Ever visited Delhi? No? Never mind. Hundreds of millions in this country have never visited it nor will they ever come here to wade through its massive as well as diminutive lanes and by lanes, to have a glimpse of numerous monuments and relics of its past glory and disgrace, the abodes of the Kings and tyrants of antiquity and the present. Their retreats and dens from where they once ran, and now run, the affairs of this vast, brutal wilderness called India. They call this city the heart of India, the dil of Hindustan.

Of course, it is. It is the core of a heartless, cruel and savage assemblage where everything representing this system is expressed in its most naked and complete form. Enter Delhi from any side, and unless you have the power and money to hire a helicopter to directly reach the point of your destination, you will confront huge heaps of scrap, dung and litter all around. If, somehow, this sight of wretchedness escapes your eye and you are not having an early morning nap, you will come across flocks of human beings dangling plastic cans and bottles in their hands running over to ease themselves out in the open, on both sides of the railway tracks and the roads, or, wherever there is some open space. Is it not a strange scene? No? We Indians are used to it. But it is disgusting to see human beings reduced to beasts. Perhaps, it has not always been like that. There was a time when we used to be more human. Long since we have lost our humanness and have forgotten that our present state is sub-human. That the man walking on the street is merely a two-legged animal who has been reduced to woe, desperation and indifference. He is unaware that he should, and ought to, be a human being. Something much more than, something radically different than, he is now. All these wretched people who live in the ghettos and shantytowns, who make up more than half the population of this sprawling monster and ‘make’ it look like a dreadful and dirty place are proletarians and semi-proletarians. They are unaware that the other side of Delhi, the green, spotless white and blue Delhi, a Delhi which is the pride of the rich, the elite, of the all powerful and all devouring corrupt politician, of the land Mafia and the underworld don, of the Jack-eyed bureaucrat and the big businessman, of the flesh-trafficker, the custom official and the narcotic merchant, the Delhi in whose bluish lifelines Chivas Regal and Hennessy XO flows, where Le Meridian, Hayat Regency, Maurya Sheraton and Taj are the new retreats of the new kings and the courtiers, is carved out of and built over them and their countless brothers and sisters living in the immense, poor, unknown countryside never knowing that where the fruits of their backbreaking labour of generations disappear. Even Shahjehan would convulse and unsettle in his grave to look at the baffling grandeur and cornucopia of his inheritors to the Delhi Throne which has been shifted from the dilapidated Red Fort to the Presidential Palace and the Seven Race Course. And there are a great number of individuals too, in this city of more than one crore, who excel and pale the "poor" Shah Jehan in splendour, affluence and frolics. This is the other Delhi, the real city of its real denizens. It does not belong to the great multitude of the wretched and the non-entity whose only identity is a ration-card, a paper, or a vote that goes into a dustbin neatly kept in an otherwise shoe-littered and foul-languaged parliament where a majority of the "peoples’ representatives" either come for wheezing or to giggle and frown at each other, and also at the fate of millions upon millions of ordinary Indians.

This metropolis, turned into a huge den of brutish felonies, massive embezzlements and dangerous deceptions is the abode of the rascal. Not a day passes where the police do not register dozens of crimes. One can argue that in a population of more than 11 million people this is not unusual and is easily understandable. But, there is more to be understood than this, and it is deliberately ignored by the mainstream press, and as a result by the people, that a greater number of more cruel crimes go unreported. The rich and the influential quietly perpetrate these crimes behind curtains, in the shrouds of authority and behind the veils of nobleness. The city has acquired the notoriety the crime capital of India even surpassing a state like Bihar which was long considered the land of the gun and the politician-criminal gang-up. Now, crime has got its real center, the capital of India. Like everything else, Delhi is the proper place where crime, whether it is political, economic or social should find it’s concentrated expression and its top defenders.

