The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Saturday 22 February 2014

CHAI-WALLAHS PUSH FOR THEIR CHARTER OF DEMANDS

After a hugely successful conclave and an unprecedented expression of the Chai-wallah brotherhood, Chai-wallahs agreed to form a registered organisation to head the fight of the Chai-wallah social community. The process may take some time in completing the necessary legal formalities.

In the meantime, an apex body representing every geography and community of Chai-wallahs has been formed to push for immediate acceptance and implementation of the charter of demands prepared during the two-day conclave. The letter for the purpose has already been sent to the political parties.

Main demands of the charter are:



  1. Inclusion of Chai-wallahs as a separate social formation in the concerned official gazetteer of the Government of India
  2. Recognition of Chai-wallahs in official communication of the governments (states and the Union) and inclusion of Chai-wallahs in the linguistics annals
  3. Introduction of Chai-wallahs as a separate point of data collection in the Census of India records
  4. Recognition of Chai-wallahs as an economically weaker social group
  5. Formation of a governing authority to streamline the affairs of the Chai-wallahs community
  6. Empower the governing authority to issue a registration based identity card to the Chai-wallahs
  7. A separate policy for Chai-wallahs under the ambit of the policies to promote and protect interests of home-based small-scale business activities
  8. Regularisation of Chai stalls by registering the spaces they are operating at and ensuring that Chai-wallahs are not harassed by the extorting policemen
  9. Entitlement of financial aid to support the business of Chai-wallahs facing economic difficulties
  10. Subsidy for procuring Chai and sugar or provision of supply of subsidized Chai and sugar to the registered identity card holding Chai-wallahs under the Public Distribution System
  11.  Healthcare insurance for the registered Chai-wallahs
  12. Separate quota for the children of registered Chai-wallahs in the government run schools 
As already mentioned during the Conclave, the charter promises to support the votes to the political parties on the ‘first come’ basis.

Now, the ball is in court of the political parties and the BJP is running ahead of others by having the ‘first mover’ advantage with the ‘Chai Pe Charcha’ campaign.

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/