We have ignored the poor, the destitute, the lonely and the dispossessed. Words like poverty, homelessness, unemployment and penury have vanished from our political lexicon today. We no longer talk of public welfare. We no longer argue over how wide the safety net needs to be cast, to protect the wretched of the earth. We boast that today only 27 per cent of India go to bed hungry at night against 34 per cent some years back without realising that in terms of actual numbers, this means many more millions are now below the bread line.
Every pain is a statistic today.
As our cars become cheaper, our overseas holidays more affordable, and imported chocolates flood the neighbourhood retail stores. We are all becoming blind to poverty. We are all becoming indifferent to grief. The grief that is spreading all over rural India, the grief that grows in the slums around the flats in which you and I live. By ignoring this grief, this pain, this poverty we will eventually turn it into anger and then, one day, into blind rage.