India, United By Blood : Pune Stands  Up For Communal Harmony

This year, the country celebrates the 75th Anniversary of one of the most glorious chapters of our Freedom Struggle, the Quit India Movement, that was launched on August 9, 1942. Our freedom struggle has been an epic example of unity in diversity. We have centuries old tradition of harmonious integration of various streams of human civilisation of the world comingling into what is now known as the Indian culture. To demonstrate this unity in diversity and communal harmony, a nationwide campaign is being organised.

As part of this nationwide campaign, we in Pune organised a day long Blood Donation Campaign on 13th August 2017. The slogan for campaign is “India, United by Blood: Share It, Don’t spill it”. The blood donation was jointly organised by Lokayat, Socialist Party(India), SM Joshi Socialist Foundation, Swaraj Abhiyan, Shaheen Friend’s Circle and All India Insurance Employees Association (Pune Unit). Government’s Sasoon District General Hospital’s blood bank was engaged for collection of the blood.   To garner publicity posters were put up in colleges and public spaces, email, phone, social media were used as well as personal contacts were used. Activists of Lokayat had decorated the place of the camp very beautifully to convey the message of the campaign. Camp was inaugurated by Retd. Wing Commander Abhay Joshi(S. M. Joshi Socialist Foundation), Alka Joshi(Lokayat), Ibrahim Khan(Swaraj Abhiyan). Activist of Lokayat’s cultural team sang various relevant songs.

The blood donation camp was visited by around 125 people for donation. Out of which 50 donations happened. The collection was at par with other similar events. The sad part was that most of the  girls who came forward to donate blood could not do it  as most of them(more than 90%) were unfit for donation as they had low Haemoglobin and/or were underweight. The patriarchy is the reason of sufferings of girls and their under performance.