How does it smell when hopes die? Is it the ranking stink of charred bodies and simmering implements of what people used to call “home”, doused in water from a fire engine’s hose pipe? Is it some strange cocktail of smells of sweat, grime, toxic fumes of the diesel engines, and suppressed tears of seeing their all turn into ashes? That of sheer helplessness pressurized into some unseen tinder box? Is it the acrid fume of suppressed anger and helpless surrender before an adversary, a hydra headed monster that cannot be slain? Or is it the serene incense of a cemetery where the living, envy those that have passed away?
“Dada, I desperately need a job” the young management graduate was saying, shattering me out of my limbo. “My ailing father is retired, we have two younger siblings at home and all his savings have been used up to pay for my education. Without a job, I cannot even pay the Bank dues; leave alone be a support to my helpless father. Things are so bad that even taking my own life is no more an option” the young boy was sobbing. “Help me” he was literally begging, overwhelmed at the face of the invincible adversary. For, to many like him, going out of the state in search of greener pastures was not an option.
Why can’t we offer our children: educated, honest and highly skilled in their respective callings a basic job? What picture are we painting before a generation that is restless, helpless and swinging between the extremes of seething anger and helpless dejection? Are we even concerned; forget about taking steps that are aimed at generating employment opportunities within the state?
Open the daily newspapers or switch on the 24X7 news channels – the headlines are predictable – rape, political debates that are bereft of any logic whatsoever, sensationalism, gore, or swindles. The Government seems to have taken it on them the onus to running into (and stoking) mindless controversies so that the media may go to town building up on the inane banalities. You can’t even blame the media though, in the absence of anything constructive, what will they report on?
It’s indeed a strange situation – the bankrupt State Government does not have money for development, yet a swindler of a gentleman along with his rotund consort is alleged to have decamped with INR 21,000 crores! Those that matter: the media, and the political / industrial leadership, instead of debating on ways and means of staving off the State’s financial crisis is more interested in dishing trivialities like the loose motion of the concerned lady in waiting to the Ponzi king. Electoral compulsions and misplaced political concerns ensure that the State make a mockery of its land acquisition policy, while the reigning agenda of debate continue to be a self created imbroglio over the holding of elections. The last two years, since the new Government took charge, a concerted effort to woo investment into the state has been conspicuous in its absence. Yet, we pour into the streets (and rightly so) to protest against the so-called high handedness following the rape of our daughter, but say nothing when the economy is raped repeatedly, even systematically, which is in fact akin to the sealing of fate of all our children.
“We haven’t had any investment worth talking about in the state in the last decade and more” an industrialist was lamenting. “Where will the new job opportunities come from?” Political rhetoric like “if the large ones won’t come, we will do with the MSME sector” may win a few desultory claps, but we all know how hollow the true purport of the message is. As a matter of fact, most of the so-called “industrial clusters” built by the predecessors are yet to even have a semblance of basic banking infrastructure! “Forget about everything, we are yet to have even a coherent and logical industrial policy paper in place” the same industrialist said in mock helplessness.
What the young job-seeker said next really shattered me out of my sense of complacency. I was not prepared for his logic and naturally had no answers.
“Is there no hope then” asked the young boy? Look at the streets – they are full of swank cars that come with price tags that are enough to pay for the services of the likes of me for years at an end. The malls are brimming with the goodies. Autorickshaw driver turned scam stars are the talk of the town for their million dollar lifestyles. Grassroots political goons are speaking in terms of lakhs and crores – yet you say we are in an economic downturn? That there is no hope? Something is seriously wrong with the very system where we the honest are paying for the sins of the lavishly living up crooks.”
What could I have possibly told him? Buy a bike and join the force of musclemen employed by members of the syndicate that supplies building material or acts as land grabbers / brokers? Open a chit fund, buy the patronage of a few political pygmies and decamp with the life’s savings of the poor and the destitute? Warm up to the pimps of politics and get yourself a plum job and earn your victuals by paying your wages of sin?
Point is, every year the ilk of this young man is swelling. Swelling with educated, honest, diligent boys and girls with dreamy eyes that are soon filled with dejection. We the people have failed them. We the State have failed to provide them with honest avenues to tread on. We, in our addiction for political brinkmanship, for our vested interests and cheap thrills have played with their futures and their dreams. What is even more frightening is the fact that their ranks are swelling by the hour as those who have been castrated and rendered jobless by bursting of the so-called Group Company bubble join ranks of the helpless.
I had no answers and certainly no words of solace for the young man, as I walked away in dejection, unable to look straight into his eyes. For, I could see the swelling of the tears that had dried up long before, metamorphosing into a kind of a grim, determined hatred. Not the kind that says “for I being poor have only my dreams. I have laid my dreams upon your feet. Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams”. But a teeth clenched, cold look of emptiness that was silently telling things that are much less poetic.
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