It's Sunday again and my only window to the world is the television but the window opened to a rather shocking sight!!

A seven year old boy in Murshidabad,West Bengal,stripped waist down,tied to a pole and beaten up mercilessly for close to an hour,in full public view of a crowd that jeered and booed him...REASON...??he was suspected of theft.The child's tiny sobs only brought wider grins.The beating and the jeering would have continued had not the police rescued him...

This is a case yet again of people taking the law in their own hands.But such acts of primitive brutality-woman stripped and beaten up alongwith her paramour,suspected thief stripped,tied to a policeman's vehicle and dragged through the streets and countless such others happen in the dust bowls of Bihar and UP or in the tiny hamlets of the South....certainly not in the CPM's Bengal which promises liberty,equality and justice to all especially to the downtrodden...

But coming to the larger question-what have we achieved as a nation after more than 60 years of Independence???Look at any area and you will realise how little we have achieved-standards of teaching in our schools and colleges remain abysmal,hospitals are running money spinning rackets,infrastructure is crumbling,goons roam openly on our streets.....

Our only achievement is in the area of population-there we have scored huge points becoming one of the biggest markets in the world----but the biggest paradox lies in this that the man on the street or the child on the pavement has still to grovel in the grime and the filth in order to survive...

We are barely managing to survive...this is our biggest achievement!!

The Government has ensured that we as a nation reach the one billion milestone and cross it and yet manage to survive!!!TRULY REMARKABLE!!