Old Rajinder Nagars and many more

 “Safety is when a child sleeps in the back seat of a car with his parents at the wheels.”

After a full day of fun at the beach, a tired child chooses to sleep without worrying a bit about the risks involved in their return journey. He doesn’t think of the risks from the faulty design of the road bend, a missing road sign or a guard rail, the mechanical defects in the car, a tired father who might doze off while driving, and risks from other irresponsible drunk drivers on the road.

The child under the protective care of his parents from his birth instinctively chooses to trust their intent, and sincerity towards him and decides to trust them and their decisions for his life.

This quote above was not told by any child but by an adult with substantial lived experience.

He said this profound but seemingly innocuous line after realising how peacefully we live when we are made to believe that our safety is in the hands of the people who are well-intentioned, sincere and responsible for our wellbeing.

And he chose this child-parent situation to best describe it.

Are we different from a child when we trust the state?

When we board a train, just after finding our berths, we start setting up our beds for a comfortable and peaceful journey ahead. Do we even once think of the accidents in the recent past caused by defective coaches, poor maintenance of the rail infrastructure, cracked tracks, negligent drunk drivers, careless signal men, sabotage, and any such risk this train might face one of them? The same goes for us with the airlines, the mechanic at the garage we get our car serviced, the shopping mall we visit, the cinema hall we go to and the traffic police when he signals us to cross the intersections. We think that there are responsible people who would have sincerely done their jobs.

We perhaps have to trust to live normally. We don’t have a choice here.

The state like our parents has somehow managed to give us that sense of safety with its exaggerated intention for our well-being and the efficiency of its various arms of execution in the shapes of regulators, administrators and the judiciary to tell us that our life and well-being is in safe hands. The moot points here are,

-        How well-intentioned are these arms and how efficient are they?

-        What are the internal quality checks to evaluate their performance and what are the safeguards to ensure that they are not just responsible but are also accountable to the law?

-        What happens to the people who become victims of their neglect?

Let us take the case of the Old Rajinder Nagar, New Delhi incident as an example.

One coaching centre like many in that locality was operating its library in the basement of a building. Heavy rain in that area caused a flood-like situation, water entered the basement of one where some 20 civil service aspirants were preparing for their examinations, and the gushing water caused a short circuit in the biometric access control system thus trapping them underwater. 17 students could be rescued and 3 lost their lives. The driver of the SUV who sped through the water which caused a wave that disrupted the electronics was arrested. The matter would have died like any other had the characters been of a lower class.

The Rajinder Nager incident has stirred the collective emotions of people from every corner of the country. Many of us are distraught because the victims are of our socio-economic class who were fighting battles similar to ours. The pictures of those three young talented kinds are getting us closest to the pain as parents. The media reports of similar incidents happening in villages or in slums which usually lose steam after a day. Life gets back to normalcy and another incident takes its place in the pages of the newspapers. It turns into a nameless statistic and gets added to the list of unnatural deaths in the national portal under a certain category. Only researchers use them for analysis. No one learns any lesson from it.

While this article is being written, the MCD has responded by sealing some coaching centres operating at the basements, earthmoving equipment is mobilized to excavate now buried storm water drains which were in use for some years perhaps when the colony was established and people from their drawing rooms are deciding who to be made accountable, and the stakeholders in that community, the inspectors of the regulators and the policymakers are feigning innocence as if they do not know who is behind it and how it happened. Everyone knows how it happened, and everyone is waiting for this to pass. The best part is that these interventions are happening only at Old Rajender Nagar, not the whole of Delhi, not even New Rajinder Nagar.

Is such an incident happening for the first time?

The outbreak of fire is a common phenomenon in hospitals, and schools across the country, from newborns in incubators to patients in life support in an ICU die due to a small neglect by an electrician which has escaped internal quality checks and external audits. Train accidents happen in disturbing regularity and only incidents like what happened in Bahanaga make us question the internal workings of the system. But there are well-oiled systems in place on how to deal with it.

We are turning passive and philosophical to such deaths.

The less said about our attitude towards personal safety and others' safety the better. It can be nightmarish to the ones who are not born here. The confidence with which a bike-riding father with two kids takes the wrong side of the road braving all the oncoming traffic to drop his kids at the school before the school gate closes will remind you of the brave student who stood facing the barrel of a tank in Tiananmen Square, Beijing 1989. The government also accepts that a country of 1.44 billion people can always afford to lose a few million of them every year to unnatural deaths.

Questioning voices rise when some high net-worth lives are lost but then the state has the ultimate weapon to gag such voices – money.

Unlimited money can be granted under the glare of the media to the near and dear ones of the ones who lose their lives and limbs earning political brownie points. These instruments of gags are called by the name solatium or ex gratia awards. It works well to gag the whiners and wailers when the people are in a situation with no other option.

It does precious little to change those rusty cogs in the system that caused such a mishap and stands to do so in future.

