THE HOLY COW

Is there a beef ban in Kerala? No. Organizing beef festival in Kerala is as ridiculous as organizing Kiss-Of-Love in New York!!! When the youth of this country, who form the majority of the voters, wants to hear what the political leadership has to say about gender equality, infrastructure development, jobs, education, quality of life, medical care etc., these idiots are discussing beef and liquor. Politicians want to capitalise on vote banks and media wants to improve TRP. If beef ban is for votes, beef festival is also for the same. And caught in the middle of this cow dung is the common man. Let’s keep aside these issues and talk development. I mean, why run a protest against something which is not banned in this state? Something that is freely available. It could have been far more meaningful if they had organised the festival in a state that has actually banned beef and cow slaughter. Most of the college canteens across Kerala already serve beef. And if some college is purposefully not serving beef, they should be persecuted; ‘coz food is a fundamental right. The decision of what an individual should eat is his/ her choice alone. Governments exist to see how well people are served…not to oversee if it is beef/fish/pork that is being served in their plates. These are the choices left for the people to make and not the prerogative of the governments in place. College campuses are not temples and rightly so. A campus is a place to learn and explore. But is our campuses helping the students in that direction? Have we ever given a thought about the conditions of the campuses across our state and the thousands of students trapped in there? There are deep rooted problems in college campuses and SFI, instead of celebrating beef festival, needs to concentrate on that ‘coz its basically a student federation! Don’t call me right wing and don’t think I’m taking sides. We have to accept the fact that there are people in ABVP who love to eat beef and people in SFI who hate it all the same. So keeping politics and cows aside let us look at an average campus in Kerala.

1. First thing that comes to mind is uniform. I mean all your life we Indian’s are screwed up in Uniforms. Even though our climate is totally inhospitable for this polyester-tent-cloth …we are forced to wear it all the time. Only devil knows for what the heck!!! And once you get a job, you hardly have a choice about what you can wear for work. Even the length of your stubble will be decided by the MNC. So from school to grave, an average Indian gets screwed up being “in uniform”. No surprise, we are hard workers… ducks who follow what we are told like silent statues and not innovators.

2. Regarding gender equality we are centuries behind 😦 All class rooms are under strictly monitored by the dean / whoever dumb ass over the CCTV. ) If you talk to a girl or a girl and boy sits together, 500 rupees fine is slapped on them. Even separate college buses are assigned for male and female students irrespective of the places they get down. I mean WTF?

3. Regarding human rights…wawooo we are yet to approach 5000 BC!!! In many colleges, the dean comes and catches you if they find you talking or dozing off during a boring lecture by looking at the CCTV footage. C’mon man… the dean himself would have dozed quite a number of times during his college days. So we are watched all the time!!! Girls are not allowed to have mobile phones in hostels and if the college authorities have even the slightest of the suspicion, they will raid the girls hostel as if hey have hidden an Al-Quida member in their bags. And they shamelessly check every bit of the female student’s belongings. And none of the political parties seem to have any problem. Student organisations are neither bothered about quality education, student rights nor standard of infrastructure they have in their campuses. But all of a sudden, they seem to have problem with beef. In a time when Beijing University is planning to install condom vending machines across it’s campus…we are stuck with banning mobile phones in campus… pathetic!!!

4. Have we ever wondered why every student who comes out of colleges across Kerala has no option but to bundle up his certificates and go to Bangalore or Chennai or some far of- god forsaken place in search for a job? To be blunt, most of the SFI students who have participated in Beef Festival is going to end up doing a job in an Indian state that has banned beef. There, they will never complain…not even crib.
I’m from Palakkad. It is just 40Km from Coimbatore, which in a few years has transformed it self into a metro. It is a major IT hub now and is a city that offers millions of jobs. Whereas, our district, which is far richer in every possible resource is slogging like a dead snail. If students who get educated in Kerala are left with no scope of finding a decent job within the state, then there is something seriously wrong. All our neighbouring states, irrespective of banning beef or not, have developed in leaps and bounds but we are still squirming under the flimsy joke of secularism and equality that politicians are feeding us. They have just three things in mind VOTES -MONEY-POWER. Are we blind to the fact that money and power is still getting concentrated on a selected few and we are made fools day in and day out by media and politicians so that we never address the real issues? A fly-over goes up in Coimbatore or Chennai in 4 months…whereas even after 40 years things do not get done in Kerala. Why ? Still we are concerned with beef and chicken. We are all intelligent enough to understand the political motives behind a beef festival… but we need to be more intelligent in tackling matters that really matter guys.

To conclude… I will tell you a small story. I went to a hospital near Olavakode with my amma today. I saw an old man almost 80, walking with a urine bag and walking stick…he had his T-shirt worn upside down and his dhoti (mund) was almost falling off… Me and a nurse rushed to support him. We asked him where his wife or children were? He said no one is there. All are away…all are away. After making him seated, he desperately rested his head on his walking stick, as if he was done with living alone. I saw at least 5 cases similar to his in that 2 hours I spent in that hospital in Olavakode. I felt pity. If those children had a good opportunity to flourish in Palakkad…at least in Kerala… the situation of the old man could have been quite different. Imagine the case with 35% of population in next 10 years with no one but only their shadows to take care of them?

Let us open our eyes to reality. When the youth of this country, who form the majority of the voters, are eager to know what the political leadership has to say about gender equality,effective sanitation, clean drinking water, good roads, infrastructure development, jobs, education, better quality of life, medical care etc., these idiots are debating beef and religion.It is good to have freedom of expression, but each citizen should use that freedom to unite this country. To build and not to break. Politicians want to create a rift between the citizens based on communal lines and make use of that as a vote bank tactics. Irresponsible media channels run two penny worth talk shows that could result in outright communal riots. We need to give serious thoughts on why they always discuss Temple, Mosque and Churches these days and not about good roads, sanitation and creating job opportunities. Everything is done to deviate the attention of the common man from the real issues at hand. It is really sad to see that politics in India is now only about getting votes and not about nation building. Are we not shaming ourselves in front of the world? As responsible citizens let us keep aside these trivial issues and discuss ‪#‎talkdevelopment‬ ‪#‎jobsinkerala‬ ‪#‎sanitation‬‪#‎drinkingwater‬ ‪#‎betterroads‬ ‪#‎India‬ ‪#‎genderequality‬ ‪#‎healthcare‬‪#‎welfarestate‬ ‪#‎unity‬

Democracy in India can be summed up in four words :

WE VOTE.

THEY LOOT.

Sad but true. Hope you agree that we have a lot to think before we go out celebrating festivals… And a lot to think about before voting…I guess… 😦

WRITTEN BY

SRINATH KRISHNAMOORTHY

(srinathtk86@gmail.com)

Photo Courtesy : Vivek Vaidyanathan