We, the giving…?

If she drowns, she’s a refugee. If she floats, she’s an economic migrant.” A friend from New York sent me this chilling cartoon and I thought to myself, it could apply as easily to India and our deplorable treatment of migrants/refugees. We have always been shockingly callous towards the plight of our own people.

Imagine, then, what our response would have been if boatloads of Syrians, fleeing tyranny, starvation and death, had arrived on our shores seeking refuge.

Look at our indifference to the high number of farmer suicides in Marathwada. Apart from television reporters, and a few print journos/photographers who have taken the trouble to visit the drought-stricken areas before filing reports, most of the pontification has come from politicians who have neither cared to go there themselves, nor offered any relief.

Without water or food to last more than a few more weeks, the precarious condition of our farmers is heartbreaking. And here we have fat cat sugar barons from other parts of the state (millionaires many times over) who are sitting pretty, and not lifting a finger to help their brothers. They too have turned a blind eye to the disaster, as has the state government, which should have considered declaring an emergency to rush aid to Maharashtra’s farmers, some of whom own just an acre or two of land, and are unable to pay back debts amounting to less than Rs 1 lakh!

We continue to ignore the tragedy of a man taking his own life, and leaving behind helpless families to cope with hunger and debt. His story is getting lost in an overcrowded media field far more interested in giving extensive coverage to murders and rapes.

It is also being asked how come so many Indians have reacted to that heartbreaking image of the drowned Syrian toddler clicked on a distant shore, and not cared a damn about equally disturbing pictures closer to home. It’s a good question which I have been struggling to find answers to, myself. I still can’t bear to see that little boy’s tiny body washed up on a beach like a dead porpoise. I turn my eyes away, haunted by thoughts of what his father must have gone through as he lost his hold over his wife and kids and helplessly watched them drown. It is this single image that influenced world opinion and led to a major rethink, spearheaded by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. We have equally moving photographs right here — but we have stopped “seeing” them.

We no longer react to our own human crises, possibly because if there is one thing there is no shortage of in India, it is catastrophes. We have multiple catastrophes. There is an overload of catastrophes. Our systems have crashed and nothing registers — not even the heart-rending sight of a poverty-stricken family, sitting on a parched patch of land, bodies reduced to skin and bones, as they wait for deliverance... or death.

We see the desperation in their eyes, and do nothing. Well, there are exceptions, of course. People like actor Nana Patekar whose NGO called “Naam” has launched a simple initiative that involves donations of just Rs 15,000 per family of affected farmers. The entire process is painless and smooth, making it convenient for individuals to contribute directly to this worthy cause.

We are not a generous nation. On the contrary — we are nauseatingly mean spirited when it comes to helping the needy. Poverty do not move us to the extent they should. May be we take both for granted — as if it’s our fate to remain hungry forever. Even the most pathetic stories of dengue deaths in Delhi do not engage us sufficiently. We brush off confronting the abject state of our public hospitals, the neglect of health issues by authorities and the baffling absence of accountability! We shrug away these preventable deaths like it is normal in this day and age for people to die of dengue.

No, it is not “normal”. And we should bloody well be bothered. But at least one positive aspect has emerged during the dengue disaster and that is the increased awareness of our despicably low sanitary standards, combined with the urgent need to clean up filthy neighbourhoods and tackle the problem of stagnant water. It’s a small step — but an important one.

Epidemics come and go. We have coped with them in our own clumsy way in the past and moved on. The trouble is, till such time as dengue creeps into our locality and directly affects our lives, it will be considered a “Delhi disease” — nothing to do with the rest of India! The argumentative India, it would seem, is also an intensely unfeeling Indian.

So here we are, tut-tutting over the Syrian refugees/immigrants, and saying how magnanimous the German people are to accept so many asylum seekers, and lead the way for other European countries to follow. We have monumental problems of our own to deal with, but what do you think our response would be if we were asked to accommodate a few thousand Syrians (those crazy enough to want to start a new life in India)? I guarantee it will be far from compassionate or positive. Living is expensive in India. But life has always been dirt cheap.

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