th October 2013 , was a red letter day in the lives of the tribal when the Mitra Foundation , a non-profit organisation , distributed solar lamps to the 125 families which can be charged even at a low 30 degree Celsius temperature. The lamps are made easy to handle and are portable.

The joy was writ on the faces of the tribals.  Admist the glow of the lamps they celebrated Diwali with their benefactors. It is indeed a festival of lights in the tiny hamlet of Awarpada.

This NGO  focuses on providing water and health-care to the tribals. It regularly organizes medical camps and has significantly contributed to the betterment of this hamlet.

Such NGO's are like the proverbial ray of hope illuminating the lives of a backward section of the society , trying to uplift them in their own way. But these achievements are literally a drop in the vast ocean as there are many pockets , some far-flung and remote while some sadly , at the periphery of the cities but lie unattended , unwanted and uncared  as these simple lives do not make much of a difference to the vote-banks or the bottom-lines of any corporate balance-sheets. But as citizens of our country they too should benefit from the liberalization and globalization policies made in the corridors of power.

Readers , should the fruits of progress be shared by one and all or should it be confined only to a particular section of the society ? and why?

1 comment:

  1. It is an extremely pertinent question that you ask on the eve of the festival of lights. The village you just mentioned is just one of many where even basic amenities like clean drinking water, electricity are yet to make their way to, and we walk around strutting our credentials in fields like Software Engineering, etc. Not to take away from all the progress we have made in various fields, but somewhere we have forgotten our basic premise as a welfare state and that is to ensure the well being of each and every citizen of this country.

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