Stephen’s meet with Bapu…In the midst of extreme poverty.

Bapu once decides to see the plight of people in India…Though he could see from heaven,significant progress in terms of development, the very notion of certain things, especially extreme penury in India keeps him baffled…

Bapu walks on one of the busy pavements in a street in Mumbai…Everyone is busy in the scheduled lives and no one cared to notice his presence…One of the kids named Stephen, a daily rag picker suddenly notices Bapu and the conversation between them begins…

Stephen (With great astonishment): Bapu, What a splendid surprise visit to the nation…

Bapu (With a pleasant smile): May I know ur gud name pls. my son…

Stephen: Sure. I’m Stephen, leading a life on these busy streets of uncaring city. I am shelterless orphan.

Bapu could see Stephen’s skin being gripped by the chilling cold, his eyes squinted, pleading and begging to the passers-by displaying his horrific specter of penury. He stands helpless, holding the two slices of dried bread in either of the hands, as his precious opulence of the day.

Bapu(tears rolled down his eyes ): Stephen, let’s go to some pleasant place.

Stephen: Ahh! Bapu, U cannot find such a placid place here…If u wish, we can go to the nearby beach…

Bapu and Stephen started walking and soon reached the beach. Soppy sand seeped between Bapu’s toes, the tender tides fondling his feet…

Bapu: I could see many people speaking to themselves…Is there something wrong?

Stephen: Hmm…They aren’t speaking to themselves,they are on some conversation with their dear ones…that is the mobile technology which had greatly impacted the normal lives for even a small vendor owns a mobile handset these days…

Bapu: Grt! Even heard lots of software revolution…

Stephen: Yes, It has brought about great prosperity to the nation…Of course, the condition is bit worse now as the industry observers say the IT sector is heading towards a recession which would be worse than the one it had witnessed in any sector in the past.

Bapu: Let’s not discuss abt these white collar jobs…I feel they can somehow manage living.Is everyone so busy that this year on Jan 30^th ,only 30 seconds silence was observed instead of 2 minutes silence unlike past…Anyways,I’m not worried if they observe silence or not. All my worry is that I expect every individual to be concerned abt the poor and spare some of their valuable time to help the homeless…

Stephen: Only few people have time to help people like us because their present schedule keeps them busy all the time…

Bapu:Even more than 50 yrs after independence from almost 2 centuries of British rule, large scale poverty remains the most shameful blot on the face of our nation. Our nation has the largest no of poor people, 75 percent of the inhabitants still reside in rural areas, majority in slum areas, more than 40 percent of population is still illiterate.

Though economic prosperity has indeed been very impressive, but the distribution of wealth has been very uneven…

Stephen: What you say is absolutely correct… Population growth rate far exceeding the economic growth rate being one of the prime significant reasons for poverty in the nation…Increasing focus on education, increasing empowerment of women and economically weaker sections of the society is expected to contribute to the alleviation of poverty, which of course can be a very long time goal…

Bapu: Let’s take the instance of you people leading a life on these busy streets…I understand life in such uncaring city is joyless…Yet countless men, women and especially children manage to find solitude sometimes in each other ,sometimes in soft drugs…

Stephen: Most of my friends are neither helped by govt. or charity during their entire lives on streets. Hope everything will turn out better one day… It’s time for me to pick up rags to earn my daily bread…See u Bapu…

Bapu: Get well soon, my son…

It’s not the task of govt. alone but it’s the responsibility of every citizen to strive towards some social noble cause helping the downtrodden.

Pls.help the poor and the homeless!

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