"Everyone just stood there and watched."

November 19, 2011. In a city bus in Pune. The young girl standing beside me in the bus starts yelling at a guy next to her. It was time the girl's patience had gone over board due to inappropriate advances the guy was making towards her, intruding her personal space. My friend & I had noticed the pranks of this guy from the time we had boarded the bus, which he had been doing since he was in the bus stop. Meanwhile, the guy tried to defend himself by blaming the girl for what was happening. She created commotion out of it and called out for the conductor to chuck this guy out of the bus. But like everyone else in the bus, the conductor just stood there and watched the tamasha. The bus and the commuters continued their journey as if nothing had happened.

What the girl told me, during the conversation later, is what this article is about. “I cannot tolerate such things” she said “Unfortunately, no one in the bus came to my help. Everyone just stood there and watched.”

“Everyone just stood there and watched.”

This is exactly the same thing what Priyanka Fernandes said a week back, “When my friends Keenan and Reuben were being stabbed repeatedly, mercilessly, I could see at least 50 eyewitnesses, who stood like stone, unmoving and unmoved, as we screamed for help. Not one came forward to join the fray, to help us fight against a reprehensible crime.” [Keenan & Reuben case: NDTV, Wikipedia ]

Not that I expected a mob justice for this girl, but I was hoping that, at least, the bus conductor would give a warning to the guy. The last time I witnessed something similar was in Chennai, when a guy was thrown out of the bus for making lewd remarks to a girl.

But unfortunately, people need a more empathetic factor to raise a voice against something bad happening to a person standing next to them. They don't care because it is not someone they know. And while we stand there watching indifferently, the number of Keenans & Reubens will only continue to increase in our country.

Thankfully, this time, I wasn't one of those who stood there and just watched.

[The above image is not an image from the scene]

Policeman attacks mentally challenged man with brute force. Jai Ho!

The ABC of Ayodhya

Source: The Internet

A celebration of slavery

A recent campaign by Arindam Chaudhuri (of IIPM) about his latest article on the Common Wealth Games interested me and took me to his blog. The article is about Indians creating hype around the CWG and that we should stop participating in such lavish games.

In a country like India where we cannot provide the basic necessities of life to lakhs of people across the country - is there a need of spending Rs. 70, 000 Cr on a 11-day event? I am sure many would have been happy, at least, if the money was genuinely spent on the games, but we know what has happened to it, which is a different story in itself. Even the central government did not show much interest though it involved so much money.

In terms of expenditure, Rs. 70, 000 Cr is a whopping amount compared to the 1951 and 1982 Asian Games for which the expenditure was only Rs. 5cr and Rs. 55cr respectively. Yes, there has been inflation over the decades but this is mind boggling. The amount spent on the games is a lot more than the yearly food budget of the country.

Arindam says in his article (complete article here) that these games are a celebration of our slavery under and British Empire and of all the nations that were under the colonial rule. Frankly speaking, they are. Is there a need for any of the erstwhile colonies to celebrate their centuries of oppression?

Amazingly this year, the celebration of slavery started a day after Bapu’s birth anniversary.

 

Also read

Arindam’s article on CWG

Was IIPM offering an MBA degree that nobody would recognize? – By Vir Sanghvi