Moral policing has become
increasingly common in India. Are we restricting individual rights in the
name of Indian culture and safety? We are still pondering over whether there's life after death,
we can add another question to the cart. What has happened to democracy? Has it
been emptied of meaning and scooped out? Are we mutating into a totalitarian state?
Being the largest democracy in the world, it is a matter of
great offence and disgrace if the Government suppresses or controls the ideas,
public communication and information within a society. The Government's order
to the internet service providers to block access to 857 websites hosting pornographic
content being socially disparaging and advance violence against women was one
of such attempts. Few days later, Mumbai police arrested 13 couples and 35
others following raids at hotels and a beach for indecent behavior in public. What
have we turned democracy into? The need of the hour is the Government's long
term vision and not its dependency upon immediate and extractive short term
gains.
Let us glance at the pitiable state of affairs of our nation.
We cannot provide food and water to our people. Our Government policies have
created a population of 800 million people who live on less than 20 rupees a
day.[1]
India has the largest number of malnourished children in the world. India's
demographic dynamics are such that even humdrum projects, such as constructing
a road, dislodge thousands of people let alone large dams and mining projects. In
2012 alone, around 14,000 hapless farmers committed suicide in India.[2] These
villages are completely resource less, barren and dry as dust. India is home to the largest number of poor with one-third of the
world's 1.2 billion extreme poor living here. [3]
In the name of development, the rivers and forests are destroyed. In the
name of progress of the nation, land is destroyed by dam reservoirs and
thousands of homes are bulldozed. India is suffering from problems like
poverty, illiteracy, racial discrimination, famine and drought which needs
immediate solution. Where basic education, health care and survival is a task,
our Government's major priority is the desire to distribute Unique
Identification cards(UIC) to all of its citizens and moreover do moral
policing. In short, we are a state incessantly
at war with its people.
Further, what did the
Government formulate of these many corruption exposes? Does the Government see
major scams like Commonwealth games, 2G and Coal-gate as a vigorous development
of the nation? It is indeed an essential development as it helps a ordinary man
know the politics of the current process of political and
economic destruction and the other innumerable things that make India’s engine
work, or not work—all through the contracted, frail lens of corruption but the
worrying thing is that each scam pushes the last one out of the way, and life
goes on.
We live in a civilized society. Creating
havoc over a movie poster spreading vulgarity and trying to smear the purity of
the Indian culture, vandalizing Valentine's day celebrations to safeguard
morals, banning beef to protect our religion,
banning porn or raiding hotels intruding someone's privacy to safeguard morals
and values will not help our nation develop or progress or evolve in anyway.
Let the police do only policing and value education be the means to learn the
difference between good and bad.
India is certainly not yet the worst place on the Democracy
issue but the state needs to focus of its development and leave moral policing
aside. Having said that, the anarchism in our people, the fact that it is such
an insurmountable country and though the institutions of democracy are of their
way to corrosion, there is a revolutionary sprit among the people. They know
that they have to preserve energy and how and when to deploy it. They have
apprehended that they are on their own and have to fight their own battles.