Behind the image of paternal benevolence for which we trust the state for our safety and protection of human rights, we don’t see how generationally and tactfully they have kept themselves and their array of machinery starting from the regulators, administrators, inspectors and enforcers away from any accountability. The size of the establishment is so big, and the duration of their indemnification from any accountability, it now seems impossible to bring any change that can change the status quo.

The state is infamous for appropriating a cause by formulating a policy.

That leaves the nay-sayers with no evidence to blame the state of neglect or not for having the right intent. They do it not because they are serious about it. They do it because it is politically not wise not to stand with the cause. Call it political expediency.

Our constitution has established a system that insulates the government and its various arms from the adjudicating power of the judiciary about matters concerning neglect. By not giving enough teeth to the people and the laws to establish negligence and hold someone accountable.

When incidents like this happen the cause of it is internally investigated and what happens to the findings is kept under the wraps of the red tape. When the incident is too big to be handled internally, a judiciary enquiry is commissioned headed by a chosen person where the state is under no obligation to accept the recommendations. In our living memory, no penalty bigger than the suspension of a lower-level functionary for a few months has been awarded to anyone. We also have not witnessed any change in the system to enforce responsibility for deliverables linked to quality and time and to make anyone accountable.

The array of instruments of dilution at their disposal is mindboggling.

Having declared a policy, they can dilly dally on formulating the right laws, they may pass a law and not the rules, but they can weaken it by not giving adequate power and financial resources needed for implementation. They can weaken the regulatory bodies by not appointing any head for a period or by appointing someone who will not be an irritant with his hyper activism or appointing a pliable one who will stay dormant or of a particular ‘Bichardhara’ who will participate in establishing a hidden cultural agenda across the organization.

If someone asked you who is the government?

The best answer can be this – It’s a body formed by people from amongst us who can tax you at will and punish you for any deviation and assume responsibility for everything but if something goes wrong or questioned, can say that they are accountable for nothing.

Will this Old Rajinder Nagar incident be the last or there will be many more in future?

The answer is obvious.

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Peace, Piece by Piece

As I prepared myself to return to my routine life, after living almost off-grid for three days at Koraput, I realised that I was in a different state of mind which I had not experienced in the last few months. I was much calmer and in harmony with my immediate surroundings.

I tried to recall what had happened in the last few months. India’s dream run in the Cricket World Cup 2023 and its miserable defeat in the finals, IPL matches, T20 World Cup and Indian win, General Elections and the unexpected results, political uncertainty, garish and overstretched marriage of an Ambani scion, and the Rath Yatra mishaps and this Ratnabhandara commentary have left us feeling lost, defeated, anxious, uncertain, joyful, and irritated in some way or the other. There was hardly anyone who was not affected by these events. We did react to them in our own way, but these past few months can’t be described as peaceful in any form.

 

While driving on the beautiful roads running through those emerald mountains adorning the crown of monsoon clouds and seeing a small child taking shelter from the sudden rain under his rickety umbrella, I for a moment realised that the baggage of worries I am carrying from my world and his worries are so different. At the same time away from the footprints of online news outlets, newspapers both local and national, and unaffected by the global chaos at all the airports and banking hubs due to the Microsoft Global Server outage, the worries of the child under the umbrella and mine were quite similar.

 

If we keep my baggage out of the equation both of us had similar worries – both didn’t want to get wet. That was our immediate concern and how simple and small it was.

 

Was I not in peace earlier?

 

While driving back to my base after my trip, I tried to make sense of the exact meaning of the word ‘Peace’ which we so liberally and casually use without giving much thought to it.

 

The search tool on my phone helped.

 

It said Peace is a complex and multifaceted concept that can be understood in various ways, depending on the context and perspective. Some common meanings of peace include the absence of conflict or violence: Peace can refer to a state of quiet, calmness, and serenity, where there is no war, fighting, or violence; Inner tranquillity: Peace can also describe a state of inner calmness, serenity, and contentment, where an individual feels at ease with themselves and their surroundings; Harmony and balance: Peace can represent a state of balance and harmony within oneself, with others, and with the environment; Reconciliation and resolution: Peace can involve the process of resolving conflicts, forgiving, and reconciling with others; Social justice: Peace can also imply a state of social justice, where individuals and groups are treated fairly, equally, and with dignity.

 

Overall, peace encompasses various aspects of human experience, from personal inner calm to global harmony and understanding. Our ancient literature and wisdom have put enormous importance on peace. If the stanzas of ‘Santipatha’ are studied, it has given a list of areas where and how peace needs to be established to allow the development of just not human beings but of the flora and fauna.

 

Of all the connotations of peace mentioned above, what matters the most to us and the world is our inner tranquillity, harmony and balance with our immediate surroundings.

 

By analysing the difference in my state of mind earlier and what it was in the last three days, I shortlisted a few things that we are exposing ourselves to which are eluding peace in our lives. What are they?

 

The factors can be broadly categorized into two thematic groups.

 

The first is the exogenous factors which means what affect our tranquillity from outside and the endogenous factors, which culminate inside us which affect our balance and harmony with our surroundings.

