Man will always be a man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there's always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love.
~ Danilov : Enemy at the Gates
While we all know that here in India, human inequality is an institutionally accepted concept, the inequality has never been laid so bare as by the recent case of the children going missing in NOIDA and the subsequent find of the human remains from a NOIDA house and its adjacent drains. Even as the details are sketchy as of now, one thing comes out starkly from the whole ghastly story : the Police indifference to the case of the missing children of the migrant workers.
The number of cases of missing children and women in the particular vicinity in last two years is around forty. And the reasons for the delay in solving the cases that seem to have been put forth by police officials are the lack of photographs, the poverty of the parents and the fact that they just give birth to the children and leave them on the roads to fend for themselves. Even though on the face of it these reasons seem to be valid and quite practical, the whole affair poses a very pertinent question : Are the lives of some of us more important than the others? Is human equality a myth? Are some of us simply the children of a lesser God?
It may not be so wise, but one cannot really help but draw a comparison between these cases of missing children of the poor wretched migrant workers living in the slums and the case of the kidnapping of the son of Adobe India CEO. Ironically, both these cases were handled by the NOIDA police force. While some of the cases of the missing poor kids seem to be as old as two years with the police not even bothering to register a case, the kidnapping case of the CEOs son was solved within days with the whole media establishment parking itself outside the CEOs palatial bungalow while the kid was taken hostage.
Two very similar cases. Two very different results. Why?
