Our garden helps us to feel connected with the nature's way of promoting life to fullness! The plants give flowers and trees give fruits. I feel touched by the optimism and care with which our gardener tends each plant and tree attentively and timely!
The flowers feed the birds with their nectar. The flowers join the cycle of sustaining life in the garden!
While visiting a village recently, I noticed the children below going to the public water filter station in the village to gather drinking water for their homes. This sight inspired me because children too join in actively in sustaining life in a significant way. They felt nurtured at their homes to participate in the routines of the home. They grow up in their homes with habits of responsibility and stewardship.
The news from New Delhi is distressing and alarming!
Hundreds of young people are in the streets demonstrating and sloganeering to express their concerns about 130 million people who lost their voting rights during the recent Special Intensive Revision of the voter's list. They are agitated about names of eligible people disappearing from the voter's list and many names of those who do not physically exist appearing in the voter's list.
I have wondered how the young people who are now protesting ought to have been concerned about the election process and the irregularities in the voter's list! It occurred to me that it is similar to children who take responsibility to collect drinking water for their homes. These young people now protesting in the New Delhi streets and in other parts of India exercise their stewardship of preserving constitutional rights of people to vote in the elections ! They exercise their right to point out the slips which the Election Commission of India has made inadvertently or deliberately. There is a suspicion that it was intentional to benefit a particular political party!
The children with water bottles go to collect water to preserve life in their homes. To me, the protestors are doing their bit when the election commission has failed in its role as an efficient independent constitutional body to safeguard the election process to elect eligible people's representatives to the legislative assemblies and the Indian parliament.
Why is the Election Commission of India and the government of India not obliging to take steps to address the issues that harm the fairness of the election process! The perception is that the President of India, the Prime Minister of India and the Courts of Law in India are taking time to consider this issue urgent enough to take corrective steps.
Now the response of the government is to suppress the protest by threat, forceful police action and detaining protestors to deprive them of their legitimate constitutional right to protest.
The homes of the three children in the above photograph nurtured children to take responsibility to participate in the life of their homes. The young people in the streets are taking responsibility to protest to express their obligation towards fair governance of their country because they were nurtured to become responsible citizens through their formative process at their homes, schools, and colleges!
It is therefore disturbing and unsettling to see the government of India escalating the peaceful protest into a confrontation! Why has not the Prime Minister of India not called a consultation with the leaders who are guiding the protests for negotiation and settlement of issues at stake! Why is the Election Commission of India not assuring the citizens that they would take steps to restore the voter's list to be a honest representation of the eligible voters ?
Let me suggest this. The homes of the three children in the photo above invested in their children to be responsible enough to fetch drinking water. How terrible if they are denied water!
It is something similar, the government of India is doing to the young people of India. The young people are responsible citizens feeling strongly for good practices in governance. It is their moral sensitivity which makes them protest against acts of commission and omission of the governance system! By denying them to express their grief and anger in their way in the streets, we are de-robing them of their moral standing. The police action hurts them physically and morally! They were educated to be responsible citizens, which is what they profess to be through this protest action! The system disfranchises them and displaces them to the margins although the youth represents thirty-five percent of the population of India! We further inflict injury to them physically and emotionally, adding pain to their hurt of alienation! The silence of the Prime Minister makes them feel that they do not matter!
I wish all those who advocate forceful action to contain the protest, pause to think about the consequences of the post-traumatic stress the police action would inflicts on some young people mote. The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is an emotionally devastating state in some. I wonder if all those leaders who are detained in police stations or other places receive a de-briefing support from counsellors for them to travel the recovery path ! To hear that some of them were beaten while under custody strengthens the need to have the detainees to be under the care of counsellors to feel therapeutically supported!
I hope some corrective action would soon be forthcoming. One indication was yesterday's announcement by the Election Commission of India that the new revision of the voter's list will offer opportunities for people to represent for inclusion in the list.
The soul of the independence struggle of India was non-violence. The action plan of struggle for independence was packed with acts of civil disobedience and satyagraha. It is this model the youth of India is currently pursuing while they protest ! They follow a method that they saw work in the history of the nation!
It is because the youth feel wounded because of which they resort to protest! They were nurtured to be responsible. Now they feel wronged!
A nation owes to its citizens a nurturing and enfolding attitude! We need an enabling attitude towards young people! The flowers and the fruits in the first three photos of our garden tell me that they were born from nurturing of the plants.
Nurturing the youth of India is the vision worth pursuing to make them feel trusted to grow into their stewardship role!
At day break today, it is this sight in the rose bush in our garden that revived my hope and trust that a plant when nurtured would give abundant flowers!
Nurturing the youth of India is the call for the leaders of India !
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