There’s no logic to survival, beyond the realm of accidental choices, or the presence of a supreme force orchestrating our lives, depending on your personal line of belief. Ask all those who miraculously escaped the terror attacks and warded off death by mere seconds entirely on account of random decisions that somehow took them away from the war zones at the Taj and Oberoi-Trident hotels or kept them safe even in the face of extreme danger. Others paid the ultimate price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It’s only at times like these that we take a pause from our robotic existence to reflect on our inherent vulnerability. And naturally, it frightens us. For a long time to come, many of us will be looking over our shoulder wherever we go and will never feel safe no matter how much reassuring rhetoric flies around. We already know that our political system inspires absolutely no confidence, although we now have renewed faith in our security forces and brave police officers. Yes, the very same who, until days ago were being maligned for their communal bias, but were the first to go in and face the fire with their pathetic safety equipment.
Our politicians, on the other hand, are treading the thin line now it seems, and one hopes it is they, and no one else (especially not innocent citizens), who bear the brunt of the public backlash. Maharashtra’s chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s single largest achievement in office so far has been to hold on to his chair for as long as he has managed. He is, arguably, the least effective chief minister this state has ever known and it boggles the mind to imagine that such an uninspiring man is at the helm of affairs in times of crisis. Home Minister Shivraj Patil believes nothing that happens in the country has any reflection on his role as Home Minister, and hence, he can’t really be held accountable for such frequent and sustained terror attacks in several different cities. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hasn’t been able to assuage the citizens with his muted rhetoric summoning the ISI Chief to Delhi. L K Advani keeps threatening to scream POTA, POTA , and only just stops himself. Narendra Modi goes around making a nuisance by meddling around in Mumbai when we all know it didn’t take any terror attacks to eliminate thousands of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Raj Thackeray, meanwhile, has either been hiding at home, or lauding the brave ‘Marathi’ policemen who lost their lives in the gun battles. The rest can go to hell for they’ve no business defending lives on his ancestral territory. Already, various politicians have put up hoardings around Mumbai saluting the policemen who lost their lives in the encounter – for a change, we don’t see their own smug mug shots plastered all over these unauthorized publicity hoardings.
We Mumbaikars have lived with the threat of terror for nearly two decades now, apart from innumerable other equally ominous situations like say, the annual rains or overcrowded public transport, or rash driving. Trains and buses have been targets of terror attacks at regular intervals. We all know that the country’s largest city is totally ill-equipped for crisis management of any sort and after each successive emergency situation, we’ve heard hollow promises from two-faced politicians, riding on the belief that people will forget all about what happened and get on with their lives in a matter of days. We’ve always proved them right by not asking questions, by not raising our voice, by not coming together towards a constructive citizens’ initiative to make the system accountable to us and not just in times of crisis, and actually getting on with our lives as though what has happened may never be repeated, or in fact, doesn't concern us at an individual level at all. It is up to us to make our elected representatives, the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the media accountable for the way they function, because everything they do, does impact our everyday lives in some way. If we, the educated and privileged don't do it, who will?
Lighting a candle in the window is merely another variation of the tokenism we’ve seen from our political brass. For the candle is sure to burn down long before the scars and the wounds of the hundreds wounded and bereaved even begin to heal.
3 comments:
Last week Mumbai witnessed horrible acts of violence and showed how savage human beings can become. Close to 200 people died because of senseless violence and this could happen in any part of the world. But what makes this whole episode even more painful was the reaction of the citizenry of India. Yes there were failures at multiple levels. Our intelligence agencies had no information that an attack of this scale would be launched in the commercial capital of India. Our police machinery is riddled with a range of problems starting with seriously outdated equipment, lack of training to deal with anything more than street fights, political interference and corruption. The initial response was amateurish and sluggish. The police and marine commandos acted bravely and did the best they could. However we as a city do not have an emergency action plan. The police are trained to tackle day to day law and order issues and when something of this scale happens they respond in the same manner. Even our most elite commando squads are woefully ill-equipped and ill-prepared to fight an attack of this type. A lot has already been said about how the NSG lost precious hours because they don’t have a dedicated plane stationed at their base. And the less said about our elected officials the better.
The biggest failure in what happened however is ours. We have become desensitized to everything that happens around us. We don’t rise up and create a grass roots movement to change anything. Every time such an incident happens we express our outrage, blame our politicians, wax eloquently about how media is only concerned about TRP ratings and then in a few days get back to our old life and old habits. We are the ones that elect politicians but don’t demand anything of them. We are the ones that bribe bureaucrats so that we get our passports done quickly. We are the ones that refuse to stand in line and wait our turn anywhere-be it at the airports, or in the passport office. It is hard to fight against a bureaucracy for every right and privilege of ours and so we take the stance that we have more important things to do than to deal with this. And because other things in life are “more” important we turn a blind eye, pay a little money and get our work done. Tax collection in India is abysmal and just the other day I heard Simi Gerewal encourage the people of Mumbai to stop paying their taxes completely. Is that going to fix the mess we are in? Every step of the way we are violating some law and taking advantage of some loophole in the system and yet we expect our system to function flawlessly. We don’t want to be taken to task for bribing officials, spitting on the road, watching pirated films but we want the officials who take the bribes to be held accountable, we want clean roads and we want our film makers to make better films.
I have read countless blogs and analysis blaming Pakistan, criticizing the media coverage, lamenting about the political apathy and our military response to the horrible attacks last week. But I think it is time we take some responsibility for what happens in our lives, its time someone extols us to sacrifice something and do our part.
Meenal, I couldn't agree with you more! It's a malaise of our times that we want a comfortable and secure life, but aren't prepared to make any sacrifices for it. We won't ask questions, we won't fight the system and just like the Congress has found scapegoats to sacrifice (a meaningless act, in my opinion), we look for instant gratification in the form of some useless action -- deriding politicians, lighting candles, organising morchas, writing blogs. But we won't even declare our income, pay honest taxes, follow traffic rules, treat those who work under us with respect, refrain from paying bribes and live with an active conscience. You're right, just as we deserve the trashy cinema we get, we deserve people like Sonia and Rahul Gandhi (or alternately, Advani and Narendra Modi) to lead our blind nation because we ourselves abuse our democracy in every way we can.
How many of the demonstrators who took to the streets in the last couple of days haven't bribed cops, government officials, evaded taxes, watched pirated movies, or indeed broken some law or the other is some small way? I'd guess not one! How many of us speak out against corruption, poverty, inequality and every kind of human violation in our ordinary lives? Nobody does.
So, the question is, how do we differentiate between our sins and those committed by our equally human politicians?
...please where can I buy a unicorn?
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