Abundance of anything makes it cheap. One thing that is abundant in our country is life! Too many people! If I reflect back on some conversations that I overheard during my childhood, elder women would talk about having a house full of kids just in case some die. The logic being, a few are going to get bumped off anyways, because of what ever reason - disease, accident, natural calamity, social unrest etc. and hence it is advisable to have more. I guess it got burned into the collective psyche of the society that it is OK if a few die. Reaction of the society to people dying is like shrugging the shoulders and carrying on with the task at hand. We have become numb to such news/ incidents. Some societies try to take on the adversities head on and overcome them or build defenses against them, so that everyone has a higher probability of survival. We as a society seems to have taken the other route, which is of producing more and there by ensure that some survive, even if the average probability of survival of each individual is much lower than some other societies.
People die on poorly laid out roads and because of lax enforcement of traffic rules .Too bad, we are too many and not enough roads, so it is OK if a few die! Children die in overcrowded school buses. Well, it is OK, if that happens once in a while, by putting kids in a school bus like sardines in a can, we lower the transportation cost. Illicit liquor gets made, sold and consumed, people die, who cares. These poor folks who buy this cheap liquor are anyways too many and who cares if a few die! Khap Panchayats give diktats, run parallel courts, pass death sentence, execute those sentences. Hush, that is a taboo subject. How can we go against our superior social practices, which have been handed down to us thru' the ages and have come from God or one of his representatives. Girl child is killed in the womb, no one gives a shit. If it happens in the family then it was such a necessity, if it happens somewhere else, oh! such a social evil! How could they do it, animals! Women, an object to use and abuse, made for pleasure, it is the men who have higher calling in life. Women just happened to be there! It is a different matter that it is the men who line up by millions to seek blessings of goddesses, for good fortune and prosperity.
It is not just the police that is responsible for what happened to that beautiful, innocent girl in Delhi. We all are! Society is rotting, morality is at its lowest. Morality in a society just does not go down in an instance. It happens over a few decades. This incident is another in a series of such incidents, which tells the trend morality has taken in our society. Our education system, both formal and informal has failed us. Mothers, fathers don't teach their sons the limits. Schools don't talk about relationships, respect for other humans - men and women, humbleness. In fact, quite the opposite, schools and educational institutes teach about competition, about surviving in a dog eat dog situation, about the importance of each mark, as one mark less can leave you behind, far behind, about the fact that for you to succeed you have to defeat others. In our country it is either ultra competitive environment or there is no education at all.
Sare jahan se accha hindustan hamara....sounds like a joke!
