By Col Sudhir Rana (Retd)
At the outset, I must confess that I am not a qualified person to pontificate. But I am a senior citizen and these are my common sense observations. This exercise is just to examine what ails us as a society.
It is said that man is a social animal. It is therefore imperative that he lives in a society. The society becomes good or bad depending upon behaviour of its citizens. A society becomes one when it is based on a common idea which keeps it glued into one entity. The idea might be a single race, geographic location, religion, ideology or language, etc. The society is not based upon its riches or resources. A society is essentially based upon equality of its citizens, meritocracy, humane values and fair play. A solid and good society is made by solid, honest, disciplined and compassionate citizens who are ready to contribute more than they get from that society. Therefore every citizen should have a sense of duty towards improvement of society to the best of his/her ability. That duty starts from every household and school, city, state and so on. The betterment of the society is not just the responsibility of the politicians and bureaucrats, but also of its citizens. In a good society, presence of politicians/ administration is almost invisible and the citizens many times don’t even know them.
So what are attributes of a good society and how does our Indian society perform? By no means is this an exhaustive list, one can add or subtract things according to his or her understanding. Let us discuss some of them, one by one.
- Equality of all citizens
- Duties and rights
- Mutual respect
- Discipline
- Unifying factor
- Sense of service and contribution of members
- Fair play
- Human rights
- Culture and education
- Quality of leaders
Let us examine Indian society on basis of this criteria. Let me be clear this criteria is not exhaustive and we are free to add more criteria to understand the nature of our society. The idea is to introspect as to where we stand on these parameters.
- Equality of citizens: Does our society treat its citizens as equal stake holders or does it treat them differently? Are the rich treated the same as poor members of our society? Are all religions, castes and linguistic and geographical areas given the same importance or not? Are all skilled or unskilled people given similar respect? It is obvious we are not in a happy position on this scale.
- Duties and rights of citizens: Are the duties of our citizens well defined in India and are they insisted upon by the leaders? Are citizens sensitised and educated about their rights and duties in schools, workplace and homes? If not, than we have to work towards correcting the situation. Are we diligent in electing our representatives in panchayat, zila boards, state assemblies and parliament? Do we have efficient institutions like ombudsmen, effective organisations that keep a check on government and machinery as watchdogs? Does society make efforts to take care of elderly and especially abled citizens and children? What do we do to educate our present and future citizens about their duties towards our society? Have we created incentives for good behaviour and effective deterrence for bad?
- Mutual respect and ettiquette: What is respected most in a society, generally reflects the evolution of that society. The citizens of an evolved society, respect themselves, their parents, teachers, leaders and their nation. They dress and behave properly at home, public places and workplace. Self-respecting people extend similar courtesy to fellow beings. This respect is reflected in following rules, forming queues, waiting patiently at the traffic crossing, speaking gently and listening other points of view with an open mind. In a good society, people respect others and are courteous. They help the poor, needy and weak. In less developed society, members display unruly behaviour, bullying, not following norms and trampling over the weak. They behave rudely and do not respect rules. A few examples like honking, loud talking, spitting, urinating and defecating in public places reflects poorly on us. Road rage, rude behaviour, breaking of rules are symptoms of a sick society. In India you can often see arrogance and bad attitude displayed by the rich and powerful. Everybody wants preferential treatment. It is considered OK to insult institutions like the army, police, doctors and public servants even by our political masters. In a good society, intellectuals and nation builders like teachers, doctors, scientists, defence services and technocrats are respected more than the politicians and the bureaucrats. In India, generally the reverse is true. Here qualified engineers and doctors dream of becoming bureaucrats. It is painful to see celebrities promoting harmful products like gutka and liqour for monetary considerations. You can see several scions and sycophants having a bad attitude towards common citizens. Therefore, wrong lessons are drawn by the younger generation. They learn that it is OK to bully and it is OK to become successful even by adopting wrong means. One can only imagine what harm we are doing for the future of our society.
