The Vulture atleast had the brains to wait, for the child to die...

A few years back a very disturbing and shocking photograph published in the New York Times made ‘the world weep.’ The photograph that captured mass starvation and hunger deaths in Africa showed a severely malnourished girl lying face down on the ground, and a few feet away sat a plump vulture waiting for the child to die so it can feed on her.

The photograph is so disturbing you turn the page or turn your face away. But what if instead of the vulture was sitting a human being waiting for the child to die. Then what would you do?

Hundreds of families among the Sahariya tribe in Baran, Rajasthan are living in a similar state. They have become bonded labourers in their own land.

Two year old Kushi’s cry is unlike any other child’s. She is crying for food. Her face is wrinkled, her hair colored, her hands and feet with wounds and skin cracked in many places, the shape of her bones bare over her skin. Kushi is severely malnourished. Her throat is so bad, that she cannot swallow any solid food. But the family has nothing but five Rotis which Kushi, her five sisters, her father and mother eat morning and evening.

Kushi’s father, Gopal (30) works from dawn to dusk, seven days a week in his own land, but as a daily wage bonded labourer. He gets Rs.25, 000 per year, the entire amount he gives back to the owner to repay his debt. Gopal, his wife and six girls survive on the 35kgs of free wheat that they get from the government distribution centre. Apart from this they have nothing else to eat.

A certain section of people from the neigbouring state, Punjab have invaded and taken hold of Gopal’s farm land. Every single soul in the village is extremely scared to part with any information about their owners. A local said, “There are many incidents in the recent past, where the tribals who protested or questioned the landowners were burnt alive…thrown into burning bushes.”

These tribals have been exploited to the core…living as slaves in their own land.
As the photograph that ‘made the world weep’ comes to my mind again, I think how shockingly inhuman proportions a human being takes, just to satisfy his/her greed.

It's a farce that I can’t even describe these so called humans...the landowners as - “they are like vultures.” Because the ‘bird brained’ vulture atleast had the sense to wait till the child would die. But here human beings are torturously killing their fellow human beings…Alive!