Here the influential and the wealthy, the noble and the respectable, the elite and the famous, the baton wielder and the powerful, the one who belongs to the genera of the creamy upper layer of society, though generally protected and defended, sometimes fall-out with one’s own ilk or becomes a victim of one’s own subtleties and gets exposed. The tip of the iceberg shows up, an uproar ensues, some noise here and some commotion there, flapping and gossip starts, the police and judiciary intervenes, the case drags on for years and finally no one gets convicted. This is the general procedure when the upper crust is directly involved barring a few rarest of the rare examples when the culprit is caught red handed. With this class the disingenuousness of the system starkly reflects itself. As the perpetrator is generally well entrenched and well established he spends only a few days in jail. He is well taken care of. If "unfortunately" some tycoon like Rajan Pillay dies there the whole of police system is pulled up for its "negligence and the inhuman treatment" being meted out to the prisoners. The whole of "civil society" rises up in unison condemning the colonial time prison manual and asking for its change. The police are made to listen that they are here to serve the system and its class and no highhandedness towards Sam’s nephews will be tolerated. Custodial deaths occurring due to police brutality towards the ordinary Indians is okay. Okay is the efficient faculty of "fake encounters" and "disappearances". Nobody from the elite ‘civil society’ talks of the police savagery then.

In the hawala case the list included some ex-Prime Ministers and ex-ministers, leaders of various political parties, important ministers of the present regime and a number of big businessmen. But nobody was convicted. In such cases the files disappear suddenly or the witness, and even the accuser, backs out in the interest of the "leading lights". Or the pace of litigation is rendered so nauseatingly slow, as in the Bofors case, that the public interest fades away. Even when the top political leaders are caught accepting bribes they refuse to accept that they were involved in the corrupt practice. This is their normal practice in morals, ethics and uprightness. The economic crimes, in fact, abound and constitute the major part of all the crimes taken together. The malaise permeates downwards right unto the grass root levels in every government department, in every business establishment, at the super stores and on the streets right in front of the imposing Red Fort, the symbol of India’s "independence". There is "freedom" for everybody to indulge in corruption. Every thing is too rotten. The whole pyramid stinks. The scramble for money and the great loot going on is reflected, on the one hand, in the unlimited amassing of wealth in a few hands, their riches, debauch culture and extravagant existence. And on the other, in the unbelievable poverty, disease and suffering which are the stamps of the sprawling shantytowns.

Sushil Sharma, the Delhi youth congress goon, cuts his socialite wife Naina Sawhney into pieces and roasts her in a tandoor. He absconds and surrenders after about one month but pleads his ‘innocence’. In the Tihar jail he gets a star-prisoner status and continues to live a life of privileges. Four years have elapsed since, and one fine day the people may discover that the prime witness has metamorphosed. That on the fateful day he just strayed there and does not remember the face of the alleged culprit. He may detract his previous statement and suddenly become incoherent against the defence onslaught of an expert advocate. All because he is a poor constable and cannot match the power of his adversary. Or we have Chandraswamy, the tantrik, caught in a foreign exchange scams. The godman had close links with the ex-prime minister PV Narsimha Rao and has benefited many high-ups with his ‘spells and the power of meditation’. He is now bailed out after a brief stint in jail where he must have taken classes of other inmates as well as prison officials in how to meditate and cheat. In another case Narsimha Rao himself is convicted but is given the benefit of "serving the nation" and he is pardoned. Had he served the nation more diligently and for more years in the chair of the Prime Minister he might not have been convicted at all. The greater the contribution to the system the greater the immunity from being convicted and greater the freedom to indulge in criminal activities. That is how this system works.

In the other rungs of the systemic hierarchy where sons and daughters of the big have their way, profligacy and crime intertwine. Wherever the sons and daughters of the "peoples’ representatives" are involved in criminal activities, the parliamentarians are least bothered about the wild conduct of the wards of their colleagues. Two prodigal sons of two sitting MPs are accused of killing a model who refuses to serve them liquor at midnight at a party thrown by an NRI woman socialite at her hotel. Police picks up three ordinary non-participants as witnesses and they turn hostile during the proceedings in the court. (One of the accused, the son of DP Yadav, the MP, again murders a man called Nitish, who happens to be the friend of his sister. The woman silently yields to the crime of her brother and does not dare to depose against her own brother and father. May be, she was threatened. But the point is the criminals have a field all to their advantage.) The reveler’s party constituted the Haute circle of the twenty-first century Delhi, which is fast becoming a part of the Global Village, and is directly influenced by the cultural nerve-center of the Oval Office. The model’s murder was definitely a sickening development for them. So they preferred to look the other way when it was being committed to avoid the uneasiness of standing in the witness box. No one from the elite guests dared to stand as a chashamdid gawah. In other words, the high society is least bothered at the murder of a model. For them she was just one of the sales-girls who will no longer be around serving them with liquor and charms and they can have plenty of these girls from the fashion and flesh market. The degeneration of the elite society pops up from every pore of its frame. The other day a renowned city newspaper carried a report on the ramp walking and the ‘honouring’ of a fourteen year old girl and put the message: Why do the home work? Here you can earn thousands in a day. This is the call of the fast growing Fashion and Advertisement Industry of the new market-economy-age to the pubescent girl student for a ‘career’ where "so much can be earned with so little an effort". This Industry with its gutter culture is the new dazzling corridor to female body trade and prostitution. It offers hefty money packs for a chosen few and attracts the young and the gullible minds with its glitter and gloss. Why ‘mourn’ the death of a Jessica when they have secured a long line of prospective candidates to fill her place? In the eyes of this industry the capital city is better turned into a big whorehouse. The NRI lady first destroys the evidence and then calls up the police. But no one books her for destroying the evidence. The victim, after all, is a woman and that too a woman who "sells" her body looks. For the system her place is either in a showcase, or, in a tandoor to be roasted like a chicken, dead or alive.

