Emigration

Today he woke up early, earlier than his usual timings. He offered his prayers to the Almighty after a very long time. He called up his mother spoke to her for a while. He then went to his daughter’s room, put his hands on her sleeping little cheeks and kissed her forehead. Next, he moved to his study room. He gave a look at the array of books he had accumulated over the years. He arranged the scattered stationary in a neat manner on the table, ticked that day’s date in the calendar, opened the chest of drawer, picked his best performer of the year badge and pinned it on his front shirt pocket.

He came out from his house, got down to the parking lot, cleaned his bike, gave a final look into the bike rear view mirror to check his preparedness for the day. He kicked the starter and left his society compound. He reached office, marked the attendance, smiled at everyone as usual, picked his bag and went for the field visit. Along the way, he stopped at his favorite road side tea stall, took a sip of the special ginger tea. Next, he stopped at roadside temple to offer a prayer. Then, he called up his boss and said, ‘Sir, Today’s 20^th and this month’s sales target has been achieved.” He got back to the bike, moved 200 meters further and stopped at one railway level crossing. He looked furiously at his wrist watch, gave a look at the both side of the track. After 15min, he found a train approaching from the west. He started his bike gave a final full throttle to the accelerator. Within a fraction of second he banged himself to the approaching train.  Boom!!! He got dismantled into uncountable pieces. Yes, my friends, our hero chose to give away his life before assuming his supreme role of life.

Mr. Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters and dear guests, good evening!

My protagonist was not like this before his fateful day. He was an achiever throughout his life. He had achieved everything what we consider a modern Indian dream – secure job, palatial house, car and a happy family. However, in the end he took the premature decision.

Do you want to know, why?

Friends, like most of us, in his relentless endeavor to achieve success, happiness and prosperity in his modern life, our protagonist lost the leisure of his hometown. He received modern city education, but missed moral teachings of his village. He got a high paying MNC job, but missed homely job of his town. He got married to his love of life but he left his loving parents behind. He got everything in his life but remained bankrupt within his heart. Perhaps, he was not able to sustain transitional phase of emigration.

Friends, it is said that we won’t get anything new if we are not prepared to sacrifice something that we have. In fact, the success of modern industrial economy lies on the hard working backs of skilled immigrant workers who fill the local talent deficit. We not only emigrate within country but we also go to the foreign lands. From Greek empire to Vedic empire, from Roman empire to Mughal empire, from America to British empire, most of the old cities and civilizations are built by the immigrants.

Emigration may be beneficial at times but it also creates huge socio-economic disparity. The author Alvin Toffler argued in his famous book, 'Future shocks' that society is undergoing an enormous structural change. Society experiences an increasing number of changes with an increasing rapidity, while people are losing the familiarity the old institutions, that brought them up, institutions like religion, family, national identity, and conventional jobs in the rural society.

Friends what if emigration is bi-directional – Village to Cities and Cities to Villages. What if the government focuses    on developing cities, towns, villages, municipality, panchayats or any economic centers for that matter, equally all around its geography? What if people should get employment in the economic center closer to their hometown?

When that happens, ladies and gentleman, we will not lose another protagonist on a railway level crossing.

Over to you Mr. Toastmaster!