Fwd: India's Most Wanted

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ravi Kuchimanchi <raviaravinda@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, May 11, 2011 at 5:12 PM
Subject: India's Most Wanted
To: reachindia@lists.aidindia.org

India's Most Wanted                

 

Perhaps even more than its American counterpart, the Indian media is dissecting Osama-bin-Laden since the SEALs completed their job a week ago. Drooling at the US stealth helicopters our media asks if we have the technology and the capability to carry out such an operation against those that terrorize India?

 

No doubt we have the technology to eradicate malnutrition, TB and malaria but do we have the will? Is not our government either complicit or incompetent? Do we need the CIA chief's intelligence to tell us this? For let us make no mistake. India loses millions of lives every year to threats we have the technology to fight covertly and overtly.

 

Somehow our radars seem to be jammed and they are not picking up the real threats even when our terrorists are hiding in plain sight for decades. Imitating the FBI, our media asks about India's 10 most wanted. Can "two square meals a day" and a functioning Primary Health Clinic make it ahead of Dawood Ibrahim, most Indians would really want to know. Have we thought of going for our most wanted in our own Abads? Or like the US do we want to nail them in Abbotabad, Pakistan?

 

This is not to say that the war against terror for India is easy or that it won't involve painstaking work. America spent trillions of dollars over ten years fighting wars across the world to get its terrorists who took down nearly 3000 "American lives" when they bombed the World Trade Center on 9-11. Over 6000 of its soldiers died. Hundreds of thousands or even a million people died when we combine the toll in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bulk of them were civilians. It is strange to us that America puts value on everyone of "its" lives but not on "Indian" or "Pakistani" or Iraqi" lives. Death toll in other countries does not enter its equations. But why should we only look for America to value India? What value does India put on "Indian lives?"

 

When mosquitoes dwelling in open drains that have been poorly constructed and ill-maintained bring down thousands of lives of people in cities and villages of India, just as the planes that hit the WTC, what value do we put on these "Indian lives" that were lost? Last year 138,000 people were attacked by Malaria in Maharashtra with nearly 200 deaths. 80% of these were in India's malaria capital, Mumbai, more well known as the financial capital and for the 26-11 attacks. The Falcipuram strain of malaria, like nuclear weapons, would have been significantly more lethal and our terrorist mosquitoes, mainly equipped with the more conventional Plasmodium Vivax, may acquire this strain any day. We are not talking of malaria in some remote villages in tribal areas of India's border regions -- it's in a big city like Mumbai right in the midst of our super specialty hospitals. Mumbai is our Abbotabad.

 

Over a million children under 5 years of age die every year due to hunger and starvation (aka malnutrition) in India and over 350,000 people die annually due to TB. Like the causalities of the war in Iraq, they seem to be unnoticed. What sacrifices are we prepared to make to fight such terrorism that is taking our lives all over India?

 

This is not to say that we should look at the other way on cross-border terrorism. Our neighbors face some of the same terror threats that challenge us. If we value the lives of the under-privileged Indian, just as we would value our own life, and strive to eliminate most of the threats to "Indian lives," surely we would find most of the terror is within our country and likewise would the Pakistanis. Such a war would unite us rather than divide us. Surely it would elevate our sense and sensibility to respect human rights so that we find a way of peacefully co-existing and resolving issues.

 

Ravi Kuchimanchi.
ravi@aidindia.org

 

Article URL:  http://aidindia.org/main/content/view/1392/1/

------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for your continued support to Association for India's Development and its work.
Please visit http://www.aidindia.org for updates.

If you like to unsubscribe from this list, you can do here:

http://lists.aidindia.org/mailman/listinfo/reachindia and enter your email in last option and select unsubscribe in next page.

Alternatively, you can send an email to reachindia-owner@lists.aidindia.org with subject: Unsubscribe
------------------------------------------------------------

--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/