 

The exogenous factors can be of the following types.

 

Which makes us focus on things that don’t affect us and over which we have no control.

 

We are consuming content from almost every corner of the world and on an astounding number of topics. Earlier it was limited to our immediate neighbourhood or at best our city. Our exposure to information through electronic media has made us highly vulnerable to its negative effects of it. News of Wars, invasions, and political disturbances in distant countries are beamed to our homes and phones in real-time. Critically seen these incidents don’t have any immediate impact on our lives and neither we are responsible for them, nor do we have any control over their outcomes. A stream of news makes us anxious and nervous internally. Unknown to us negative news consumed at the beginning of the day, affects our mood and that in turn affects our thought and behaviour subsequently.

 

A mind with an appetite for unnecessary curiosity for others’ lives and feeding on the news of accidents, rapes, violence, and political upheaval can never be called a peaceful mind.

 

Which makes us focus on things that we don’t have.

 

Unknown to us, we live with a sense of blissful autonomy when we are the fodder for many. Political parties and big business houses selling goods and services use various channels and complex algorithms of manipulation to drive our minds into doing things as they want or buying things they sell by planting a need for them in our minds. Open a newspaper in the morning and you will find advertisements of premium real estate, cars, jewellery, holiday packages and tools of a supposedly good lifestyle seducing and encouraging you to acquire them.

 

They focus on triggering that sense of inadequacy in you to make you work hard to acquire them. That’s called having the aspiration for growth. While you were grateful for having a car which helped you to commute on a rainy day; the advertisement of the launch of a new brand or a new model makes you realise that that same car is now old, doesn’t have the modern features, completely changing your perspective towards it.

 

A smart mind can see through the ploy but most of us will keep thinking about it and subconsciously start the preparation towards acquiring it one day somehow.

 

This seed of ‘Lack’ would grow in you to make you steal, borrow, divert from the essentials and splurge to acquire your aspirational products. Most of the latest iPhones purchased in India are through EMIs. The consequences of not being able to manage to pay them back are not what a peaceful life constitutes of. Many lives are lost to their inability to deal with debts and many lives are spent in the drudgery of managing EMIs.

 

The endogenous factors can be of the following types.

 

Two prominent attributes of the human mind that differentiate it from other animals are Memory and Imagination. This perhaps is the byproduct of being of a higher intelligence order. We are a unique species with the ability to keep recreating the images and scenarios of the past and the future in our minds and silently working on them in our minds.

 

We make ourselves focus on things of the past that can’t be reversed.

 

Our present version is the accumulation of experiences and scars of the past. From our childhood, we bear the wounds of our disappointments, traumas and frustrations to our adulthood. Behind the happy faces that abound in the world and the false world of social media, there exist several unhappy souls who continuously suffer their memory and their personalities carry the signs of their past trauma. Each of us knows that the past is gone and can’t be reversed. But the stickiness of the past is so high that very few can detach themselves from it. Wise ones are practical enough to detach themselves from their past and accept the present as it unfolds. But most upon reaching a new milestone of our lives be it a new relationship or a changed and better opportunity, we subconsciously remember some of the scars and try to reverse them or ameliorate them to some extent.

 

A person who has lived a life of material or emotional inadequacy would try to make good on the new opportunity. Non-achievement of it leads to further scars and traumas.

 

We make ourselves worry about things of the future that may not happen.

 

Self-preservation is a primal instinct of every living organism. The animals of higher intelligence orders are good at seeing dangers to life ahead of time and are far better at protecting them. Awareness of his surroundings and his innate intelligence make him design better strategies to protect himself in the future. Adapting to the changing environment not only to preserve themselves but to help it propagate

 

This awareness makes him plan for dangers and risks and making provisions for it becomes one of his life goals. We are trained to save for the rainy days, for our financial independence post-retirement and also for our future unforeseen medical expenses. Unregulated awareness can also lead to irrational fear.

 

When fear becomes more, we not only think of our future but also of our dependents and start planning and worrying for them too. History tells us that most of the things in the future we fear never happen. But an unregulated mind will constantly worry about his goals and never be at peace until he succeeds in achieving them. Such anxious minds invariably invent another goal and start chasing it and worrying about achieving it. It’s an infinite loop.

 

Modern lifestyles urge everyone to join a rat race and be successful in the name of peace and happiness. But Success and Achievements don’t always lead to happiness and peace. We need to teach acceptance and seek contentment in the present and what we have in hand to live in calm and harmony. Memories are extremely sticky. We need to practice detachment from the past and teach ourselves that whatever had to happen has already happened and thinking about it and carrying it in our mind is at the cost of missing the present opportunities. We need to be aware that the future is uncertain. One best-laid plan may not be of any use because it may not be effective or that may not be adequate.

 

We understand peace or its importance after doing enormous damage to ourselves when it’s too late. Staying peaceful doesn’t come to us naturally. It requires a determined effort to reach that state.

 

 

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