A tale of urban decay

 Plunder story without any problem in any city..." The big story is that reflections on disaster and dreadfulness stories are true to all the cities where most of the people rush to fulfill their unfulfilled dreams in the 21st century Nalanda, Hampi and Taxila.

These cities inescapably ellipsis in every country where ellipsing is a reaction edifying and economic pattern juggles up ideas of the forward-looking calculating artificially, dress-down super-rich tech expert, stylish nerd, eye pulling ultra luxurious restaurants with fabulous dishes on their carte du jour, and, for those with a political-sociological bent of wits, a fabulous unruffled artificially liberal-tolerant ridge, an inheritance of ages the cities were the worldwide epicenter of thriving supremacists. 

Now cities are the placard examples of urban decay in India and other parts of the world. Media is flooded with detailed stories of city rots, a pandemic of street crimes, use of narcotics and drugs, shabbily dressed and zombie-like drugs and sex addicts but pretend to be liberal, tolerant, cool secular and modern, empty ghostly malls and old buildings and a flood of people staring for freebies and generosities.

Millions and billions of people are addicted to narcotics and drugs to get short-lived but splendid highs. Children boost and introduce their sex partners without any shame and nervousness. Children come home after narcotic and drug sessions. They feel pride to rebel against their parents and seniors.

When the space is encroached by a drug-crime and encroachment problems. The justice system is almost non-functional or kind to wrong-doers, affluent, white-collar cool citizens, and business class try to leave the place and the number of worthless freeloaders, beggars, drug addicts, criminals etc swell.

Branded food stores are shut. Luxury retail chains also try to flee. Businesses try to find new addresses. After March 2020, when the Covid lock-down hit the world, cities suffered the most. However, the tendency and attraction of freeloading benefits crossed all the limits.

Pandemic-period remote work system got acceptance, and the office buildings, railway land, temple land, public land and parking spaces and vacant land were encroached on by illegal migrants and intruders. This system pushed many working people out of the system. Some left for their native places. Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native" type story.

All this did not stop the march of ruthless slayers. The unstoppable march of illegal intruders, criminals and land grabbers and authorities and the helpless police due to much-hyped human rights and their peddlers, soft and lethargic justice system give immense power to these nihilist bosses. For them, poverty, backwardness, illiteracy and incompetency are status symbols to boast with pride and fanfare.

All are worried and scared of this urban rot. However, the worry is only limited to the drawing room chat. Nationalist right-wingers are haunted and bullied by the judiciary, right activists, and left-winger toolkit branded as inclusive liberal and tolerant. The celebrated liberals blame the inequalities, the meritorious hard-working class and the political and social system of rich and poor divide and gap. In return, they advocates more free-loading schemes, goodbye to merit and talent to give employment to these huge vote banks.

The urban decay is like 'Cocktown' of "The Hard Times" by Charles Dickens.

Celebrating Poverty

 With sound high I come, with my agenda and my manifesto,

I celebrate poverty for usual victors only,

I shout poverty-poverty for dead and defeated persons.

A defeated man's thoughts of schools,

A defeated man enjoying freebies and never-ending rest,

Blooms with life itself, cannot have.

 

Now I know the masses and the leaders;

And these I observe these begging eyes,

Those fables of mystic voyages are all meaningless.

Villas equipped with an immoral wealth

Sailing to the bottomless dark seas

Marching on the soul's cruise.

 

Lots of aimless boys and girls, herding in schools and colleges

Learning erroneous education, bunking classes.

Missionaries and Maulanas making fast bucks. 

And you India creating a fake Utopia ;

Crying the real reckoning for her lot,

The shadows of your future, evil and evil.

 

Flow, Flow the finest wind of Democracy,

Value thy beauty, 'tis not the freebies only

The Duty and sacrifice are also amassing in thee.

Thou embrace freeloaders alone,

Not of suckers contingent alone, 

Nation floats on morals and character.

 

A nation is built by merit and honesty; 

With her Time tours with pride

With all her ancient scriptures, martyrs, heroes.  

Fought wars, thou bore the many crowns

The message of love and compassion;

Seers bless her with divine hands and sparkling eyes.

 

O countrymen, thou carries priestly nation sails with thee

And great sagely India sails with thee

Don't celebrate poverty, and sing poverty. 

I roam and invoke my sole,

And what I believe all will believe,

For each grain belongs to one as good belongs to you.

 

Schools and hospitals are all free;

Born dissatisfied while sufficed, but never happy;

Harbor is always bad, fleeing at every hazard.

Rush for a loaf at their ease watching a coughing leader,

His tongue, each atom of his blood, created from this soil and air,

Now in perfect health and budding youth sick like death.

 

In thick walls of abode, in huts, sleeps hunters after day's sport-begging;

The village sleeps, the town sleeps and the country sleeps;

The dead sleep for their sins, the living sleep ruining their time.

They tend poor and hungry; old, young wise much as the fools,

Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse and immoral;

Southerners as well as Northerner-sternest burden on the earth.  

 

For leaders, those were good to gain pleasures,

Excellent to fall and lost, everything is lost in that dust;

Which they raised and won.

