India is the largest working democracy in the world,it is a thriving,prosperous nation,its GDP has touched double-digit figures or will soon if it hasnt yet..

Its constitution gurantees to all its citizens Liberty,Freedom,Equality,Justice...

Its citizens enjoy the right to vote and they do so in swelling numbers every time there are elections...never mind if for more than 70% of the population it is the only time they get to exercise their rights as citizens....

Its citizens have been vested enormous powers by the constitution...they can elect their leaders,have a decision-making power in forming their government and equally have the right to dethrone the kings they made yesterday...

Yet more than 70% of these very people who make the country what it is lives in abject poverty,more than half of its newborn babies die of malnourishment,its women die of hunger and disease,its men enslaved and rendered powerless by loan sharks and musclemen...

The Maoists in the rural heartland of India are a group that fights to rectify the terrible wrongs that Democratic India has inflicted on its people....it is committed to fighting debilitating poverty,inequality,injustice,hunger,disease,deprivation.....but as with all causes its too has failed for it has resorted to violent forms of aggression to counter the might of the State.....and its leaders today are declared criminals hounded by the police....

It is against this bleak background that Dr.Binayak Sen,one of India's best-known public health specialists and human rights activists was working to improve the conditions of the people in Chattisgarh,one among the poorest states in the country.

Dr.Sen is now is jail for the past one year,accused by the Indian government of harbouring links with the Maoists in Chattisgarh..Shocking but true!

Dr.Sen had been working with the poor tribes of Chattisgarh for years,piloting a community based health programme,setting up a non-governmental organisation alongwith his wife to train rural health workers,setting mobile clinics,speaking out against alcohol abuse and violence against women...

He was also a Senior Member of the local unit of a leading Human Rights Group,the People's Union for Civil Liberties...

It was in this capacity that Dr.Sen spoke out about the legitimate grievances of the Maoists and had been specially vocal about the government's ways of tackling the Maoists' violence which has been  backing a civil militia of local tribals called the Salwa Judum..

Dr.Sen feels and rightfully so that the 'Salwa Judum' has created a dangerous rift in the tribal community and made them nervous and rudderless...It was the path he took as a Civil Rights Activist,the voices he raised to protest the policies of the State that irked the Indian Government...

Dr Sen has been awarded the prestigious Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights which his wife received on his behalf at a function in New York because the Indian Government would not release him even though there has been a world wide clamour for his freedom including petitions from 22 Nobel Laureates and more than 2000 doctors worldwide urging for his immediate release...

What a pity...!!This kind of incarceration of its best citizens in a country like India!! which has always condemned human rights violations in neighbouring China and other nations all over the world..The Tibet protests were against human rights violations,a cause that India has always supported...

But peep into its own backyard and you will come across the most shocking cases of gross violations taking place on a daily basis...just think of the unthinkable brutality that its police inflict on undertrial prisoners,sometimes on innocent victims...the disregard of court orders and the rule of law by this very force...the fake encounters in Kashmir and other insurgency prone areas...and you know why we are in effect a Sham Democracy...!

But maybe there is hope....Maybe all is not lost,yet...

One Binayak Sen with courage and conviction can lead to an army of Binayaks,maybe not today,not tomorrow even but definitely the day after....We shall wait for that day..Dr.Binayak's fight for freedom shall not be wasted...!!!

His wife Ilina says,'We are part of a much larger fight.We are fighting for the right to dissent peacefully.Our commitment to that gives us strength....'