HEMA Malini who won her seat in the Lok Sabha from Mathura unaccountably trained her guns on widows from West Bengal and Bihar crowding Vrindaban which is part of her constituency. Widows in Vrindaban live in absolute hell. Several poor widows live in Mathura and Varanasi as well. They have been there for years as they are cast out of society. The sweaty gloom of their lives has been described in the film, ‘Water’. Presumably Hema Malini has seen it. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that he is India’s pradhan sevak. Hema Malini has shown unexpected arrogance. To her widows crowding Vrindaban are eyesores. They do not evoke her compassion. She tried to cover up her faux pas saying that she meant widows should not be despatched to Vrindaban by their relatives in order to shake off their burden. But why did she refer specifically to Bihar and West Bengal which indicated regional chauvinism? She seems to be unaware of the Supreme Court’s directive that widows should be he helped out of their sorry plight.
In fact, some widows from Vrindaban had approached Narendra Modi for the alleviation of their distress soon after he assumed the office of Prime Minister. At present, 3700 mostly illiterate widows of Vrindaban avail of the UP government’s social welfare schemes. Widows have the right to settle wherever they like. True, many of them are forced to be sex workers but Hema Malini should know what leads to it. She could be expected to cooperate with the state government and NGOs to save them from their sad plight. Their number which is estimated to be 40,000 shows the extent of the problem. The woman MP would do well to see these widows live in dignity instead of being critical.
