We do not believe in processes
Things we Indians are known for include list too long to pen down, but some of the more noteworthy observations about us countrymen include no sense of punctuality, spicy food, love for cricket and brilliant engineers. Shashi Tharoor recalls an amusing encounter with an Asian ( Indians are not included in this term, unless it benefits us!) at an airport where he was requested by the quite frustrated and confused stranger to fix his laptop. At Northwestern University, on the very first day of college, the dean looked to us Indian students all sitting together in a group(surprise surprise!) and said, "There is no concept of Indian Standard Time in Northwestern." He smiled, but managed to send his message across. Indians have been loved, hated, misunderstood and confused in almost all parts of the globe and have earned a set of defining qualities through these experiences. However there is once characteristic that I feel deserved much more attention than these.
India, as a country, do not believe in processes and we will skip a process every time we can, irrespective of whether we need to or not. We believe that steps in each process can be discarded as long as the ends are achieved. Ends justify the means, and we really love to play around with those means. We are impatient people, hungry and dreaming. We are hoping to move ahead, on every road we see. We are competitive and we are fierce. But we are lazy and goal-driven. And in this whole stage of frightening confusion, we have decided that for the time being, let us not focus on the process.
An extremely disturbing and chilling incident recently in the capital of India highlighted this very fact.The horrendous and appalling rape of girl leading to her death brought about a sea of emotions throughout the masses. People from every part of the country stood up and held a candle, to show solidarity. They sang songs and wrote witty articles. They shouted and they walked all across the nation trying to wake up a country that they call 'sleeping'.
Death to rapists
"Death sentence to the rapists" and "Castration of the rapists" were being uttered by every girl I knew (a fact quite disturbing in itself. "We should look at Saudi Arabia how to deal with rapists" people proudly spoke, and my heart sank. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying rapists do not deserve a harsher punishment. They deserve a punishment much worse than murderers for at least murderers don't leave their victim in a pool of their own shame and humiliation. Murderers don't leave their victims behind to be ridiculed, ostracized and shunned. Murderers are better people than rapists because I believe theft of dignity if much worse than the theft of life.
But, what I want to highlight here is the sheer lack of people saying "Hmm, lets make the process of investigation and the process of court proceedings clean, efficient and transparent." What I heard instead was , " Kill them"
In short, we skipped a process.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhubaneswar/Death-to-rapists-may-spell-doom-for-victims-Experts/articleshow/17950308.cms
"The investigation process needs to be more efficient. Culprits were getting away easily because of loopholes in investigation," said former law commission member of India, Mr. Mishra. "There is no doubt rapists should get stringent punishment such as life imprisonment. There should be heavy financial penalty on the culprits and compensation to the victims. But without improving the conviction rate, by making probes and trial time-bound, these would not be possible," he said.
The Bar association advocated there should also be enough safeguard against politically motivated allegations and complaints by vested interests to avoid unnecessary harassment of innocent people. Let the new rape law not be misused like Section 498 (punishment for dowry), it said.
A process that would in theory decide the fate of a human being. How can we a country as a whole, ignore some of the main reasons why rapists walk away free? Sure, rapists walk away with a lighter sentence now but what about those innumerable cases where the cases never reach the court. People don't come ahead and report cases due to lack of sympathy for victims. Victims go through a harrowing process of first
1. reporting their case to people who do not care
2. get threats from the rapists to not complain to the police
3. go through the trauma of having to stand in court and relive the nightmare again
4. live a life of shame and humiliation because the entire society treat them as outcasts
In country where accusations and convictions can be bought and sold, do we really want to have a punishment as harsh as death or castration in such cases? Do we not want to make sure there is a transparent and effective process in place first? If not, please visit the innumerable families who are currently rotting in prison because of a falsified harassment over dowry complaint by angry females.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Now-men-seek-shield-against-women/articleshow/18095492.cms
Do we really wish to ignore the fact that increasing the prison sentence will punish only two kinds of people
1. rapists who actually get reported and caught
2. innocent people framed
Did we skip a process here of tackling the actual issue?
Rape is extremely scary because the society as whole has a pathetic attitude towards the issue. Victims have to live a life in hell while the accused usually roam free.
In a country where we worship the Goddess as the most powerful Being in the universe, a hypocrisy has arisen that tells a bad story about our nation.
We feel no need to change the attitude of multitudes of men who still treat women as inferior. We feel no need to change the attitude of so many families who do not educate their girl child and simply prepare her for marriage. We feel no need to sit down and tell our own kids about this issue. We skip so many processes in between that the increase of prison sentence seems like a joke.
