Here Is What Should Really Count As Sedition In India

Mahesh Peri Entrepreneur

Merriam Webster defines sedition as "the crime of saying, writing, or doing something that encourages people to disobey their government." Going by that definition, there's plenty in this country that can qualify as sedition.

• When a country has 340 million people below the poverty line (which is more than the population in 1947), it is sedition.

• When every year, 16,000 farmers are compelled to commit suicide because of failure of government policy, it is sedition.

• When a country has 287 million illiterate people (37% of the world's illiterate population), the highest in the world, that is sedition.

• When a country has 47 million of its labour force unemployed and a government that fails to create employment opportunities, that is sedition.

• When every year, a country has 30% of its children suffering from malnourishmentand the government is reducing budgetary allocation to midday meals, it is sedition.

• When a country has 25,000 rapes every year, and the government doesn't seem to be doing much to prevent them, it is sedition.

• When a country has 626 million people defecating in the open because of a lack of sanitation facilities (making India the world's largest open air toilet), it is sedition.

• When even today, more than 150 million people walk at least 2km in search of drinking water, it is sedition.

• When politicians spend ₹30,000 crore in conducting national elections and states spend ₹100,000 crore in state elections, despite such abject poverty in India, and then lie about their election spending on an oath on the Constitution, it is sedition.

• When getting justice takes up to 20 years and still 30% of vacancies exist in the judiciary, it is sedition.

• When politicians, bureaucrats and the super-rich send their children to foreign shores, costing India a potential ₹27,000 crore per annum, because they don't trust India when it comes to their own children's future despite espousing the cause of nation building every day, it is sedition.

Sedition is not some idiots shouting slogans in some corner of this country. Sedition is not some misguided youth waving black flags on Republic Day or green flags on another day. Sedition is not some youngster having stupid debates on issues they don't really understand.

Sedition is when a government turns a blind eye to violence against humanity, with an ulterior motive to break people resistance, forcing them to rise in rebellion. Sedition is forcing people to take the law into their own hands because government has failed. Sedition is testing the patience of a nation's people.

It is no foreign power that will cause our great country to disintegrate. If ever it happens, it will be the apathy of the government, the inaction of the administration to the real problems at the grass-roots level. It will not be for want of a temple or because of sloganeering by idiots. Our enemies are not outside but inside. And most of them sit in the Indian Parliament.

Follow Mahesh Peri on Twitter: www.twitter.com/maheshperi

http://www.huffingtonpost.in/mahesh-peri/here-is-what-should-reall_b_9261122.html