WHEN I THINK ALONE

One wonders what needs to be done to awaken people sufficiently to engage them in collective fruitful action for the country, that is, service to the motherland, and giving their utmost to regenerate the masses whose earthly plight is worse than what humanity ought to be heir to in a just and fair world. It is misery itself to witness destitution of the masses on one side and the overflowing affluence of the few privileged ones on the other who spare not a thought for the suffering of the millions, nay, close to a billion, and nonchalantly go about their business of the accumulation of wealth and the consequent pleasures of material living. What it means to the masses is of little concern to them who wield their sovereign power by dint of wealth to determine the course of life for the teeming millions who toil in vain for bread but get kicks in return from their brutal masters.

It is a silent crushing machinery, this capitalism, that sucks the life-blood of the masses in a modern mechanised manner so sophisticated that the hapless victims cannot even fathom the reason why they have to suffer this death-deal on earth. Knowledge coupled with avarice, technology aided by legal sanction to exploit, economic theory aimed at yielding maximum profit to benefit business at a terrible human expense, these represent the challenge to the sufficient survival of billions of people across the world, not merely our country. The problem of equitable distribution of wealth and the generation of enough for the effective existence of all has not yet been solved. Thus, millions live like scavengers even as billionaires loot the nation with the fullest support of the government propped up by them and brought to power by a system of democracy that dupes the masses with fair hopes and false promises as they are led to press the ballot button yet again to bring about their own doom. Thus goes on the saga of their unending woe despite the passage of seven decades of political independence.

What is the to be done? Must we keep on watching the proceedings till kingdom come while the rich roll in luxury and the politicians, corrupt to the core, join in the party to make a common cause in the impending death of the nation? Never. We must reverse the scenario, redress the issue of poverty and illiteracy, hunger and ill-health, and all other derivatives of the terrible exploitation of the masses by the use of capital.