Are We Failing As Citizens Of This Country?

After I wrote about the “Ugly side of Gurgaon” a lot of my friends wanted to know, what I was planning to do next. An incident such as this cannot be dismissed as a one-off occurrence. It happens every day, people face worse and we will continue to be victimized if we accept is as our karma.

Pawan puts forth some valid observations. It’s an ugly picture he has painted but it’s not far from the truth.

Today, I read your experience with the police. I am sorry you had to go through it.

And then I examined my own feelings about it. I am angry. And I am very angry, because when I read your account, I didn't feel angry. I only nodded along, thinking, "business as usual in our country."

The shocking bit, the painful bit, the irritating bit, the positively galling bit is the apathy towards the system that exists within me and I assume, by extension, the rest of the country (and a majority of those comments on your blog does nothing but reinforce that view).

I wonder why? I can perhaps excuse the uneducated, illiterate people who have to survive despite the system (on 28 rupees a day), and perhaps must make compromises. But what excuse do the educated, well-off among us have? Why do we stop at twitter-trends, and armchair outrage?



Is it that surviving in a country of 1.2bn, where each one of us has to fend for himself, has made us so selfish that we refuse to look beyond issues that don’t immediately affect us? Is it because (at the risk of sounding like Greg Chappell) we have forgotten to stand up for our rights since the British rule? Is it because we are too adaptable? Or is it because we like to feel victimized, and blame something that is not in our control. That feeling of martyrdom that’s so addictive!

Maybe it is all of the above. Or maybe it is none of this. I do not know.

What I do know is, whatever it is, we deserve what we’re getting. Why? Because we haven't done anything about it. We deserve the leaders we have. We deserve the netas that rule us. Because we let them. We deserve this “system” because we are not changing it.

And I am tired. Tired of blaming others. Crying about the problems. I'd like solutions. I want to make a difference. I have already written about how conveniently we forget that we ARE the bloody system, and for the system to change, we must change. I however, struggle to see how to make that happen? How to keep up the crusade even if it is only a single-person crusade against the apathy that infects us so. To make a tangible difference to what the problem might be.Have you ever thought of what we can do to combat this, beyond making it trend on twitter? Have you done anything? Do you have ideas? Is there something that you need people or help with? Can we take the next step after pointing out what is wrong, and actually fix it?

As a "known blogger", is that a question you can ask, and find answers to?

I realize this comes across as accusatory. Believe me, it isn't. I am not glossing over or belittling the anguish you went through. We've all been through stuff like this. I have. But it would be nice if we could do something about it, so this is the first and last time we go through this thing. It would be nice if this post didn’t end up being an ironic reminder of EXACTLY what we’re failing to do.

Pawan apportions his time between real and fictional worlds. In the real world, he pretends to be an IT consultant and wastes the remainder of his time in worlds of science fiction. He likes to reflect on the futility of existence and pontificate on things he doesn’t know much about. He occasionally blogs at @ http://pawanrajs.wordpress.com.