Yet another clarification…

My previous blog received a number of interesting comments, both here and through other forums. Many commentators seem to have misread my article completely or got sidetracked into peripheral issues that were not the focus of the blog. I suspect that was mostly because people simply don’t have the attention-span to fully read and digest such a verbose article! I apologize and I hope I can give a to-the-point summary here.

In that blog, I was only bemoaning the dichotomy and apathy that generally seems to pervade our every day existence as citizens of India. The point I was trying to make was we become all belligerent when there is the slightest hint of an “external” hand, while we don’t seem to care as much about injustices happening everyday in virtually every part of the country. I hope to clarify with a few real and pertinent examples.

While people rightly condemned the 7-11 bomb blasts, 15-20 times that many people die every year on that same Mumbai suburban rail network because of the lack of proper fencing around the tracks, over-crowding on the trains, etc. Why don’t we hold our ministers and governments accountable for such mismanagement or think of alternate means of reducing the congestion?

I am sure virtually every Indian with even a basic internet access would have received a forwarded email that talks about how proud we should be about “facts” such as 38% of Doctors in the US are from India, 36% of NASA employees are Indians, 34% of Microsoft employees are of Indian origin, etc. among other things. (For those unlikely few who haven’t seen the email, the text is available here.) Though I have no clue about the authenticity of the statistics quoted (it is often mentioned that they were published in a German magazine!), I am sure there are a substantial number of Indians (at least a few million) who lead very comfortable lives in the US and other “developed” countries. And to a man or woman, if anyone ever asks about problems in India, “corruption” will be right on top of a long list of woes that afflict India and most of us will even talk very eloquently about it! Given all that, I wonder why only about 6000 people thought it worthwhile to sign the online petition protesting the proposed amendment to the Right to Information (RTI) Act, which would have rendered it virtually toothless despite the fact that RTI act happens to be the one effective tool that the common Indian public has to fight bureaucratic corruption. I can’t accept that there wasn’t enough awareness about the issue because there was widespread coverage in Indian media (print and electronic) and also there were a number of emails that were circulated. (I personally emailed about 250 people). Can’t these “oh-so-busy/intelligent” engineers and doctors spare a couple of minutes for something that is very important for our country? The common refrain is, “All this is pointless. Nothing will ever come out of it.” Then, why do we keep complaining about the gazillion things that are wrong with India?

It is not my intention to sermonize as if I am the perfect “Indian” who cares a lot about his country and questions every wrong that is committed. I am also equally guilty of many such acts borne out of apathy/disinterest/a defeatist attitude. I’ll give just one example. On my first trip back to India after coming to the US, one of my friends died in a tragic drowning accident right in front of my eyes in a place called Meghadaat near Bangalore. We (5/6 other friends and I) later learnt that the particular stretch of Cauvery was indeed very dangerous. We went there just because our driver said this place was closer to the place we had originally planned to visit and there wouldn’t have been sufficient time to visit the latter. We were devastated and we ranted about how there weren’t any warning signs posted in any language other than Kannada (which none of us could read) and the closest police station was about an hour away. Even the “so-called” warning signs in Kannada were just some random-looking scribbling on rocks. I had a million ideas at that time like putting up sign-boards by paying out of our pockets, petitioning the government to set up emergency rescue posts nearby, etc. to make sure that such a thing doesn’t happen again. But, I doubt any of us ever followed up on that and did something constructive with our anger/sadness these past 5 years.

That apathetic attitude is rightly brought out by the seemingly care-free youths of Rang De Basanti. I think most of us are happy living our own blissful lives, complaining about this and that among friends/colleagues but never taking any concrete action to fix the problems. We don’t seem to value life enough unless somebody we know personally is involved (as pointed by an anonymous commentator here). The previous blog was a plea (to myself and other like-minded Indians) to be more pro-active in tackling India’s woes and not go bonkers only when things like the mumbai train blasts happen. I believe our anger at Pakistan and terrorists across the border would be better put to use if we focused more on our internal problems like corruption, rampant malnourishment, lack of drinking water and proper sanitation, unavailability of basic medical facilities, poor status of women, etc. Though I do believe in the spirit of the "re-born" youths of Rang De Basanti, I don't think such simplistic, violent actions will achieve much either. There are more effective non-violent direct approaches like the Chipko Movement, filing PILs, increased participation of youth in politics (as championed in Yuva (Aayudha Ezhuthu in Tamizh)), etc . The afore-mentioned RTI act actually originated from some non-violent protests to demand minimum wage by some workers in Rajasthan. (This interview of Aruna Roy, a former IAS officer who pioneered the struggle to get the law enacted, is enlightening.)

The title character in one of my all-time favorite TV serials, Chanakya, uses the slogan “Uthishta Bharatha” (translated as “Rise, O sons of India”) to encourage the youth to fight Alexander’s invasion. Do we need another Chanakya to arouse us from our stupor in order to think about problems other than terrorism?

P.S: As far as Israel is concerned, I mentioned it just because I saw many articles on the web drawing parallels between India and Israel. The Arab- Israeli conflict is way too complicated to comprehend and argue about as a peripheral issue like I did in my previous blog. But, I would still maintain that across the border punitive action of the kind employed by Israel (even assuming it is right) cannot possibly work in India for a variety of reasons, some of which I have outlined in the article. Now that I am writing on this topic, I would like to recommend the movie Paradise Now, an oscar-nominated, moving tale about two would-be Palestinian suicide bombers and the human side of the conflict. An argument between the non-violent female protagonist Suha and one of the would-be suicide bombers, Khalid towards the end of the movie is especially worth watching as she explains how Palestinian bombings and kidnappings leaves them without a moral high ground to criticize Israel's occupation.