Your statements and statistics are not acceptable to us without evidence.

There are many wise men in our country! The neighbors, the neighborhood, the city and the media say that it has rained last night but these wise men would not believe it until you show them the evidence of rain drops on their body. It is under such great men and their so called powerful and pious friends and the tricky laws that they follow; our monarchy (under a foreigner) has many distinctions. How dare we call the following distinctions listed below dubious and something to be ashamed of. They would quote several laws and give reasoning to say we have no right to point our fingers at them and prove they are wrong. Beware you could be eliminated or put behind bars as it is happening regularly in my province.

Here are some facts and statistics about our country from responsible national and international organizations. Our wise men and their friends in power would not accept them. To disprove the facts they would appoint a Sri Arishna or Sri Zrishna Committee to submit a report after a year or two to state that our country is the greatest in the world in every aspect. Please read the following points to know where we stand among the nations of the world:

1.      Our country accounts for around 50 % of the world’s hungry.

2.      Our Global Hunger Index (GHI) score is 23.7 and our rank 66 among 88 countries.

3.       34.7 % of our population lives with an income below $ 1 a day and 79.9 % below $ 2 a day.  This means that according to international standards 34.7 % of the population is living below the poverty line and a vast percentage is not far from this poverty line.

4.      Current account balance of our country is $ - 37,510,000,000 (Minus) while our neighbor with a higher population than us China is $ 426,100,000,000 (Plus). As per this China stands at rank 1 as the world’s wealthiest country and we are at rank 182.

5.      In the Human Development Report released recently our ranking is 134 among 182 countries.  

6.      Talking about living conditions in our country, 89 % of rural households do not own telephones and 50 % do not have any domestic power connection. 20 % of the rural population has partial or no access to safe drinking-water supply. And the sanitation conditions in rural areas are at its worst.

7.      There are daily power cuts even in major cities and towns crippling normal life and industries. While the domestic power cuts may range from 2 hours to 8 hours per day in summer, it is 2 or 3 days a week for the industries.

8.      34 % of our population is illiterate.

9.      Corruption is rampant in every department even in places like hospitals and temples. It can be found everywhere on the streets and in highest offices but it is mostly impossible to prove its existence. Rowdies and criminals and their heirs become politicians and soon millionaires through ill-gotten money and this business cannot be checked.

10. Come to my province to see human rights violations. Everyone who opens his mouth for justice or protests misdeeds is thrashed and put behind bars.

11. Justice is delayed beyond imagination. There are millions of legal cases pending in the country with very little hope of quick justice.

12. Our country has the highest number of street children in the world. Child labor is rampant. Child malnutrition here is the highest in the world.

13. Discrimination against women is a lifelong tragedy, sometimes ending very early with female fetus killing.

14. Crime exists in all parts of the country and unchecked it is on the increase.

15. Economic crimes are virtually daily news and their investigation goes on and on and most cases are closed or forgotten or some scapegoats are punished.

16. Terrorists attack the country killing innocent people and very little is done to prevent such incidents and when terrorists are caught their trial goes on for decades and ultimately the monarchs are afraid to punish them for reasons best known to them.

17. Suicides by farmers and many other people frustrated with the rule of the land and false promises is a daily tragedy occurring at various places in the country. In the past 3 years close to 700 people have committed suicide in my province alone, as the monarchy keeps fooling them with false promises and assurances.

18. 70 % of our population depends on agriculture, but growth in this sector has declined from an already meager 3.8 % to 2.6 % last year.

19. Employment situation is at its worst. No serious effort is being made to create jobs. Millions of Indians have run out of the country to eke out a living elsewhere. Any given day, go to any passport office in the country, you will find long queues of mostly sad looking people eagerly waiting for a passport to get out of the country.

And this list would go on and on if I do some more research on the internet. This dubious distinction after six decades after so called self-rule is something to be ashamed of, but not to those who are responsible for this. They do not focus on problems but brag about a few skyscrapers, a few good roads, a little good transportation here and there, shopping malls in big cities and their list would be much longer than mine but how many people are really benefited by them and finally what about the problems raised by me which affect the majority of the rural population.

The wise men ruling us do not care; they are busy doing and covering up their misdeeds and exploring ways to project their progeny as rulers of the next generation.