Don’t deliver outside India quip Chicken neck syndrome

The chicken neck syndrome. The refusal to look beyond the Brahmaputra and the refusal on the part of successive Governments down the decades that the history of India is seriously lopsided with no mention of the people living to the east of the mighty Brahmaputra. Add a Nation of racists and bigots to whom the idea of India does not go beyond the physical attributes of what they see in their immediate environs and here lies the perfect recipe to victimise people who belong to a different race. This and the simple refusal to accord dignity to fellow humans are the main reasons why so many young people from the North East region of the great Indian Nation were singled out as corona, when  the virus first started spreading fast across the country. The reason ? People of the North East belong to the Mongoloid race and the coronavirus originated from China. So anyone with a physical resemblance or belonging to the same racial stock as the Chinese were deemed fit to be called corona. Making it all that more jocular is the fact that it is this same set of people who cried foul over racism  when a Black was beaten to death by a policeman some time back in the USA. Stories of how people from the North East were picked, bracketed within a social construct mentally worked up by those who champion the dowry system, untouchability, bride burning, dowry and called names ranging from momo, chinky, ching-chong Chinaman to corona and one gets a fair idea of where the North East stands in the scheme of things of majority of the people of India who live in the so call mainland. It was not for nothing why the Government of India went ahead and constituted the Bezbaruah Committee in 2014 after a young student from Arunachal Pradesh, Nido Tania was lynched by a group of people in Delhi all because he looked different and dressed different.
It is this mindset which was clearly visible in the reply given by e-retailer Flipkart that it does not deliver goods or items outside India, when a customer from Nagaland inquired why people in this North Eastern State are not getting their items delivered. No one doubts that the ‘don’t deliver outside India’ answer was a mistake, a gross error on the part of the employee who came out with such a reply to the question raised, but it was a clear reflection of how ignorant many of the people living in so called mainland India are. Add uncouth to the ignorance term and one here will see the typical man or woman who did not hesitate in stereotyping the people of North East, calling them corona when the virus had just landed in the country. That the North East region is amongst the least infected places by the virus is something which has refused to register in the consciousness of these elements who call themselves ‘educated Indians.’ And mind you, Mizoram in the North East is the only State in India which has not reported any COVID-19 death. The answer from Flipkart should be seen as the ideal opportunity for the BJP led NDA Government at New Delhi to come to the realisation that it will need more than changing the Look East Policy to Act East Policy, making it mandatory for Union Ministers to visit the North East region on rotation basis etc. The very reason why the dumb response from the Flipkart employee went viral on the social media should be seen in its entirety and it was nothing less than a symptomatic demonstration of where the North East stands in the consciousness of the people of India. Runs contrary to the idea of India as a Nation.