The tigers, terrorism and a whole lotta questions.

"http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/savetiger/sthome.aspx"

“Save the tiger”, google blares out at me, and just about then it got me thinking... A couple of months ago, we as a nation, united towards a common goal, launched a campaign to save our cherished “national animal”.

The masses awoke all over the nation, signature campaigns were launched.. over 5 lakh signatures collected! Funds Raised!... But quickly enough, all of it starts to sound like the radio when you begin to loose out on your signal… Ok chuck that, whatever happened to our home bred hero Sanjay Dutt, prime accused for bringing the guns that shot our heroes, right into our very homes! One day it was the center of a storm and the next morning it's like no one's even heard about it.

To put the whole purpose of this article in context, “I just don’t get it!”

“I just don’t get”.. how amongst over a billion people the world today knows as India, we just can’t seem to find anything even remotely uplifting to read in the papers today. The last time I checked, India, was the flavour of the world, we were on a roll, and everyone wanted to hear our story. But surprisingly, check the news tomorrow, and all you’ll see is violence, opportunity and terror. In a country where our very constitution proclaims religious tolerance, secularism and the right to live beyond oppression, why then do we wake up every day to a bulging sense of paranoia?

Is it because amidst all the masala mixes and the desi flavour we just don’t have anything happy and exciting enough to talk about in our lives? Or is it because terror and the war against it, were never intended to be won, but were rather just intended to ensure its sustainability?

I find it difficult to comprehend why an entire nation is itching to throw away progress and development attained over 61 years of independence and more importantly many more complex but yet extremely significant cultural shocks over a thousand years of history, only to satisfy a thirst for vengeance. Beyond the obvious fact that war in any form would signify extensive casualties (that is, IF anyone can justify the loss of a single life towards it) or the loss of security that we provide our foreign investors and the multitude of IT and call centres that they bring with them; I can’t help but suspect that the terror and the war against it is only intended towards generating extended TRPs, aggravate paranoia and bust millions in our hard spent tax towards the illusion of defence and security. That roughly translates into a whole load of quick bucks earned by the people “behind the scene’, and the rest of the millions we have earning less than a dollar a day pretty much on the same boat.

Tell me that amongst all the major religions in the world, all of them with over a billion believers, and all of them teaching nothing more than the lessons of purity and peace, one religion alone is accused of instigating hatred and violence in a substantial section of its followers, and I simply smell the word P.R.O.P.A.G.A.N.D.A

Propaganda aimed towards subjecting a billion dreams towards paranoia and hence diverting them towards chaos and insecurity. If, in a hypothetical world, I were The Ultimatum, and my word was the law, I wouldn’t stop to think twice towards directing all our available resources towards fighting the very cause I believe to be at the root for all our issues today, Poverty.

I used to wonder, what it would take for someone like me, ‘educated’ and relatively comfortable in life, to want to discard all of it and pursue a wild chase to annihilate all living existence towards my cause, and bring forth into existence my way of life, the very core objective of terrorism. And I realize that there would be absolutely nothing to define me in such a way. I am just supremely comfortable and secure in my life to even consider simple but profound terms such as anarchy.

I truly believe that if we are to eradicate terrorism, our simplest solution yet would be to demolish poverty. Qasab, the only surviving terrorist of the dreaded Mumbai confessed that his family would be “well” compensated for his actions. Now if you can barely afford a cup of cutting chai, why would you wish to decline such a ludicrous offer? Or otherwise, if you could afford an education well enough to take you beyond a life of borrowed and meaningless existence, would you really even consider an option such as terrorism?

Eradicating poverty might not necessarily “end all that is evil”, because for all that is good there would always be men who just love to watch the world burn… But it would definitely grant reprieve to those that live in the shadow of ignorance and the hope that participating in terrorism would liberate them from their torturous lives.

In quintessence..., It’s just not OK anymore…

“My first image of America as far as I can remember is Man on the Moon.

We are not asking them to put man on the moon.. more like.. put man back on earth..

We have the technology . we have the recources,we have the know how to end the extreme poverty... if we have the will..

And I believe we have the will.. We have the civil rights movement, others ended apartheid; our moon shot, our putting man on the moon, We are gonna put an end to extreme poverty...thats what fallen to us to do.

And I Believe, that it's not an impossible adventure.

I believe, that in 50 years, they'll look back on this moment and say there were these people in time who said, It's not ok to have a child die for the lack of a 20 cent immunisation.. It's not ok to have a child die for lack of food in his belly in the 21st century.. That's just not ok anymore..And now I know you know that.. and I'd like you to tell President Bush that.. Primeminister Blair that.. and any other politician that...”

- Bono, U2