The all-pervasive degeneration of a criminal system works silently, a collective conspiratorial behaviour of the rich, the police and the investigative agencies do their job efficiently. The fourth estate and its sister concerns glorify the evil in ever new forms and this attracts new aspirants to the world of crime.

Or we have the types of Shoaib Ilyasi who made it big on the small screen by sensationalising the crime and the criminal. He did not make a distinction between a rebel and a scoundrel. He landed himself on the ‘most wanted’ list by killing his suspecting wife. The man had relished in exposing the crimes of others and yet employed nefarious means to eliminate his wife and then denied the charge. The police top brass and the bureaucrats were all praise for him as he was very well serving the system. He is unlikely to go to the gallows for culpable homicide, or for abetment to murder, or suicide. He is already back in the ‘respectable’ circles of the TV world continuing his ‘Most Wanted’ programme in service of the police.

You must remember the fate of the Priyadarshiny Mattoo rape and murder case. She was harassed, kidnapped, raped and murdered by a debauched son of an IPS officer. But the judge acquitted him while lamenting that he was freeing a "criminal" as the case against him could not be proved due to ‘the lack of evidence’. The Priyadarshiny case had rocked the capital in 1996. In spite of the acquittal, the Judge’s harsh comment on the accused made the latter’s mother wail that their family’s prestige was "ruined" by the pronouncement. The criminal’s mother was concerned only for her family’s prestige and the future of her criminal son and had no tears or regrets for Priyadarshiny’s fate. Then this is almost the general psychology of those who are closely related to/or are associated with the criminals. They constitute a part of the crime world and the criminal environment. Priyadarshini’s case is only one typical example. Crimes abound and so does this mentality. The dehumanization does not restrict itself only to the criminal who commits the crime rather it has many dimensions. It is almost built into the general psychological fabric of society. Such cases are a normal occurrence in the capital where ordinary women become victims of hardened criminals as well as those from ‘refined’ background.

And what does the BMW case indicates? You can skew anything to disprove the involvement of a rich and influential person in the crime. The man rams his BMW into the pavement killing five persons on the spot and gravely injuring a sixth. In prosecution records the BMW is first converted into a truck and then metamorphosed into a red coloured Contessa car spoiling every chance of a conviction. The man is the grandson of a former admiral and runs a business in ammunitions. The sixth victim (and the prime witness) is purchased with money. The evidence gets destroyed and the culprit freely moves conducting business in death. Members of five families are left panting in the air. No justice, no redressal, no way out. The only alternative is: Don’t walk on the street and stay indoors as the city swarms in prodigal sons of top bureaucrats and politicians and you can be the next to get knocked down or the victim of ‘road rage’ of the rich. The streets of the capital do not belong to ordinary humans.

No one has forgotten the perishing of 59 persons in the fire that engulfed the Uphaar Cinema hall in 1997. The relatives of the dead still experience the trauma of losing their kin as justice continues to be delayed as ever. The Ansal brothers, the influential owners of the Cinema hall, come out of the courtroom after a hearing smiling shamelessly, quite unconcerned with the sufferings of those around, whose family members had perished in the fire. Let us assume that the owners are not responsible for the fire and the security lapses by all accounts (though this is not the case) yet their smiling shows the contemptible inhuman being within and exhibits its monstrous face. And what have the authorities been doing all these years after the Uphaar tragedy? Their attitude is no different. Dozens of cinemas are still running in the capital without the required security specifications being met. Another Uphaar will only lead to renewed promises to look into the running of cinemas and nothing concrete will come up. Already, investigations against 35 officials related with the tragedy stand stalled. The authorities took four years to frame charges against the Ansal brothers and 16 others directly related. The delay in itself is not only the denial of justice. It is criminal too. This situation is right in the heart of the capital. One should forget about Dabwali and the coalmine fires and other accidents that make news in far off places. The same callous and criminal bureaucrat mentality prevails everywhere. The culprits are never proved guilty and the show goes on. Encounters are reserved for "outlaws" and rebels and not for those who are "lawful" criminals. They have the power and means to skew all justice.

