USHERING IN THE NEW YEAR 2010

2009 has been a difficult year for many. The good thing is that there is some optimism that on the economic front things are improving in the US and even in Britain there are some signs of recovery. In India as always there is talk of 7 and 8 % growth but the reality on the ground is very different for the majority of Indians who are living on the breadline. 42 % of Indians live on less than one dollar a day. So nearly 75 % of Indians are living on the breadline. For these people on a subsistence level life has become a genuine nightmare. In 2009 food inflation has been over 20 % and essential foods like potatoes have more than doubled in price. So it is only the salaried upper middle class who are celebrating the so called 7 and 8 % growth in this land of the poor. The others have absolutely nothing to cheer about. Wake up Indians for things are only going to get worse and worse. Global warming and population explosion will impact on India and large regions of the country will be affected by drought and there will be no drinking water in the country in the years to come. Food prices will spiral out of control and the poor will get poorer and the rich will get richer and everyone will choke to death in the cities as pollution levels rise and the traffic congestion increases. The greatest polluters in the world today are China and India. Soon we will be choking on our own fumes. No one in India has the sense or the awareness to change anything. Greed, avarice and competiiton rules the day.

Shaw

MY INDIAN DREAM

Indians have a bullish optimism about India's future and nothing one says can dampen that optimism. This is a good thing in a way but for most Indians The Indian Dream is having better job opportunities and more money to spend on flashy clothes and cars and beautiful homes for just the educated middle class. The poor and downtrodden are left out of this dream. No Indian believes there will be a day when all Indians will enjoy a more or less equal standard of living as they do in the west. Indians love to lord it over other Indians who are lower down the economic scale. A domestic help is a must in every middle class home. These servants eke a hand to mouth existence and they get paid only a small fraction of what a middle class family earns. No one even thinks of these people as part of the Indian Dream. In India no Indian can dream of a India where there will be no poor to wait on them on hand and foot.

India inspite of the 9 percent growth is nothing but a big slum where pigs and cows and buffaloes and humans forage for scraps of food and other articles from the same smelly garbage bins. Half of the people in India defecate on the side of the road and to this day no politician in this country has ever taken the trouble to take steps to address this problem. Heaps of garbage just pile up on the streets and no municipality in the country has ever thought that it is their job to keep their assigned area clean. If people of this country have a dream then it should be one where everyone can live in a clean environment and enjoy a decent life. A clean rural India where everyone has access to a good education, clean drinking water and where they can find fulfilling and rewarding employment. This is my dream for India. A clean and prosperous India where there is genuine equality for all. I urge our political leaders to plan for such a tomorrow where no class or caste distinctions exist. This is My Indian dream.