The Realm of Negativity

The newspapers, the news channels, the tabloids, the magazines and last but not the least- the human psyche have become a realm of negativity. Remember, the T- Bag of Prison Break mentioning about the Captivity of negativity- Well!! That's what I see now in the real world now.

Politically, if I see it, the government is a werewolf whereas the opposition is toothless tiger. Let alone the expectation of positivity from that arena. The news being thrown at us 24x7 have the news of all the bad things happening in this world. Human psyche has transformed and began to like this interference of negativity. It has become quite natural that we lean our attention to stuff that is negative, bad or gruesome.

Well! Good or bad is always relative. If we feel something is bad than it means we know what is good and indeed good exists! Mass do not want to see good and media, in a race to earn more money and survive, do not show good.

How does this system affect the country?
Well! Imagine a kid growing into a juvenile in this kind of environ- listening about the corrupt government, inefficient opposition, characterless society. This will manifest a very bad image of the country which is not so bad rather. Such youths will never loose any opportunity to leave this country behind, probably forever. So, we loose our own assets to somebody else.

Does that mean we should never see or show the bad aspects of the society?
Weight-age should differ. Positivity should have a major share. Letting the common people to take decisions about bad or good is novel idea. Youth should be mad to feel that it is not so bad to dwell here. After all, it is not so bad to be here!!

Looking at the cause not at the effect

The nation has again plunged into the streets with the same vigour and anger, if not less, as it had in the beginning of the year gone but for completely different reasons this time. Nation is outraged, angry, embarrassed after the recent rape and death of the medical student in Delhi. The political and judicial classes have reacted to the nation’s mood by taking many steps like setting up of Fast Track Courts for the speedy trials of rape cases, institutionalizing stricter punishments for the offenders, setting up hotline for the needy etc. But, as the days have gone by we are still reading about many other rape cases coming into light, many more victimized by the dreadful, inhuman act. Many victims have even tried to commit suicide.

Here, there is a need to pause and have a re-look at what exactly is going wrong and why the society is not kind to the fairer sex. TN has vowed to give death sentence (or in some cases chemical castration) to the rape offenders, so does this mean in coming year or so the rape cases will come down regularly in TN (if not drastically)? The point, here, is not that there should not be any strict punishment to the hideous crime committed. There should be, but, the point is that whether this would suffice or bring in any significant change? Such steps should be looked as short term implementations against the crime. There should be an approach that will look at the cause of such incidents rather than looking just at the effect. As Praveen Swami of The Hindu rightly notes in his article that there are many contexts ‘as possible keys to the production of India’s urban-male dysfunction’.

Case Studies

A system where there will be a detailed case study of the convicts of rape in the past will help in better understanding of the socio-economic background of offenders. A psychiatric analysis of the convicts to understand the psyche or mental condition may lead to clearer ideas in understanding the contexts better. Once the case studies are done, deductions can be made to understand what exactly is wrong with the male dominated society of India. These studies will not solve the problem in a snap but it will certainly provide the guiding light needed to walk towards the probable solution. Also these studies should have some statutory or legal backing or else it will be just another case study done by any NGO which never gets read, let alone, getting governmental recognition and implementation. With many men believing that the victims of rape invite the crime on themselves showing them the mirror through these studies becomes important.

More visibility

Indian women are, by default, house-wives by profession, and thus there are very less number of women visible in the workforce of the country. The minority catches the eye of the people. In India, even now, a women working in any domain is an eyebrow raising issue(except say in IT industry but the workforce there is mainly single women, most of them who quit jobs after marriage to become house-wives). The patriarch ego of men condemns such presence. The possible solution to the problem can be to increase the women workforce. Way forward in this could be implementation of existing legislation strictly or drawing more legislation for the upliftment of women esp. girl children from the shackles of male oppression. Quota for women in Parliament might well be the first step in this direction. 

The change of the hour is not quick, hasty, ad hoc decisions but thoroughly thought, long term, ‘cause’ based decisions which will have long lasting and permanent effect on the society for its betterment. 

Can India do away with the Death Penalty?

We all woke up today with a very significant news breaking out of our televisions and computers. Ajmal Kasab was hanged to death in Pune. There has been increasing demand from the human right activists to the law makers to do away with the death penalty, now as we don't have the 14 years cap on Life Imprisonment. Can India afford to do this?

India right from its independence has been witnessing the barbaric, inhumane acts of terrorism. There have been thousands of casualties which includes significant percentage of women and children. These attacks are a great threat on the sovereignty of the nation. Only death penalties can be viewed as the form of punishment which set examples to future terrorists so that they fear the Indian law. There have been many cases in which there have been inhuman attacks on women like acid attacks, sexual assault- which sometimes leads to the death of the victim. There have been gross attacks on the right to life of dalits and other backward class people wherein the victim is humiliated, beaten up, sexually assaulted, killed in many instances. The law has to take stern action not just to punish the offender but also to set an example so that the similar offenses are not repeated- which is kind of main objective.

Taking a different perspective now let us think is death the only answer to this? If we take the terrorism angle then it takes to a different paradigm in which the fellow offenders, helpers see the death as martyrdom and take it as case study to educate future offenders!! Keeping this apart, if we consider domestic offenders then we should probably think a bit more deep and try to analyze- is a sudden death or a long lousy life in captivity with no freedom more effective. Probably accused prefer sudden death than a long painful, stressful, lonely life in jail. So are we justifying the punishment given to such gruesome offenders? In a altogether separate note, we do not live in a barbaric society where death for death can be the rule.

As we see there are certain loopholes in the concept capital punishment (death penalty). India being an active democracy, well lately at-least, has to consider people sentiments and aspirations. Its high time the law makers give some time to think through this.

London 2012 Olympics- Indian Triumph

The 2012 Summer Olympic Games, officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad concluded yesterday i.e., 12th August 2012. The 17 day long sporting extravaganza came to a mind-boggling end in London. In India, it was a day of celebration as Sushil Kumar made history by winning back to back medals, first Indian to do so. India, totally, got 6 medals, gold being elusive and ended at 55th position in the events' medal tally with 204 nations participating.

India gave its best performance at the Olympics till date. Point to be noted here is India had sent the highest number of sportsperson this time, counting to 81. There were fantastic performances from the medal winners. Few missed the medals in whisker. Having said that, we expected a better performance from the contingent. Vijender failing in the QFs, Bindra not qualifying to the finals, Gutta and Ponnappa failing to reach semis were few of the hard to digest truths. The biggest of all was the first round exit of World No.1 Deepika Kumari in Women's Individual Archery event. She was definitely a gold medal hope.

Nevertheless, India did better its performance and there are lessons to be learnt especially for the sports ministry and sports administrators. The main reason for the failure of stars, probably, was the pressure of the big event and the conditions in London. Olympics is a mega event and has great significance, the thought of this might have got into the skin of lots of players who did not perform at par. Also the cold weather at London might have affected the player performance. Administration now has sit back and look at the reasons of failure and address them before its too late for Rio 2016. At the same time it should not forget to felicitate the medal winners.

Jai Ho !!

2012 Olympic Medal Winners from India