But, With the ordinary man the police acts otherwise. Nothing to talk of the frequent police killings in judicial custody and pseudo encounters. The criminal treatment meted out to the petty criminal and the bashing up of the ordinary people just to gratify the rich and the influential who use police to intimidate people and settle personal scores. It is a routine matter in the capital. Specifically, there are countless examples of police helping the land Mafia and builders in evicting the weak and the innocent from their residences, and themselves indulging in unlawful activities, land-grabs and fraudulent deals. Then, this monster city belongs to these people and not to the ordinary millions who have to struggle all along to eke out even a miserable living.

As said earlier, the capital city has surpassed the notorious State of Bihar in the crime graph. Here the criminals operate in a highly organized manner in collaboration with, and under the protection of, political leaders, civil officials and law enforcing agencies. When Mafia men grab governmental lands, evade custom check-ups, strike at will on their victims and create terror in the minds of various sections of the population they don’t do these things just independently. At various junctures a sort of collaboration gets exposed when names of politicians get identified with various gangs. Or when some high officials are nabbed due to internal rivalries. Money, power, politics and crime go hand in hand. And in the capital all these things are present in their concentrated form. The octopus like tentacles of crime reach every posh colony, basti and slum irrespective of the political hold of this or that bourgeois political party. Everywhere a nexus of the politician, the muscleman and the rich operates. The common man feels helpless in this vast network of organized crime and is forced to feign ignorance when he comes across a crime being committed. He knows that if he intervenes he will get trapped in the tangle risking his own life, or if some how he escapes the ire of the criminals the police will be the next to harass him. And he shudders at the prospect.

Not that there is less petty crime on the street. Plenty. It is more than any other city in India. This is another indicator of a system where degenerative forces are highly active. Capitalism has created an army of the lumpen from among the poor and the wretched working people of the cities. This army indulges in thefts, small robberies, pick pocketing, etcetera. More importantly, it is the recruiting place for the big criminal gangs and also provides musclemen and rioters for the politicians. There are areas in the capital where these forces are in high concentration. At the same time it is the lumpen criminal element which usually earns the wrath of police and pays Hafta, or the weekly (or monthly) dole, to propitiate the police to carry on his activities. The bigger criminals don’t have to pay Hafta. Here the political connection can work wonders. The nexus is all-powerful.

But the crimes committed by petty criminals don’t make sensational news. For petty criminals it is a way of life. The system denies them channels to revert to a dignified life.

Neither do crimes against women make the daily figure chart worthy of any serious attention. It has come to be understood as a routine affair. If insulting, harassing, bashing is a household thing for the womenfolk the teasing, molesting, raping and even killing are features on the street and at the work place. The police generally receive reports about the kidnapping of women with contempt declaring almost every case as one of elopement and love affair unless the women folk of the very rich become victims. Bride burning or killing for dowry is commonplace and is usually passed as accidental deaths. Most of such crimes against women go unreported. Delhi stands second only to Chennai in women related reported crimes. Here, it is dangerous for a woman to travel alone in a bus at night. Normal looking fellow passengers may anytime turn into monsters and drag you down between the seats even in a government owned bus. Once a woman ruled over this country from this city for almost eighteen years but crimes against women never ceased. As of the official corruption she declared that there could be no stop to it. How the social crimes, and crimes against women for that matter, can be prevented when officialdom, which runs this empire of evil, is itself highly corrupt and degenerated? And what about the great Prime Minister of free India who died of syphilitic heart fever? He gave us our ‘tryst with destiny’ which is still taking a heavy toll from us in a myriad of forms.