They eat the pound of the sick;

They blow through their poverty-loudest and merriest for them;

Worshipping those with so many pangs of hunger.

 

Those are with an empty vessel to sink the nation!

Those will themselves, sink all!

They will sink all the national vessels in the dark sea.

Fake Generals are in arms with those who sank

And the generals won powers have defeated heroes!

Living in the dark world or Narcissa who sank. 

 

Spreading gloom that stopped playing kids,

The meadows have turned bald and barren;

Even brides and grooms have faded.

Space has fallen short and dirty;

Cry of merit and hard work shaking heaven and earth;

A choked voice filled with fear and silence in the air.

 

Dew of dawn has stopped cheering children,

Mad rush for the work-less work rings the bell;

Screeching tyres were stopped by free-loaders.

Inhabitants are throbbing for liberation, into nature;

Struggling for means usually than usual -

Hating their face in the garden of unseen shores.

 

The wrinkled clerk spoke unclearly past his torrid glasses,

Wheezing in and out, head and heart waggled unknowingly,

I muttered a "have a nice day" back in the dark.

Running for freebies throughout life,

To auction them in the charity market,

The clerk cried," No more bagging!" 

 

None realised that all are becoming old wags,

All are reaching the failed abode of pain,

Of aimless life, of the day after day melancholy.

Lost in a perennial intoxication of nothingness,

Till death, till Yama on buffalo blown he bugle

To wake everyone of their sins and glory. 

 

The loss was invisible in the din and noise, 

Now it will be a national shame and curse,

Faster, diminishing the splendour and energy.

In these days of shifting stands,

Living is bogged by troubles and pains;

Wounding the body and the soul.   

 

Eyes always cry for heavenly bliss,

To hear the music of thrill without hiccups,

Where every crumb of food flavour is venomous with pain.

Where even Lord's hymns sound jarring, 

Where the melodious voices irks mind, 

Where each breathing is filled with ache. 

 

 

Cut the freebies and waste of money

 All are worried to strengthen the economy on the one hand and the other helping the people by reducing pressures on them.  But again the rhetoric is on the same beaten pattern --- Free vaccination for all, unemployment allowance,  job programmes and freebies for the poor, GST and tax cut on consumer products etc.

They, again and again, fail to understand that Indian people have remarkable power to sustain and stand even in the most adverse situation. Whatever the drawing-room economists claim, the Indian economy will again come back to life and brace itself for positive results. These self-claimed economists and columnists have just been exaggerating the problems and spreading panic and negativity.

In March 2021 the positive news of the recovery of the economy of 1.6% GDP growth has been shown but the second wave of China Covid-19 halted it. Different surveys have been showing the depressing situation. One such is by CMIE, showing the rate of unemployment in May rose sharply by 3% points to 11.9%. Consumer future index, according to RBI, since March, the expectations index has by 11%. JP Morgan is showing the composite index dropping by 15% in April and May in comparison to March. 

All these institutions are doing their job and business. But what are the citizens getting by these studies? They are just claiming people are afraid about their future, people are losing their livelihood, people are dying due to the failure of the system, the economy is going down etc. Even some are speculating about the actual numbers of infections and deaths in the second wave are much higher than the official figures. 

One question comes to mind. What will the nation get by the claims and the surveys of the economists? Only fear and depression? Have they done anything to reduce the costs of treatment and increase the healthcare facilities? The answer is a big NO! Instead of depending on the government for dealing with the lost or reduced income people should be suggested for going for the self-work like agriculture, horticulture, dairy farming, poultry business, vegetable and fruit business and skilled work. It has become a big agenda of opposition leaders and economists to instigate the people to demand reservations, quotas, freebies and economic packages from the governments. This is very bad economics and immoral politics and making citizens crippled.

Only those families that have lost their main earner should be given reservation and quotas in education, employments with other economic benefits. Their safety, survival and employment should be the main concern of the governments. Even Delhi has no beds in hospitals, no ICUs, no ventilators, no oxygen, no ambulance,  no medicine and no injections. All the shocked to witness when dead bodies were not getting honourable cremations. Delhi has a tremendous shortage of even crematoriums.

Governments should act fast and cautiously for building good hospitals and healthcare facilities in the rural areas and small towns and give employment to the local people to stop the mindless migration to big cities. This pandemic has proved that the system of big cities has completely collapsed due to vote-bank politics. Political parties should stop this huge waste of taxpayer's money on vote banks on freebies, freeloaders, free-electricity, free-water, free-bus passes, loan waving, caste and communal budgeting. This is a criminal waste of money and resources.

If this is stopped, this money can be invested in generating employment and improving healthcare services. Similarly, tax-net can be widened by bringing more institutions under tax-net. There should be an expansion of the tax net. There is no constraint for tax space. The government should impose a tax on NGOs, temples, mosques, churches, dargahs, gurudwaras, religious missions, charitable institutions etc. This is very necessary for a fiscal boost for the market and economy. The government should reduce its spending, like wasting money on routine transfers of the employees and subsidies which has no positive outcome.

The usual strategy response to such a difficult situation is the same--given freebies, economic packages, loan waving in the shape of government support to people and incentives to boost the economy and industry. However, nothing is still there to improve healthcare services. The economists and reformists have nothing new to suggest. 

