Two very disturbing reports. One, of course, is that of the demolition of homes and age-old structures that has been on. In the latest round of the bulldozing spree in the capital city, home of Wakeel Hassan in Delhi’s Khajuri Khas locality has also been demolished. Yes, he’s the man who along with his team saved the lives of miners trapped in Uttarakhand. Today he and his wife and children sit outside the demolished home! One can imagine their anger cum disgust cum frustration at the treatment meted out to them. In fact, when several citizens raised much hue and cry and pointed out that this man, Wakeel Hassan, was the saviour of the trapped miners, the authorities offered him some alterative shelter which he’s rightly refused to take as it’s a matter of his home which he’d built over the years with his hard-earned money. With school-going children, why should he get dislocated from his familiar home surrounding at this crucial stage of his life!
It is not a matter of just one man and his hearth but of the hundreds of families forced to sit or squat or stand outside their demolished dwellings. Ruined are these men, women and children. One is provoked to question: where are all those who harp on the safety of girls and women? Don’t they realize that with homes and abodes demolished, entire families are forced to survive without a roof over their heads. So very vulnerable they are! Yes, their vulnerability is at the peak, when they are forced to sit by the road side.
Even if one is told that demolitions are on because those structures were built on un-authorized lands, then one may ask: Who’d given the initial go-ahead? Who all are part and parcel of the entire nexus? And, is there no other civilized way…civilized measures undertaken to ensure that they are not uprooted in this ruthless manner, with a nothingness staring out?
And when school sheds and madrasas are demolished, it is the very end of education for those trying to learn the very basics. Can’t alternative building structures be offered so that the learning process is not ruined or disrupted in an atmosphere where dismal realities and poverty stare in the face?
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News reports of our young Indian men getting trapped in Russia, compelled to fight in the ongoing war, are more than disturbing. News reports of the first Indian mercenary death of a 30-year-old man, Mohammed Asfan, from Hyderabad has been confirmed by the Indian Embassy in Moscow, which said it was trying to get his remains transferred to his hometown of Hyderabad.
Unconfirmed reports speak of another 23-year-old Indian getting killed in a drone attack on a Russian army formation in Donetsk. According to news reports, the killed youngster, Hemil Ashvinbhai Mangukiya, was from Surat in Gujarat and died on February 21. There is no official confirmation about the death… There are also reports of 18 youth from Telangana duped by travel agents into fighting for Russia in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Not to be overlooked, the latest on how young men from Haryana-Punjab who’d flown to Russia to celebrate the new year, have been taken hostage. To quote details from news reports, they arrived in Russia on December 27 to celebrate New Year and were taken around by a person, who then offered to take them to Belarus. To quote one of the men, “We were not aware we needed a visa. When we reached Belarus, the agent demanded more money and then abandoned us. The police caught us and handed us over to the Russian authorities, who made us sign some documents.”
What happens to our citizens who are heading towards Israel, to earn their daily bread! Worries must be surmounting for them, in the backdrop of these news reports and the ongoing war and conflict in that region too. Their logic for undertaking that rather too obviously risky journey was straight and simple: Here in their own country, they were promised jobs but with no jobs around they were sitting and starving, so where was the option for them but to travel out, where they’d get to earn the basics.