I noticed something astonishing today. While I was walking towards the metro station in Old Delhi, I saw a man. He was a healthy man who was sitting comfortably on the path that lead to the subway with hands folded and eyes closed. He didn’t say a word. He was just sitting with a rather peculiar imitation of pain. Now I say imitation because I saw him squint his eyes to see the passers-by. Some kind people were dropping coins in the plate that was kept in front of him obviously hinting that he needed help. But he didn’t. He was good enough to work.
India is a rather interesting place to live and New Delhi tops the list of cities. The contrasting shades of life are so painful that you almost cry. While you see people driving past in a Porsche, you can see some people dying out of hunger. Only that has prompted people to come up with thousands of shelter houses and free food distribution. Which in my opinion has led to both elevation and demotion of the poor. What do you think a poor man needs? Some clothes to cover himself up, food to survive and a place to sleep. Of course they don’t need anything else because they have never seen anything beyond that and neither do most of them aspire for something else.
What is the problem? They get all this too easy. This is not the case with all the poor out there but yes to an extent a majority of these people have become Lazy. Millions of clothes are donated every year, so there is no shortage of clothes, billions of rupees are spent in NGOs so no shortage of food, even religious places serve free food and there are thousands of them too. A place to sleep? Easy!
We can never expect everybody to be ethical and to be hard working. Maybe there should be a system where help reaches only the ones who are actually destitute and who fail to secure two meals a day even after a hard day at work. That’s close to impossible, is it? What do you think?
