http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Ahmedabad/Dalit-Disaster/articleshow/4764904.cms
Dalit Disaster TNN 11 July 2009, 03:01am IST AHMEDABAD: If the 2002 riots brought the communal divide in the city out in the open, the spiralling toll in the ongoing hooch tragedy is bringing a class divide to the fore. For most readers, this would be almost as if it is someone else’s tragedy, not mine. Rough calculations show that almost 90 per cent of those who have perished after consuming the deadly brew in the poor neighbourhoods of eastern Ahmedabad are Dalits. Who else would buy a Rs 10 pouch of stinking stuff to get a decent high? The tragedy hasn’t touched the Scotch-drinking elite of the western areas who flout the dry laws of Gandhiji’s Gujarat with equal impunity and never get caught. Drawing-room conversation is full of police bashing, not the human tragedy unfolding a few kilometres away across the Sabarmati. Never in the history of Gujarat have so many people lost their lives in a hooch tragedy. But, for a city which recorded 800 deaths in the 2001 earthquake and a similar toll in the communal riot a year later, these are probably still smaller numbers. But leave alone the complete disconnect of the gated communities in the western areas for whom any area east of Sabarmati seems remote. Even in Kankaria, the heart of Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency of Maninagar where most of these deaths have been reported, the fun and frolic hasn’t stopped around the newly-created entertainment zone around the lake. Here, again, one has to pay Rs 10 to get a glimpse of Modi’s vision for Gujarat. Crowds are still thronging here every evening, leaving the victims to the mercy of a public health system which looks clearly over-stretched and sluggish. This reaction is different from the way the city reacted last July when serial blasts ripped apart these very areas and people rushed to hospitals to find out if they could be of any help. So many children have been orphaned and women widowed in the last four days. Yet, the army of NGOs and volunteers that the city is proud of haven’t shown up at the hospitals where the wails of crying women are deafening. Women, whose husbands are battling with death, are moving around in a daze with prescriptions for medicines available only in the open market, often costing thousands of rupees. Many families need help desperately. Anybody cares? ------------------------------------ ---- INFORMATION OVERLOAD? Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to [email protected], OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/ PARTICIPATE:- On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to [email protected] TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:- If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to [email protected] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/ Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[email protected] mailto:[email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