Mishandling of victims has been reported so many times. But does anyone bother to change that? No, because here we skip a process. Do we take any active efforts to make the victim lead a normal life and not feel like an untouchable? No, because we skip a process. Do we take some time to even think about what would happen to every innocent man who is framed and is castrated or killed, who never had the chance or money to beat the system? No, because here we skip a process.
Do we really want to skip the process of preventing rapes and changing mindsets as a whole? We should never try for male dominance or female dominance. We should aim for a society where co-dominance is the key to survival.
Agreed, it will no doubt deter a large group of people who are extremely scared of the law. And No doubt it definitely needs to be much harsher than it is now. But we are ignoring everything else that needs to happen along side. So, besides a change of mindset, how do we change a nation's approach?
Simple, we change the politician's approach. And how do we do that? Simple again. We deal in the political currency- votes.
To effect a change in our system, we need to first be a part of the system. People often think that being a part of the system means stepping up for elections and being a part of a political party. That is an extremely ignorant view of democracy. The most important role any person can play in a the democratic process if the role of the voter.
We deal with vote banks and the country has no option but to bend and change. But here we skip the process again.
The Government does nothing for me- the cry of the person who never votes. But in order for the democratic process to even have a chance of succeeding we cannot ignore the one simple rule it was built on------ voting. It is only when people understand the true power of a vote that India will come ahead stronger and cleaner. We rarely take advantage of this democratic detergent of voting.How many of the throngs of people who walked with candles in their hand actually show up for voting in Delhi next time. How many people who sat at home and cried would go out and vote?
This is one process we simply cannot skip. If you want to be heard, all you need is one hour of one day every couple of years. But apparently, people are too busy to give that time but have more than enough time to gather around for a couple of drinks of scotch and complain how ill treated the country is and how the system had gone kaput. But that however is not the case.
To sum up my point- We currently live in a country where people spend hours a day going for candle walks and marches but do have one hour a couple of years to stand in a line and vote. The system has not gone kaput. Democracy can never go kaput.
The process has gone kaput. Because we simply don't want to care. And the thing is we can reach the same destination over and over again by ignoring the process, but we can never reach the destination everytime. This is what we have to live with.
Quoting quite an intelligent person, "This world today is not ruled by the country which has the largest army. This world belongs to the country which tells a better story". And as Indians, we really need to hire better script-writers for our nation's grand Bollywood finale.
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Things we Indians are known for include list too long to pen down, but some of the more noteworthy observations about us countrymen include no sense of punctuality, spicy food, love for cricket and brilliant engineers. Shashi Tharoor recalls an amusing encounter with an Asian ( Indians are not included in this term, unless it benefits us!) at an airport where he was requested by the quite frustrated and confused stranger to fix his laptop. At Northwestern University, on the very first day of college, the dean looked to us Indian students all sitting together in a group(surprise surprise!) and said, "There is no concept of Indian Standard Time in Northwestern." He smiled, but managed to send his message across. Indians have been loved, hated, misunderstood and confused in almost all parts of the globe and have earned a set of defining qualities through these experiences. However there is once characteristic that I feel deserved much more attention than these.
India, as a country, do not believe in processes and we will skip a process every time we can, irrespective of whether we need to or not. We believe that steps in each process can be discarded as long as the ends are achieved. Ends justify the means, and we really love to play around with those means. We are impatient people, hungry and dreaming. We are hoping to move ahead, on every road we see. We are competitive and we are fierce. But we are lazy and goal-driven. And in this whole stage of frightening confusion, we have decided that for the time being, let us not focus on the process.
An extremely disturbing and chilling incident recently in the capital of India highlighted this very fact.The horrendous and appalling rape of girl leading to her death brought about a sea of emotions throughout the masses. People from every part of the country stood up and held a candle, to show solidarity. They sang songs and wrote witty articles. They shouted and they walked all across the nation trying to wake up a country that they call 'sleeping'.
Death to rapists
"Death sentence to the rapists" and "Castration of the rapists" were being uttered by every girl I knew (a fact quite disturbing in itself. "We should look at Saudi Arabia how to deal with rapists" people proudly spoke, and my heart sank. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying rapists do not deserve a harsher punishment. They deserve a punishment much worse than murderers for at least murderers don't leave their victim in a pool of their own shame and humiliation. Murderers don't leave their victims behind to be ridiculed, ostracized and shunned. Murderers are better people than rapists because I believe theft of dignity if much worse than the theft of life.