As of the prostitution, this city perhaps makes the greatest dirty den of the land. There are big red light areas in Delhi where women are kept "without any discrimination" in caste, creed and colour. This is the only place for women where "equality" prevails. This is the one territory where backward and most underdeveloped regions are given special consideration and enjoy excessive representation. Here the system takes extra care of the under-privileged and the poor and destitute. Who says that the rulers have ditched the poor and the backward, especially the womenfolk?

Mera Bharat is Mahaan! where the Mother goddess appears in many incarnations and the Nari is allegedly given a prominent place in society, especially in culture, art and religion, there she lives in the stifling four walls to lead a miserable life throughout or is kicked, humiliated and roasted alive for not bringing in sufficient dowry. She finds a prominent place no where but in the brothel.

A few months ago when a mother of a two-year-old child wanted to quit the demonic environment of the brothels and started looking for a respectable job to make a place for her growing up child in the world the city of devils did not allow her the option. At the most, they promised her, and her fellow sisters, "better working conditions" in the dark filthy chambers, health check-ups so that deadly diseases are not transmitted to their ‘respectable’ clients and a helpful social climate to make their life more "honourable" with ‘working women’ status and ‘trade union and human rights’ but, without any place in the society. Our society is not worthy for anyone to look towards a better life. It stinks to the core.

All around the capital the call girl centers are the elite centers of prostitution. These are rather blue than red in colour. It is business as usual. Many beauty parlours and health workout centers provide the rich clients with girls at a price. After every few months the police crack down on these centers. The accompanying propaganda make one feel that now this dirty business is off for once and all. The police "capture" the girls ‘unmindful’ of the fact that their promoters and ‘respectable’ clients will soon establish new retreats. Such is the regenerative capacity of this degenerate industry. The respectable and noble men hate the filth and stench associated with traditional brothels and prefer Ritu Berri couture clad ‘modern’ women in ‘clean’ and glistening environs of parlours and hotels.

Only those who cannot afford to book into big hotels and the haute circles throng the brothels. The "business" is brisk and also provides space for ‘social activists’ to launch intermittent campaigns for the eternal upliftment programmes which never take off. No doubt the cops and pimps collude and make plenty of money over the inhuman existence of these women.

All the slogans that come calling for the empowerment of women remain as empty and deceptive as anything can be. These "empowerment schemes" are directed towards the elite women only while imparting legitimacy to a system that continuously debase and defile womankind.

Even the universities in the capital city, the alleged institutions of higher learning, are not safe for the girl student in the evening. In the sundown stretch the campuses acquire a weird look and no girl dares to come out alone. When authorities deploy police after incidences of molesting the environment becomes more suspicious looking and unpredictable. A journalist described the evening scene in the campus in the words, "every dark corner and every side bush seems to be on the prowl". A sense of insecurity overshadows the intellectual atmosphere.

On a higher plane than the individual criminal acts the situation is more horrendous. Crime en-masse or where an entire section of the population is made a target are not an exception.

One of the top examples of the instigation and defence of dreadful carnage on a large-scale is that of the 1984 anti-Sikh massacres which were called for by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to avenge the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Delhi became a terrible killing field for the innocent Sikhs who were chased, captured and burned alive in thousands by the screaming bloodthirsty crowds of maniacs led by the congress leaders just to show to the minorities that what is in store for them if they dare to disturb the political games being played by the powers that be. The rulers were out to prove that how the "earth would tremble when some big tree falls". And the earth bewailed and convulsed in agonising pain under the feet of crusading savage gangs. And then we experienced the workings of the judicial system of this "biggest democracy" right in its belly. Almost no culprits were found for the thousands of murders committed in broad daylight. The killers, the instigators, the providers of tyres, kerosene and ration card and voter-list records for the identification and killing of the Sikhs—all went Scot-free. The leading accused came out of the courts making victory signs and newspapers flashed their photos being garlanded by their supporters. For them "the day of judgement" transformed itself into a day of celebrations. The issue is dead for the villains but still fresh in the bloodied memories of the victims.

Another crime of enormous proportions being committed against the ordinary people of the capital is in the name of cleansing of the city. Here, the government, the judiciary, the law enforcing agencies and some environmentalist zealots shut down the industries snaching away the livelihood of millions. When the highest court of justice orders the closure and eviction of industry and the workers, and police and bureaucrats come to enforce it you are left with no door to knock at except to fight back. The city saw memorable battles with the police for one day on this score. But then the political wing of the system, the bourgeois parties, intervened and doused the peoples’ wrath with water.

