From
Kannagi's story to the burning realities of today's India
Hunger, unemployment, and poverty—78 years of incomplete freedom
Deep concerns about health, nutrition, and the status of women
Economic growth versus inequality: The reality of two Indias
Agrarian crisis and farmer suicides—a national tragedy
"The fire will not be extinguished until injustice is extinguished"—Justice Katju's warning
Former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju, citing the story of Kannagi, said that India today is burning in the fires of injustice, inequality, poverty, hunger, unemployment, and social failures. He warned that until these injustices are addressed, the country's fire will not be extinguished.
India is burning
By Justice Markandey Katju
In the famous Tamil epic 'Silappathikaram' by Ilango, a woman, Kannagi, burnt the entire city of Madurai ( in Tamil Nadu) because injustice was done to her husband ( he was falsely accused and executed for stealing the Queen's pearl anklet ).
I was in Madurai recently, and narrated this incident in a function of the Madras High Court Madurai Bench Bar association which I addressed.
Having narrated this incident, I said that the whole of India is burning because injustice is being done to minorities, dalits, women, tribals, and others in our country, and it will keep burning unless the fire is quenched by the water of justice to all.
And it is not injustice regarding civil rights. Socio-economic injustice is also widespread in India, in the form of massive poverty, massive unemployment, skyrocketing prices of essential commodities like food, etc, appalling level of child malnutrition, almost total lack of proper healthcare and good education for the masses, etc
Even after 78 years since Independence in 1947, the basic problems in India persist. Why, after decades of so-called growth, is India still mired in poverty and hunger? We claim to be an independent country, but real independence is freedom from poverty, unemployment, hunger, lack of proper healthcare and good education, etc, for the Indian masses, which we have not achieved despite 78 years since 1947.
According to the Global Hunger Index, every second child in India is malnourished, a rate far higher than sub-Saharan countries like Somalia and Ethiopia, where the child nourishment rate is about 33%, and the condition has become worse in recent years, India slipping from position number 101 to 107 out of 125 countries surveyed.
The country also faces staggering levels of unemployment, with millions of youth entering the job market each year, but only a fraction finding gainful employment. It is estimated that 12 million youth are entering the Indian job market every year, but only 1.5 million jobs were created in the organised sector of our economy last year. So where do the remaining 11.5 million go? They end up as hawkers, street vendors, stringers, bouncers, domestic servants, criminals, beggars, prostitutes or suicides. For every class 4 government jobs advertised, there are thousands of applicants, some holding PhD, M.A. M.Sc. or engineering degrees, all begging for a chaprasi ( peon ) job
Women, too, suffer from the dearth of nourishment and medical care, with 57% of women being anaemic.
Proper healthcare for the India masses in is almost non-existent. There are no doubt some state-of-the-art hospitals with excellent doctors and facilities in the big cities of India, but these are exorbitantly expensive, catering only to the rich and powerful, and beyond the reach of poor Indians ( who constitute about 75% of the population ) because doctors and medicines are too expensive for them. Consequently, most of them go to quacks having no proper medical qualification. Quackery is rampant in India, quacks being many times the qualified doctors.
It is said that the Indian GDP is growing, but is this economic growth benefiting the Indian masses, or just a handful of big businessmen who have grown richer, exacerbating the gap between the rich and the poor?
The claim of some that India has the fourth-largest economy in the world, and will soon become the third largest, is all poppycock and moonshine, as this video shows :
400,000 farmers died by suicide between 1995 and 2018, according to government data. Since then, on average, 5500 farmers have killed themselves each year ( 47 per day ), taking the total to over 427,000 deaths by suicide in the last 30 years, a world record
Unless these injustices are undone, India will keep burning, and the curse of Kannagi will keep haunting us.
(Justice Katju is a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India. These are his personal views.)
