PEOPLE MAKE SOCIETY OR SOCIETY MAKES PEOPLE ?

Last  evening , as I was passing by, sitting comfortably on my brother’s bike and letting the gentle wind, filled with the fragrance of the  festive season,  to play with my hair, lost somewhere, suddenly  realized , there was a group of people on the darker side of the road , one of them shouting and hitting a rickshaw –puller . I got tensed, furious and ordered my elder brother to take a U turn and interrogate the event. He turned his bike around and as  we were reaching closer to the spot, my anger was rising in the direct proportion to what my eyes and my brain were recording and interpreting simultaneously.

We reached the spot  and my  brother told the rickshaw – puller (read the victim) to go , “chalo, jao bhai yahan se”. I unfortunately , didn’t get  a chance to ask anyone or enquire what happened, why was he being hit so badly, what were other people doing , why was a lady so tensed and and why was she not saying anything and who gave the agency to that single man to hit the puller and teach him a lesson?

He left the spot. He must have been in his mid thirtees . Tired , he pulled along his rickshaw with eyes filled with tears. We also left the spot . I turned back and saw his weeping face in the halogen light. I seriously could not make out whether he was drunk or not , as that single man was shouting “saala , peeke chalata h”.

I was taken aback ,as if some one had hit me, not that rickshaw driver. My mind immediately raised a question- had a girl , from a middle class background , was being raped by a boy  or a group of boys ,from a middle or an upper class, then would the public led by a  one man army , have responded in the same manner as in the above case they did? Or in the place of  a rickshaw- puller , had it been a drunk boy , driving a Maruti Swift or Hyundai Verna , then would the public have responded in the same manner? Would they have taken out the boy belonging to the rising middle class , out of his car and thrashed him the same way as they did to him ?  

This was the story of a small but still developing city , Lucknow. Now I shall share the story from a Metro , also being the national capital of the world’s largest democracy ! New Delhi , is one place in  India which annually receives the largest flow of migrants from its neighboring states  . Many of its auto-rickshaw drivers belong to the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Delhi is the richest state in the country and where there is growth ,there is speed . Everyone is in the race to achieve maximum within minimum time . So whenever you are travelling in an auto , there is  a highly likely possibility of your driver getting chided , abused or in some cases even thrashed . The auto drivers are paid least respect . In fact respect is an unknown word for most of the well –off people when it comes to auto-drivers and rickshaw-pullers .

Once I went to teach some students in a juvenile home where most of the juvenile offenders are kept in order to educate them, correct them and make them better human beings. To my surprise , most of the boys were framed , I.e; they weren’t the real culprits but in order to close the files , the police easily “caught” these people and put them behind the bars or the well-off homes where these boys worked , their owners didn’t have much faith in their servant’s candor!

So if a penny got lost or a hundred rupee note, it was Shamu, munu, ramu or Rina or nirmala but no proof of whether these were the actual people who performed the act . The thanedaar is called and they are put behind the bars . Case closed, parents return empty handed , cursing their fate! The child is put in the darkness for months or if possible sent to a correction home where the staff makes them do the petty jobs with vested interest and in return gives them a bidi as a token of award , to smoke!

Since Delhi University is the top university in the country right now there fore the business  for  private hostels and paying guest houses is in full swing. In paying guest houses , you will find many under-age servants working 24*7 . The “children” sleep on floors, there is no servant room or  quarter , they aren’t provided any medical facilities , the income is also low for the time they give to the job, they are all the time scolded and in some cases even beaten by the landlord. People come to Delhi to make their future bright and shiny , and here these are the children whose future remains uncertain and hazy. Development and growth at a very high cost , indeed!

These are the instances where class plays a very important factor . You can very easily  teach a lesson to a rickshaw –puller or an auto driver if you have  a STATUS ! You can be the lord and rule over these tiny, fragile , dumb and toothless creatures if you have money, a car and a mansion .

GROW BUT DON’T EVER LET OTHERS GROW.