Our buffalo loving Minister, does not seem to like people even if it is they and not the buffaloes who vote him in, wanted some more and someone who states he can give everything to the said Minister decided to gift him... buffaloes! Now these had to be transported and from point A to B and the men in uniform laid out the royal treatment for our 4 legged friends. They were fed hot and fresh chapatis and jaggery rich fodder and a bonfire was lit up to keep the mosquitoes at bay. I wonder if buffaloes can get malaria but I know humans do and die of it. In Tripura there were 67 deaths last month, and the average in India hovers around 50 000 a year. But we are blessed. The Minister's new buffaloes are safe.
What really made me see red was that police personnel in uniform was making hot chapatis (flat breads) for the buffaloes, mothers in the same State ferret rat holes do find grain for their starving children. These are the Hunger Games that will never be talked about. Should you care to know more, read Ash in the Belly. I am just quoting some lines: On days where there is no food in the house the whole family sets out to find food. They scour the harvested fields of the landlords with brooms to garner the gleaning of the stray grains of wheat and paddy... they follow field rats to their burrows and are skilled in scrapping out the grains stolen and stored underground by the rodents...after each weekly market ends, they collect in their sari edges, grain spilled inadvertently by traders or rotting waste vegetable... they even sift through cow dung for undigested grain. (Ash in the Belly page 6).
It all seems so wrong and absurd and yet no one reacts and people will still vote for the man and his buffaloes. We are not a democracy but a feudal society.
Incredible India!