[Reader-list] From Delhi after Bombings

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear all,

Thanks to all those who have begun responding off list and on list to  
this post. In my bleary eyed early morning sleeplessness, I made a  
mistake about today's date in the body of the posting. The fragment  
that reads -  'in the early hours of the 13th of September' should  
obviously read, 'in the early hours of the 14th of September.'

I think we should also remind ourselves that many precious lives were  
saved by the alertness of what the morning's newspapers chose to call  
'rag-pickers'. These itinerant informal entrepreneurs of waste and  
residue (often so-called 'illegal' emigrants from Bangladesh) when  
they escape anonymity, are usually vilified as a shadowy, quasi- 
criminal, underclass who sniff glue, act as scouts for criminals and  
terrorists, and harbour all sorts of malingerers. The police  
regularly thrashes them, extorts money from them, and occasionally, a  
pious NGO or two will dignify those amongst them with a slightly  
firmer entitlement to 'legality'  with 'Identity Cards' , so that the  
thrashings of the police can be a little softened from time to time.  
This only means that those with precarious claims to Indian  
citizenship, (those with an obviously east Bengali sibilance to their  
speech) get thrashed harder, setting off a mini civil war between the  
'deserving' and the 'un-deserving' poor born of a triangulation of  
the enigma of Indian citizenship, NGO activism and the blunt edge of  
a regulation Delhi Police lathi.

So here is a salute to all those called 'rag pickers' in Delhi,  
regardless of whether or not they can be decorated with the fig leaf  
of Indian citizenship. In the end, they have proved at least in this  
instance, that as far as saving lives are concerned, they do a better  
job than the police.

regards,

Shuddha


On 14-Sep-08, at 3:18 AM, Shuddhabrata Sengupta wrote:

> Driving through the city of New Delhi after midnight, in the early
> hours of the 13th of September, one could mistake the eerie calm in
> the broad avenues that skirt the hollow centre of Lutyens Delhi as
> the lull of a city tranquil and asleep to itself and the world.
>
>