If we just allow ourselves to pick up the threads and see what needs to connect with what, to make it better for the millions of the fluoride affected ; we’d find that solution to their problems do infact lie in connecting the many parts to a whole; there’s a whole universe out there.
Ever wondered; what’s the cost of what we’re talking about? How much of it affects how many of us? beyond a point do people really care?
Well, it isn’t that big if it is you and me we are talking about, we might not even know; but, it’s big for people in our many non-descript villages.
If we are talking about numbers; more than 10 million people in India are standing to face disability and other serious health problems because of high fluoride in their water across 22 States and 200 districts of India.
But numbers are always only one part of a story, right?
The cost beyond this is massive; because fluorosis has not only been crippling people and making them loose any capacity to work they might have, but hypothetically speaking it’s been disabling entire families; with an associated loss to their income .
The point of the matter for us is that the problem does not affect us; or how can it, if its not even adequately reported in our media and we havent a clue?
Though if you actually were to see a fluorosis affected child you’d probably get shocked that life like this does exist.
Our media is interested more in telling us more about the chief minster’s cow being lost and what’s being done to find it, or why or why shouldn’t politicians have lal battis on their cars!
But they’d not be interested in this; because this, is not making the kind of news they’d really want to make. What really clicks is more of sensationalism and less of real pain and suffering.
There simply is an insurmountable disconnect in what we see as problems in society.
Fluorosis is a rural problem, it affects rural folk, tucked in the far away rural hinterlands of our country.
Folks who might not actually not know what they are dealing with. Folks who are being thrust with toilets day in and day out when that’s the least of their needs.
ok, lets pause a minute then..
what about us the well informed living in the cities, what about the media.? And what about the government, is it not too worried with the stats it has on water health issues?
What’s been stopping us then from reaching out? what’s stopping us from letting them know that we are with them? dosen’t the onus lie on the rest of us to do something for them? to take their voices to the corridors of power that be.
Lets try and create a chain of goodwill for these affected communities across our country, lets pass on a message, that the time for us to act is now; if not our children living in rural communities would be unable to see a new tomorrow.
We owe it to them; we owe it to our future generations
