India does not have any Human Rights

As an Indian I feel sorry saying this but the past events in our country have shown that India seriously does not have any Human Rights [atleast not for the masses]. The examples are so many that I feel helpless being a citizen of India. Today morning the first page of Times Of India stated that 14 residents of Delhi who have not been getting water in their colony since January were arrested, sent to Tihar Jail and made to clean dirty toilets. In these 50 years even all the areas of the capital cannot get 24 hr water supply. These people went to the Government Office earlier and were given assurances that their compaint would be looked into, workers asked for bribes and on refusal did not work, and when they went to the Government Office for the second time no senior official met them, one of the junior officers misbehaved and ultimately police was called and these people were arrested on the pretext of "Misbehaving with a Government Employee". Allthough the Government will present a different side of the story, neing a citizen of this country I can make out who is right and who is wrong. The second headline against human rights was the latest act by the government against the media. According to the act, the press is no longer free and any senior government official can interrupt any coverage by the media or even prohibit them. Where has the right to freedom of expression gone? In this country it exists only on paper. If such rights actually exist then how could a corrupt minister ask the doctor 'who gave India the first heart transplant' to leave his position as the director of AIIMS just because the doctor criticized the government on some issues? If such rights exist then how could the police do a lathi charge on students involved in a peaceful protest against reservations? If such rights exits then how could the police stop the media from getting into the premises of AIIMS during strikes? A German woman was raped in India. The trial lasted less than a month and the convict was punished. However innumerable Indian women are abused, rapes, murders have become so common and still the guilty is never punished. Jessica Lal case is just one example. I do feel that Rang De Basanti will become true in this country. The only problem lies in the fact that people here struggle and they see hope that they will be able to get away from this mess or they feel that this will not happen to them. Is this the kind of freedom we wanted? I will end by a poem which often comes to my mind when I think of such things,

Where the mind is without fear and the head held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action; Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

by Rabindranath Tagore