Children First Party of India launched On October 7, the first shot of what promises to be a protracted war for the hearts and minds of the Indian people was fired at a sparingly attended media conference at the Press Club, Bangalore. The Children First Party of India (CFPI), registered by the Election Commission of India — promoted by your editors after a long and arduous process spread over a year — on August 7, was publicly proclaimed. We have begun a national campaign to enroll 100 million primary members to mobilise a mighty army to lead the betrayed people of free India out of the wilderness of neta-babu socialism, which has reduced the vast majority of citizens to humiliating poverty, ignorance and beggary. The body of evidence testifying to the beggared status of this high-potential nation is overwhelming. By every yardstick — food intake, clothing, shelter, public education and healthcare, corruption, ease of doing business — India, which less than 400 years ago generated 20 percent of global GDP, is bottom ranked among the world’s 20 worst performing economies. And perhaps the most shameful statistics of all are that 46 percent of India’s 158 million hapless children under five years age suffer severe malnutrition, and 53 percent of children drop out of dysfunctional government schools before completing elementary (class VIII) education. While the public is numbed into acceptance, the Congress party led by three generations of under-qualified leaders which has inflicted untold misery upon the population, claims credit for partially curing the sins of its own making. Meanwhile, unmindful of the bloody history of the partition of India in 1947, the opposition BJP is hell-bent upon releasing the virus of communalism into the country’s charged environment. Implicit in the nomenclature of CFPI and its tagline ‘Let’s Save Generation Next’ is an admission that it’s too late to save the first generation of independent India’s children, but through urgent implementation of the plans and policies outlined in the party’s manifesto, it may be possible to save the next. Although this is the core objective of the party which gives top priority to executing a detailed lib-lab-lav project to equip all 1.40 million schools countrywide with a library, laboratory and lavatories within 12 months, CFPI is not a single issue party. The party’s comprehensive manifesto (see www.childrenfirst.in) details a strategy to reduce gender crimes by 75 percent within a year; legislate Anna Hazare’s Jana Lok Pal Bill in toto; urgently legislate comprehensive police and justice system reforms; freeze defence expenditure; resolve the long-festering Kashmir dispute while negotiating Indo-China border issues; drasti-cally reform agriculture by integrating it with industry; and release the entrepreneurial drive of Indian business. All these initiatives are not only possible, but imperative to save Generation Next. Our appeal is to all right-thinking people, and especially the nation’s 120 million youth voting for the first time next year, to register as CFPI members. Together it is possible to build a new Second Republic and realise the noble aspirations of…
