Friday 31 August 2012

Poverty exhibited in a show case





There are commercials(on TV and cinema halls) which show rural Gujarati women milking cows in their homesteads and sending the milk to big milk dairies; the commercial shows how happy the rural women feel when they had contributed to provide pure milk to rich urban children. This is meant to promote the milk chain. What did their own rural children get? They did not get the pure milk that rich urban kids got. This is showcasing poverty. There is nothing to smile about this. This is a very popular commercial which has been telecast for more than 26 years. How is it that we are not sensitive to this?We enjoy show casing poverty,this indicates very poor taste.It is highly deplorable.
Recently, when asked why the Gujarati women are thin, a minster had replied that they are thin because they are beauty conscious; he had also said that women tell their daughters to drink milk and their daughter do not drink milk because they are very figure conscious. Do they have any milk in their home to provide for their daughters? For three decades, milk has brought success to the state. What has it done to its people? For three decades, milk has been brought from poor rural homes, not from big dairy farms. There are no milking machines, no big dairy farms as there are in advanced countries. Dairy industry procures its milk from the poor people and provide milk to the rich in the cities. Why have they not been modernized even after the three decades of prosperity that white revolution has brought to the state. Malnutrition among children is abundant here as milk is.The state of Gujarat boasts of high growth rate for industries. It has also ranks high in poor health of its children. The truth is that when there is tremendous industrial development, it is at the cost of the health of its people.
For a state to progress its people's health is an important index. With its people being poor and working in poor conditions, progress and development is meaningless. We are creating an inferior type of human beings…those who work with minimum intake of food; exploitation is taken to maximum--scaling the  limits of endurance. Epigenetic repercussions of such a human race of people would not be marked with a high rank during the future times to come...unless care is taken now.

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