Darpan letter · No. 2212 October 2026

Counted, not lost

On Mizoram’s decision to count every refugee in Census 2027, the RTI at twenty-one, the aspirant who feels like one roll number among lakhs, the Gītā’s promise that the one who sees is never lost, Śabarī’s welcome, and worship through one’s own work on a Monday morning

प्रिय साथी,

It is Monday. The weekend is over, the notebook is open again, and somewhere in the back of your mind is a number that every aspirant carries: how many lakh people will sit for the same examination. On some mornings that number makes you feel small, as if you were one roll number in a hall that never ends, and nobody would notice whether you studied today or not. This letter is for that feeling. Two stories in today’s magazine answer it better than any motivational video.

The first comes from Mizoram. For Census 2027 the State will count the refugees living in it, on a list kept separate from Indian citizens. As of August 20, 38,213 were registered: 29,575 from Myanmar, most of them Chins who came after the 2021 coup; 6,959 from Manipur, Kuki-Zomi people who fled the 2023 conflict; 1,679 from Bangladesh, Bawms who fled a military offensive in 2022. Local groups say the real number is over 60,000. Nobody will be forced to give an Aadhaar number, and even the 78,442 people deleted from the draft electoral rolls will be counted. Think about what this means. These are people who lost their homes, and some of them have every reason to hide from anyone carrying a form. Yet a State has decided that they will not be invisible. A person who is counted can be planned for: a school seat, a vaccine, a ration. To be counted is the first step of being cared for.

The second story is about the opposite duty: not the State counting the people, but the people being able to see the State. The Right to Information Act turns twenty-one today. Its Section 4 asks every public authority to publish information on its own, suo motu, so that citizens need not even ask. The Hindu found that only 1,446 of 2,303 public authorities, 62.7%, filed their transparency audits for 2024-25, though the number has roughly doubled since 2020-21. The law is not yet fully obeyed. But remember where it came from: ordinary people, many of them poor villagers, who insisted that they had a right to see how public money was spent on them. A democracy is a place where the citizen and the State both refuse to let each other disappear.

Now come back to the hall with lakhs of candidates. You feel unseen. But notice what the Gītā says about seeing. In the sixth chapter Kṛṣṇa says: यो मां पश्यति सर्वत्र सर्वं च मयि पश्यति। तस्याहं न प्रणश्यामि स च मे न प्रणश्यति॥ — yo māṃ paśyati sarvatra sarvaṃ ca mayi paśyati, tasyāhaṃ na praṇaśyāmi sa ca me na praṇaśyati — “Whoever sees Me everywhere and sees everything in Me, I am never lost to that person, and that person is never lost to Me” (Bhagavad Gītā 6.30). Read the second line slowly. Na praṇaśyāmi: I am not lost. Na praṇaśyati: he is not lost. The promise runs in both directions. The one who learns to see the sacred in everyone is never lost in a crowd, because there is no longer any such thing as a mere crowd. Each face in it is a person, and so is yours.

This is not only spiritual comfort; it is a very practical way to study. The aspirant who sees the other candidates only as competitors feels small and anxious among them. The aspirant who sees them as fellow travellers, each carrying a family’s hope as you carry yours, stops feeling erased by their number. Your answer copy will be read by a human being, one page at a time. Your interview board will look at you, not at the lakhs. The examination itself, for all its size, is a process that counts each candidate separately. You are not lost in it.

But perhaps your fear is different. Perhaps it is not the crowd but the feeling that you have nothing to show: no famous college, no coaching in Delhi, no English that flows, no family name that opens doors. Here Tulsīdās gives one of the most beautiful scenes in all Indian literature. When Śrī Rāma comes to the hut of Śabarī, an old forest woman who has waited for him for years, she is overwhelmed and says she is not worthy. Rāma answers: कह रघुपति सुनु भामिनि बाता। मानउँ एक भगति कर नाता॥ — “Listen, good lady,” said Raghupati, “I recognise only one kinship, the kinship of devotion.” And then: जाति पाँति कुल धर्म बड़ाई। धन बल परिजन गुन चतुराई॥ भगति हीन नर सोहइ कैसा। बिनु जल बारिद देखिअ जैसा॥ — “Caste and community, family, standing and prestige, wealth, strength, relatives, talent and cleverness — a person who has all these but lacks devotion looks like a cloud without water” (Rāmcharitmānas, Araṇya Kāṇḍ, before Dohā 35).

