Not a long ago, we as a nation stood very firmly behind Damini and showed our righteous assertion on the justice for her. Damini had become a household name. Candle marches, peaceful protests, and other related happenings were common those days. These post rape incidents led us to believe that a nation, long suppressed, has, at last, started finding its utterance as once said by Nehru. But, alas, what is even more unfortunate is the fact that she slipped in periphery from the center stage within a month or so and we could not even realize that.
Similarly, we had come across numerous scams, rapes, murders and other breaking news. They all were not only considered very serious but also they invited numerous protests from some or other quarters of our country and society. They all seemed to shake the nation at the time they broke the news. But again we forgot to deliver. Again we could not realize that how one new incident suppressed the intensity of our protest for other incidents that preceded the latest.
In fact the amount of news, we are being fed these days, left us with no or very little time to think and make opinion on any one of these issues. Today, the basic problem with our public protest is not the absence of support but is our inability to focus on the right things at right time. Today, most of our opinion is formed by media trial. The nature of news and incidents is sequential and is so large that, otherwise preoccupied, middle and lower class mind hardly gets the time and energy to think beyond these major headlines.
Actually, we are interested only on the effect (any individual case) and do not take any pain in understanding the real cause (defective public policy) behind that effect. We only tend to focus on individual cases. And a nation, which protests for stand-alone cases like Damini, 2G, CWG etc, is bound to forget it if another case emerges. Consequently we tend to jump from one piece of news to another piece of news and in spite of such a huge uproar and protest, these scams continues to hit the national daily. And it is this context in which they say that "Public memory is very short”.
We need to understand that these scams would continue to emerge until we see the real reason behind these. And the real reason behind many of such news i.e. scams, rapes, public disarray etc. is nothing but the very bad public policies of our own democratically elected government. Thus, only by changing the government and switching the loyalty from one politician to another would not solve this real and more serious problem.
I often remember a quote “Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived” which aptly and rightly justifies why the man of today is being exploited by his ruler. But we must have to look beyond what seems to be obvious. We must rather protest for a serious systemic change. We don’t have to look towards our politician for everything. And moreover, why would our politician support us, at the first place, when they are very successfully and convincingly exploiting us using the current system? They would never support such protest demanding for systemic reformation as they all are status quoist.
Most of our public policies are socialistic in nature and that is their major defect and flaw. Under this socialistic environment, governmental monopoly and control on our mind and thought is so total and complete that we could hardly even think of revolting against the current systemic exploitation. We need those policies to be abolished which are reportedly proven to be the existential threat to our individual liberty. Today, India must fight for freedom from the big government. We, rather, need those policies which not only help us in curtailing the very antagonistic power of our government but also make our administration more transparent and accountable. Only then, we will be able to provide a truly liberal and eternally peaceful society to our coming generations.
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