A painful moment

Yesterday evening I was driving to EDM mall at Kausambhi from Sector-62, Noida. My parents and Gitika were with me. I stopped at the traffic light after Ghazipur from where I'd take the right turn for EDM mall. Traffic was very chaotic. It was an auspicious day for weddings and wedding processions created these traffic-chaos. I saw some hugely decorated pandals being setup at a little distance away from the traffic light. I'm sure lakhs of rupees, or may be crores, must have been spent on all of these weddings in Delhi today.

All of a sudden, just to my right I saw two little girls trying to sleep on the divider in this busy highway. It was cold outside and they had a small piece of a torn blanket to share with them. The elder of the girls tried to cover the younger with that piece of the blanket; but she herself was shivering from the cold. There were noise, flash lights, cold winds, wedding processions around them. Then the green lights came and I had to drive away from the signal.

I know my country has seen lots of development in past one or two decades. There are new cars, new roads, new malls, apartments, and widespread use of mobile telephones etc etc. There are jobs in IT, ITES, retail, media etc. But at the same time, we've these street children who don't have the basic shelter in life! I always dream of seeing India as a developed country during my lifetime. But can we actually become a developed country when we still have many of our people who don't have a basic needs of life?

I don't know if any of our governments (central/states) is doing anything to help these street children. They might be; but I'm not aware of any such schemes. Our politicians are busy these days in discussions for giving more reservations for backward classes, religious minorities etc. But do these street children have any class or religion? Do any of our law-makers think of these little kids when they discuss about reservations?

We ourselves need to do something to alleviate these problems rather than waiting for actions from government. But I'm not sure how can I help them. I'd love to get involved with any agencies who work for the street children.