Wise man says:
“unless and
until the voice of the marginalised comes out from within, nothing can be done”.
So the whole of yesterday I was trying to find out how to bring out this inner
voice. No, I am not marginalised but wanted to check how this piece of advice
can be taken forward and the poor and marginalised can be offered an action
plan. We just got lucky, I found the exact solution. Here’s a pic of how one
will look after the inner voice has woken up:
But hey, don’t
rush or jump for joy. The pic shows you how one will feel only after the 10th step. The 10th step is: “Be optimistic. Go forth positively in your
day. The light is with you. Be blessed”. Before that there are 9 other
steps like Prepare, Stop thinking, Connect with the masters, Send
light to the world and so on. Once all the steps are followed the voice of the
marginalised can come from within and the poor will not be poor anymore. So
when Rahul Gandhi says “poverty is a state
of mind” he is not wrong at all. All that he and the Congress need
to do is direct the poor and marginalised to sites like “How to meditate with your inner voice” and they will gain
freedom from poverty. So people
ridiculed Rahul Gandhi again and trended #YoRahulSoDumb
for his statement. Naturally, NDTV
is very upset. The channel thinks people have selectively outraged over RG’s “poverty
is a state of mind” statement rather than trying to understand him and his philosophy.
Towards the end of their report on the episode, NDTV concluded with this:
He
frequently interacts with the poor in remote villages as he did on Monday too
in and around Allahabad, assuring them that, "my one and only political
aim is that I want to tune my ears to the voice of the poor and the
marginalised." That statement has,
however, failed to trend.
All you
people who didn’t read NDTV’s report are guilty of trending the wrong hashtag.
Maybe something like #YoRahulInnerVoice
should have trended instead. That would have made the folks at NDTV happy. So
it seems from ‘Garibi Hatao’ the Congress is now down to redefining poverty
almost every single day. Not just redefining poverty but it seems we have
failed to holistically assess why people are poor. This wasn’t the first time
that RG has spoken about it. On June15 when addressing a group of women in Kashmir valley this is what he
said:
"We are with you. The whole nation is with you," Rahul
told a gathering of women. "I have been all along asking bureaucrats what
poverty is. But a woman from Uttar Pradesh answered me. She said 'when you
don't have self confidence, you are poor; when you get the self confidence you
are no longer poor'. It is up to you. No government, no bureaucrat can give
this to you. And the day you get it, development would be very easy."
So you see,
RG has been asking bureaucrats all along what poverty is. It’s not just a ‘state
of mind’ but you’re poor if you don’t have self-confidence. And from “Garibi
Hatao” it now comes down to ‘no govt can give this to you’. It’s not about meals
at Rs.12 or Rs.5, all you need is self-confidence.
This is a new management concept. All those management experts who founded the
principle that confidence follows
performance need education. For instance, players like Sachin Tendulkar or
Rahul Dravid were confident first and so their performance followed. It’s not
as if their confidence got a boost after their performance. This is a new
discovery for all of us. Every first-timer at a new job can perform only if he
or she has confidence from day-1.
There is a
secret though, about this self-confidence before getting out of poverty. Gandhi
cited the example of a poor woman in Amethi, who redeemed her self-esteem by
getting associated with self-help group Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana.
Aha! That’s the secret. All the poor people need to do is get associated with
such Pariyojanas. Now that’s a hint for all States and all Districts in the
country to start ‘Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana’. May be also have a
separate unit for the poor men too. To the second part of RG’s statement on
poverty after stating it’s just a state of mind: “It
does not mean the scarcity of food, money or material things. If one possesses
self-confidence, then one can overcome poverty”.
There isn’t food
shortage as we all know. There isn’t shortage of material things as we all
know. RahulG knows it better than all of us. How one gets away with rubbish and
our TV channels can ignore such extreme mockery of poverty is a lesson on how
to cover-up. Poverty stems from the lack of opportunities to earn the “money”
that lead to a productive economic and healthy life. If money wasn’t the
starting point why then have NREGA?
After all, NREGA was supposed to provide some opportunity for employment and
money as well. Looks like that scheme failed. At least the rural areas must
continue seeking “confidence” and not opportunities that will bring them out of
poverty. That’s the message.
There’s
another reason for poverty apart from lack of self-confidence. Medical facilities! This is something
that most people seem to have missed due to the overwhelming attention to ‘self-confidence’.
This was when RG opened up another branch of the Kamala Nehru hospital and he
said: “biggest cause of poverty in India is costly medical facilities which
eat into a common man's savings leaving him penniless". So apart
from lack of self-confidence, medical bills destroy people. Of course, there is
no scarcity of money as he said. I remember the PM saying “money doesn’t grow on trees”. And RG goes on to narrate Arun Nehru’s
death. Here’s the report from TOI:
“In his bid to justify the statement, Rahul also drew a
comparison between the level of treatment which his relative (Arun Nehru), who
died few days back, received at a multi-speciality hospital in New Delhi which
boasts of five star facilities charging astronomical sums running into several
lakhs as room rent per day. The rooms are sparkling while the equipments used
are state of art. However, a common man cannot even dream of availing such
facilities”. Well, who should know this better than Sonia Gandhi? Who
rushes abroad for treatment despite such five-star facilities and state-of-the-art
equipment in India?
It’s getting
more and more difficult to understand the cause of poverty and poor people.
Sometimes they don’t know meals are available at 12/- and 5/- Sometimes they
lack self-confidence. And if at all they manage the meals and self-confidence,
the medical bills will kill them. There’s
no escape. I’m not so sure about the “state of mind” but I can definitely
be sure some people are in a “State of the blind”.