The government should shun wasteful expenditure, privatization, disinvestment, outsourcing, PPP model, sale of PSUs, and reducing the number of government employees. The governments should stop low profits public loan. This will control the fiscal deficit. Ministries like Minority Affairs Ministry, Minority Commission, Caste Commissions etc should be disbanded. Government financing to minority institutions should be stopped to control the expenditure.

Due to high public debt, the fiscal deficit is rising. High inflation is also a big hindrance to fiscal expansion. Barring some recent increases in prices, surprisingly, the consumer price index has remained almost under control. This is the surprising sustainability of the Indian market and economy. This is a big hope for fiscal expansion. It is the best hope for the Indian economy and the people. The governments should stop the fiscal softness. This may lead to an economic slowdown, price rise and unemployment.

The governments should revise the budget in light of the China Covit-19 pandemic conditions and plan on a major fiscal discipline of the economy. Barring defence, health, research, roads and transports additional expenditure should be curbed. The governments should arrange public-funded health services for all at affordable costs. This will build people's confidence. 

Next, urgent needs are rural unemployment which is forcing the mindless migration to cities, resulting in the urban infrastructure collapse. Rural people are highly vulnerable since they have neither wealth nor access to state-funded schemes. Instead of wasting resources on MGNREGA, infrastructure like hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, roads, banks should be opened and build in the rural areas and give reservation in jobs to the rural people and local people. This will stop migration, cities will be less burdened and create employment for local and rural people.

The Indian defence sector has a huge capability to support the people. The government should fill up all the vacancies in the defence sector. This will provide incentive and livelihood to people. The changes in lending and interest rates have almost no effect on the economy. Such measures by RBI does not have any positive effect. So the governments should move very cautiously in restructuring the economy.

Social Service and the freeloaders

Once an NGO had to show some social service that had to do some social service under social service obligation. It was the month of December means the month of winter. Under this compulsion, the NGO announced that it will distribute blankets to the slum dwellers. In slums, it will get a large number of needy people easily. For publicity and propaganda, the NGO hired two cameramen and few media reporters.  

The announcement was made with the help of media reporters. A large number of people - old, men, women and children - reached and stood in a row. The blanket bags were brought out for distribution. The poor people started to get restless to get the gift. Seeing this, the NGO activists panicked. There was almost a riot type lawlessness. 

Seeing this, a shrewd activist played a trick. He announced that the dirty water from their 'juggis' was accumulating dirt and mud in the streets and it became the breeding ground for mosquitoes and spreading various diseases like dengue, viral fever, diarrhoea etc. in the slum colony. So, the people who would connect their dirty water outlet drain with the main drain built by the municipality will get a blanket after the inspection of their 'juggi'.  

Hearing this announcement, almost half the crowd vanished very fast cursing the distributors for wasting their time. But again a large number of slum dwellers stayed back in the hope of getting the free blanket without cleaning/connecting their drains. When the distributors noticed that the slum dwellers are not interested to keep their illegal slum colony clean, they announced another but somewhat easy task. They announced that if they wanted to get free blankets, they should first clean the streets in front of their 'juggis'. 

Instead of accepting the task happily, again almost half of the slum dwellers left the site whispering abuses and curses against the distributers for fooling them for their hidden task. Seeing the behaviour of the slum dwellers, the NGO activists were baffled. But, still, they have less count of blankets in comparison to the crowd jeering them. This time a stylish activist woman, donning a big 'bindi' on her forehead, applying a heavy layer of 'kajal' in her eyes, speaking half English and wrong Hindi, announced that 'Bhaiyya', we would come to see the cleanliness inside of your 'juggis'. Only those whose 'juggi' was found clean, would get a blanket each. Go-clean your 'juggi'.  

All the slum dwellers left the site making bewildering gestures towards the NGO activists and reporters. Cameramen were taking photographs as per the directions given to them. Fifteen minutes passed, half an hour passed; one hour passed. The afternoon passed, the evening passed; night approached. Nobody came to show their clean 'juggi' and collect the blanket.  This time the distributers, cameramen and the reporters grew restless, fearing the snatching and mob looting.  " Why are not the slum-dwellers arrived as promised?" they wanted a reply. 

The answer they got was least convincing: because they want everything served before them i.e. without doing anything! 

Now it was the turn of the distributors to get restless. The 'artificial munificent donors' were restless to have their photograph taken in act of distributing the free blankets to make a headline and get a good 'grading' for their NGO. 

Until the slum-dwellers arrived, they could show the world their generosity. 

Suddenly, the street light failed. Fearing for their safety, the group decided to go back. They turned back to collect their belongings. To their bewilderment and fear, the big load of the blanket was not there. 

The game of generosity was over without any photograph and show. 

Dogs started to bark at them as if they were asking for the blankets in those cold - windy nights as they could not steal the blankets. 

Far in the dark of night, a Maulvi was blaring on a loudspeaker 'Allah-hu-Akbar,' inviting all the 'bhakts' for 'Roza Iftar feast. 

The crowd ran towards the mosque.