Just this morning, I saw a news item that wrung my heart in despair. A grand father died of massive heart attack on hearing that his grandson had fallen into an open man hole! The child is yet to be spotted in the drain even after twenty four hours! It will be a miracle if the child is still alive! God willing he will be!
What a needless loss of life! An average Indian immediately will pounce with a thousand questions.
Why should there be an open man hole in the first place?
Why did the corporation leave it open?
Why did the public (not including the questioner) not inform the corporation?
Why did the child's parents let the child play 'near' the manhole?
and so on and so forth.
None of the questions matter, a life has been lost and another one is hanging in balance of hope and faith!
It has become a general Indian attitude at all levels to think that a problem is never our problem unless it directly affects us!
I'm sure the average citizen would have seen the manhole open and probably it was open for even days on end. "Corporation would close it!" we would have told ourselves! or we would have even ranted it out at corrupt and inefficient corporation officials for their sloppy attitude towards work!
But its rare when an average citizen endeavors to close the manhole! Yuck! who would touch it! Even the supreme court has declared that human beings cannot be used to get into man holes! we would say pulling a ruling out of context to our defence.
The moment we are affected, the government is to blame!
Even enterprising individuals are cut down by the average Indian! The other day a truck was parked in the main road obstructing the view of the main road in such a way that the smaller street joining the main road would not have a clear view of the on coming traffic before it joined the main road. When I walked by and told the truck driver to move his truck he says
"How does it affect you? move on.. "!
When I was riding a bus one day, a pick pocket was picking the pocket of a foreigner who was on the same bus and I happened to see it. I tried warning the foreigner to move away , which he did. But the pick pocket showed a big knife and threatened to attack me should I raise alarm and I did not and he got away!
Women are being socially abused, molested in public transport and other such places and yet we do not have an uprising amongst women that says 'enough is enough'! They put up a stoic silence and delegate the problem to be foreign to their nuclear world until the day dawns when their own wards face a similar problem!
Even at work, when a worker sees a problem in the system, he does not act on it. When a water pipe is leaking in the faucet, it is the plumbers problem, its not my job to close the water supply to the faucet and inform the administration, let some one else do it.
There is a section of society that is constantly drawing attention to such problems who are being given a deaf year on most accounts. Let us take the simple case of making our country disabled friendly.
Very few places in the public infrastructure are disabled and elderly friendly! The central government has taken note of this and has slowly started incorporating this at basic level in their establishments. For instance the entrance to the chennai railway station has a ramp for wheel chair access or for the elderly to use! But beyond this, the trains and platforms themselves are not all that accessible for disabled!
If the government is taking small steps, the private establishments are nowhere in this. In a country that's bustling with development and a booming economy, hardly any private establishment today takes effort to make their place disabled friendly. Even the larger amongst these such as big malls or multiplexes have taken little effort to make their services disabled friendly. We can perhaps count with one hand such facilities in this part of the country!
There are many such places in Indian society that we seem to have this proverbial 'chalta hai' attitude or 'care a damn what happens to others' attitude that must change!
It is when this attitude of the public changes , it is when we look upon social problems as our own problems will this country improve.
Mahatma Gandhi said that "Be the change you wish to see in others.". I'm going to try sincerely. You should too!
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