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My country,my people!

It's tenth of July already and it has not rained as it should in central India.We hear of floods in the north causing havoc.A fifty year old farmer from CHopan walks into the out-patient.It is hot,humid and uncomfortable.He has an abdominal pain and has travelled more than five hundred kilometers to the hospital.I attend to his ailment and then I strike a conversation with him.Is it raining in your place?I immediately connect.No rains in Chopan either,the rivers,ponds and the streams are all drying off.He says ,till now they have not even tilled the land!So what will you do this year ,I ask.He says he will plant maize and vegetables.That will happen after the rain comes ,if it comes at all because they have no other alternatives for irrigation.
I ask him what happens if there is no rain at all this year and he says they will find a daily wage work where construction of building and roads are on and he is not getting a day younger!
The next person to be wheeled into the emergency is a young boy with a snake-bite(viper)with all it's terrible side effects-they are poor villagers who have come all the way from Panki,a block in Palaumu were they say not even a leaf moves when there is a bundh and it is in a state of almost an absolute bundh for better part of this year.
A vial of ASV cost around three hundred and fifty rupees-the bystander has one thousand rupees in his hands for the treatment which I wonder where he has arranged from!
Rains to most of us means a more comfortable and a cool weather to enjoy but to the vast majority of our land it means livelihood!
A thousand rupees is the price we pay for a single meal eaten at leisure in a restaurant,to the little boy with the snakebite and many more it was a straw which was to keep them floating till they found a footing somewhere-a passport to life perhaps and I complain my life is difficult!.

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