Look at that list. It names nearly everything the world uses to rank people: birth, family, money, power, connections, even talent and cleverness. And Rāma sets every item aside in favour of one thing that anyone can have: sincere, steady devotion. For you, devotion is not only prayer. It is the daily, honest offering of effort to a goal larger than yourself. That cannot be inherited or bought. A girl studying by a kerosene lamp in a village and a boy in an expensive coaching centre begin from very different places, but in that one quality they stand exactly equal, and that is the quality that carries a person through years of preparation.

How do you offer that devotion on an ordinary Monday? The Gītā answers in its last chapter: यतः प्रवृत्तिर्भूतानां येन सर्वमिदं ततम्। स्वकर्मणा तमभ्यर्च्य सिद्धिं विन्दति मानवः॥ — yataḥ pravṛttir bhūtānāṃ yena sarvam idaṃ tatam, svakarmaṇā tam abhyarcya siddhiṃ vindati mānavaḥ — “By worshipping, through one’s own work, the One from whom all beings arise and by whom all this is pervaded, a human being attains fulfilment” (Bhagavad Gītā 18.46). Svakarmaṇā: through your own work. Not someone else’s path, not the topper’s timetable copied from a video, but your work, done in your conditions. Today that might be one chapter of polity and one answer written by hand. Done sincerely, that is worship.

Let this make you proud of the civilisation you belong to. Long before modern ideas of equal citizenship, our poets placed a forest woman’s devotion above every claim of birth and wealth, and our oldest book of ethics promised that the one who sees the divine in all is never lost. Today a small north-eastern State, with a 40-member Assembly, has chosen to count every refugee it shelters, people the Mizos see as their own kin, and a law born of ordinary citizens’ demand for information is twenty-one years old. India does not always live up to its ideals, and the 37% of public authorities that filed no audit prove it. But the ideals are ours, and they are strong.

For your preparation. In GS2, Mizoram’s separate refugee list connects to India not being a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Article 21’s protection of every person, and the difference between the electoral roll, which asks who may vote, and the Census, which asks who lives here. RTI at twenty-one belongs in answers on transparency and accountability: Section 4(1)(b)’s sixteen categories of suo motu disclosure, the 62.7% audit figure, and the Supreme Court’s reading of the right to know into Article 19(1)(a) in Raj Narain (1975). In GS4, Gītā 6.30 opens an answer on empathy and equal regard for every citizen, the Śabarī passage an answer on non-discrimination and dignity in public service, and 18.46 an answer on work as duty. For the Essay paper, “To be counted is the beginning of being cared for” is a live theme.

And now about you. Before you start today’s first topic, do one small thing. Write your own name at the top of today’s page, and under it one line: what you will offer today through your own work. Then do it. In the evening, tick it. You will have counted yourself, and that is a kind of dignity no rank list can give or take away. If you know another aspirant who has gone quiet, send them a message today. Sometimes the simplest way to tell someone they are not lost is to show that you noticed.

A census counts people so that none of them disappears. A law on information lets people see their government so that it cannot disappear behind files. And a single verse of the Gītā promises that the one who sees rightly is never lost and never loses. You are not a roll number. You are a person on a path, seen and counted. Begin the week like one.

— आपका साथी, दर्पण

Sources: Bhagavad Gītā 6.30 · Rāmcharitmānas, Araṇya Kāṇḍ, chaupāīs before Dohā 35 · Bhagavad Gītā 18.46