But, what I want to highlight here is the sheer lack of people saying "Hmm, lets make the process of investigation and the process of court proceedings clean, efficient and transparent." What I heard instead was , " Kill them"
In short, we skipped a process.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhubaneswar/Death-to-rapists-may-spell-doom-for-victims-Experts/articleshow/17950308.cms
"The investigation process needs to be more efficient. Culprits were getting away easily because of loopholes in investigation," said former law commission member of India, Mr. Mishra. "There is no doubt rapists should get stringent punishment such as life imprisonment. There should be heavy financial penalty on the culprits and compensation to the victims. But without improving the conviction rate, by making probes and trial time-bound, these would not be possible," he said.
The Bar association advocated there should also be enough safeguard against politically motivated allegations and complaints by vested interests to avoid unnecessary harassment of innocent people. Let the new rape law not be misused like Section 498 (punishment for dowry), it said.
A process that would in theory decide the fate of a human being. How can we a country as a whole, ignore some of the main reasons why rapists walk away free? Sure, rapists walk away with a lighter sentence now but what about those innumerable cases where the cases never reach the court. People don't come ahead and report cases due to lack of sympathy for victims. Victims go through a harrowing process of first
1. reporting their case to people who do not care
2. get threats from the rapists to not complain to the police
3. go through the trauma of having to stand in court and relive the nightmare again
4. live a life of shame and humiliation because the entire society treat them as outcasts
In country where accusations and convictions can be bought and sold, do we really want to have a punishment as harsh as death or castration in such cases? Do we not want to make sure there is a transparent and effective process in place first? If not, please visit the innumerable families who are currently rotting in prison because of a falsified harassment over dowry complaint by angry females.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Now-men-seek-shield-against-women/articleshow/18095492.cms
Do we really wish to ignore the fact that increasing the prison sentence will punish only two kinds of people
1. rapists who actually get reported and caught
2. innocent people framed
Did we skip a process here of tackling the actual issue?
Rape is extremely scary because the society as whole has a pathetic attitude towards the issue. Victims have to live a life in hell while the accused usually roam free.
In a country where we worship the Goddess as the most powerful Being in the universe, a hypocrisy has arisen that tells a bad story about our nation.
We feel no need to change the attitude of multitudes of men who still treat women as inferior. We feel no need to change the attitude of so many families who do not educate their girl child and simply prepare her for marriage. We feel no need to sit down and tell our own kids about this issue. We skip so many processes in between that the increase of prison sentence seems like a joke.
Mishandling of victims has been reported so many times. But does anyone bother to change that? No, because here we skip a process. Do we take any active efforts to make the victim lead a normal life and not feel like an untouchable? No, because we skip a process. Do we take some time to even think about what would happen to every innocent man who is framed and is castrated or killed, who never had the chance or money to beat the system? No, because here we skip a process.
Do we really want to skip the process of preventing rapes and changing mindsets as a whole? We should never try for male dominance or female dominance. We should aim for a society where co-dominance is the key to survival.
Agreed, it will no doubt deter a large group of people who are extremely scared of the law. And No doubt it definitely needs to be much harsher than it is now. But we are ignoring everything else that needs to happen along side. So, besides a change of mindset, how do we change a nation's approach?
Simple, we change the politician's approach. And how do we do that? Simple again. We deal in the political currency- votes.
To effect a change in our system, we need to first be a part of the system. People often think that being a part of the system means stepping up for elections and being a part of a political party. That is an extremely ignorant view of democracy. The most important role any person can play in a the democratic process if the role of the voter.
We deal with vote banks and the country has no option but to bend and change. But here we skip the process again.
The Government does nothing for me- the cry of the person who never votes. But in order for the democratic process to even have a chance of succeeding we cannot ignore the one simple rule it was built on------ voting. It is only when people understand the true power of a vote that India will come ahead stronger and cleaner. We rarely take advantage of this democratic detergent of voting.How many of the throngs of people who walked with candles in their hand actually show up for voting in Delhi next time. How many people who sat at home and cried would go out and vote?
This is one process we simply cannot skip. If you want to be heard, all you need is one hour of one day every couple of years. But apparently, people are too busy to give that time but have more than enough time to gather around for a couple of drinks of scotch and complain how ill treated the country is and how the system had gone kaput. But that however is not the case.
To sum up my point- We currently live in a country where people spend hours a day going for candle walks and marches but do have one hour a couple of years to stand in a line and vote. The system has not gone kaput. Democracy can never go kaput.
The process has gone kaput. Because we simply don't want to care. And the thing is we can reach the same destination over and over again by ignoring the process, but we can never reach the destination everytime. This is what we have to live with.
Quoting quite an intelligent person, "This world today is not ruled by the country which has the largest army. This world belongs to the country which tells a better story". And as Indians, we really need to hire better script-writers for our nation's grand Bollywood finale.
<photo id="1" />