- Discipline: Discipline is an essential attribute for a person, institution and society to improve its future. It increases self-worth, better time management and more productivity. Adherence to timelines and promise, increases brand value of the person and the institution. Needless to say that we have a lot of work pending in this area. “Chalta hai” attitude should go. Several factories and public undertakings suffer from this syndrome. If we want to move ahead, we will have to discipline ourselves and our society. We should be equally stern in dealing with law breakers. Justice should be swift and fair, without any discrimination. Does the weak and average citizen get equal fair deals and justice in our society? If we look at our jails, what is the proportion of different socio-economic status of the inmates? Do the rich and powerful people escape punishment? How many poor people are kept in jails for long periods while awaiting trial, as compared to the rich and the powerful? Do the weak have access to affordable justice? If not then what corrective measures can be taken?
- Unifying factor: When we look at developed nations, we see that above everything they have an identity or a trait common in all its citizens. It may be a single race, religion, language or a geographical location. Unfortunately, despite being one of the oldest civilisations, we do not have a single unifying idea on which majority of our citizens agree. As a result, despite having many beautiful cultures and rich languages, we have not been able to find a single idea on which all Indians unite. On the other hand, we have multiple issues which divide us. It may be region, caste, colour of skin or facial features. It is indeed surprising that despite so many fault lines, we stumble on. What a change of pace for progress it would be, if we try to encourage unifying ideas instead of the divisive ones.
- Sense of service and contribution of members: In advanced societies, every member tries to contribute and have a sense of belonging to society. You respect and feel proud of the institutions and cultures. To know what our attitude is towards our society, we have to see how we respect and love our symbols of nationhood. Spitting in public places and hospitals, urinating in public, not giving respect to the national flag or national anthem, scratching and disfigurement of our heritage are few instances that comes to mind. We destroy our national property, governmental and public vehicles while protesting. We stone trains for fun and sadistic pleasures. We do not give way to ambulances and fire trucks. We need to change. We do not try to actively contribute freely where we can do so easily. Are we alert in recognising and encouraging good citizens and tax payers? If not, shouldn’t we look into it?
- Fair Play: All of us want to have best of care and amenities for ourselves. We want priority in everything as misplaced entitlement. But are we equally comfortable in extending similar privilege to others? Developed societies share while in not so good societies everything is grabbed by a few powerful people. Do some caste/ religion/ groups get preferential treatment in our society? If yes, we have to take corrective steps. Do the weak and average citizens get equal fair deals and justice in that society? Do the weak have access to affordable justice? If not then what corrective measures can be taken?
- Human rights: Are we alert towards safeguarding the rights of the weak, poor, marginalised and disabled members of the society? Do we make our roads, buildings, offices, airports, buses, trains and schools safe for especially abled folks? You see many such people struggling to negotiate stairs, cross roads or climb into buses. Are the rights of women and children given priority in our society? If the answer in no then we have to work towards improving their condition.
- Culture and education: Any decent society has rich culture and beautiful customs. Do we actively promote them? Or are we busy destroying what was beautiful due to mindless hatred? Where do our children get moral education? In schools or home or in religious places? If nowhere, then how can we become a decent society? Are the standards of education comparable with the standards of a developed nation? If not, then what are we doing about it? Nowadays, we have big school buildings with good infrastructure but faculty is poorly paid and is ill equipped and sometimes even poorly qualified for the job.
- Quality of leaders: There is a famous saying, ‘यथा राजा तथा प्रजा’, which means ‘as the king, so the subjects’ and in English it is called ‘Like father, like son’. The king or the leader is to his subjects like a father is to his children. He takes care of his subjects even at great personal cost. He does his best to take care of quality of life of his subject and mitigate their sufferings. He provides food, care and character through good effort and policies. You can see this as role of a father at home and a leader in society. It is just a matter of difference in scale. Authority exists only to serve. When leaders forget it societies collapse.
To conclude, when we look around us, we find that intellectual pygmies and immoral power seekers have confiscated power in their hands. The poor and honest have no say in the matters of society. A common person is at the mercy of the selfish, powerful and strong. They have no protection from corrupt law enforcement and ineffective justice delivery.
Is it not the time to stand up and start making efforts to improve our home?