Or, see how the rulers residing in this crime capital behave when a natural calamity befalls. The Super Cyclone of Orissa in 1999 or the more recent highly devastating earthquake in Gujarat in 2001 can be characterized as the most naked examples of the inhuman behaviour towards the victims, both living and the dead. Out of the nearly 80,000 who were killed in the super-cyclone only less than 10,000 were recorded as killed in Orissa; and the deaths in 2001 earthquake were downsized to 20,000 from a staggering figure of more than a lakh feared killed. In both the calamities the counting was stopped midway and the operations abandoned "as there were no more chances of finding the survivors". A good pretext to stop looking for the dead and avoid the headache of disbursing off the compensation to their living kin. This is not only a case of wholesale disrespect for the dead without discrimination but also a criminal attitude towards the living who lose their bread-winners and are rendered helpless and have nowhere to go with no one to look up to. Stop counting the dead and save a lot of money collected at home and from abroad by invoking ‘human concern and pity’. The people are not to forget the scandal of more than a hundred crores of rupees carried out in Orissa in purchasing plastic sheets and tents for the cyclone uprooted. Even thus purchased tents did not reach the needy people. No one ruling in the heart of India ever bothered to book and punish the guilty in this shameful episode. The "rehabilitation process" saw a number of destitute women and young girls landing up in brothels in as far away cities as Bhopal and Delhi. Much of the same happened at the time of the 1996 earthquake in Latur. No promises were kept, no words were carried out. The survivors were left to ‘seek’ their own ways after a few handfuls of rice and wheat flour were served to them in the rehabilitation camps. The much promised and talked about rehabilitation never comes up. The dead, however, escape the hardships which multiply in the wake of such calamities. The living envy the dead when they confront a callous government and a heartless society busy in its own pursuits. The rulers sitting in the capital city remain busy in preparing blueprints for salvage and rehabilitation operations perennially as alternative cycles of sookha and dooba immortally descend on this country of ours. Earthquakes, cyclones and epidemics only come as additional boons providing more opportunities to fill the coffers of the concerned departments and officials.

Then, you cannot expect good from the lot which run the affairs of this country in antagonism to the interests of the people. Not just the case of gigantic natural calamities and the tremendous tasks generally thrown up by them that the rulers find it difficult to cope with the pressures of such sudden situations. The behaviour of the rulers flow from their class character which is anti-people to the core. Leave aside the natural calamities. The rulers carry on their own plans to throw people into more devastating tragedies which are entirely man made and are carried out to satiate the unsatiable lust for profits. Six million people living in the surroundings of the Narmada Valley project scream that their whole socio-economic fabric will collapse if the Narmada valley project is carried out, that their displacement will push them into the jaws of ruination and death. But nobody listens. The project, once stalled in the face of massive resistance by the people, is again cleared by the highest court of the land, now goes on. Millions of people are made to suffer at the hands of a callous government and a thick-skinned judicial system. A crime of gigantic proportions surpassing all natural calamities is under way. At the core of "development" lies the lust for profit, not the well being of people. And when Medha Patkar protests against the Supreme Court’s order she is charged with the contempt of court. The government and Supreme Court’s contempt of the natural rights, including the right to life, of six million people becomes a non-issue. A gross contempt against the people is committed and nobody sitting on the throne is moved. Neither the PM is disturbed in his musings nor the President moves an eyelid. Everywhere the rulers are either concerned with mining (as of bauxite in Chhattisgarh) or big dams (as in Uttrakhand) or timber or quarrying, trampling over the rights of hundreds of millions of people driving them out of their traditional lands, stomping out their sources of livelihood, wrecking their centuries old social cohesiveness and forcing the womenfolk to prostitution for survival and men to petty crimes, or begging, or the cheapest sellers of their labour power.

Those who run the affairs of the land sitting in air-conditioned buildings, sipping foreign wines and the purest of juices are not expected to heed to the needs of the homeless, the deprived, the mal-fed and the half-starved population living a desperate and wretched life. Here water sells costlier than the milk while half of Indians living in villages and cities alike go without potable water. The water industry, which is usually the multinational food and drink industry, gets an ample opportunity for making huge money through the bottled water sales while the rulers and their Jal Board officials admit their inability to provide sufficient clean water for the consumption of the inhabitants. You cannot expect more from the rulers who are unable even to provide sufficient water to their subjects.

Then, life has a price and people have to pay for it dearly in order to drag along.