Ugly Truth

How many Baby Falaks and Baby Afreens have to sacrifice their innocent lives for the sick mentality of Indian society? How many female fetuses are forced to be aborted even before they experience the first light of this planet, just for the whims and fancies of a feudal, patriarchal mindset? How many women are to be battered, brutalized, ravished, raped, and finally pushed into death for no reason, but being the easy target of boorish criminals? How long the judicial system of this country will be fettered by the archaic jurisprudence and let those bloody criminals run scotfree because of the damn loopholes in our legal system? How long the executives and legislators of this country support those criminals in perpetrating the crimes against women in broad daylight and still not get convicted? And how long the insensitive citizens of this country notice all these heinous acts like unabashed nincompoops and forget it next moment in the pretext of false resilience?

Certainly, there is no concrete answer to any of these queries because we as integral part of this rotten system are so engrossed with our own selfish agenda that we have hardly a moment to think about the larger society around us. And what we do? Twit a couple of harsh or sarcastic comments, write a bashing blog, or, in the worst case, given an opportunity, force our fiery arguments in a television debate and forget right there that the issue is so deep rooted in our collective mindset that even the severest ever tumbler can uproot a mountain, but it may be too feeble to shake the collective conscience of this nation.

In a sense, the 21^st century Indian mindset is still shackled with the rituals of Iron Age. We are the slave of a dangerous notion that men are dispenser of this evolutionary civilization. We still worship goddesses like Laxmi and Saraswati, but given a chance to exploit our free will, we instantly get infected with chronic dementia and infest upon the physical body of women like wild vultures prowling upon a corpse. Is there any resurrection for these crazy, barbaric tribe called men? And we claim civilized? Shame on these monsters who live behind the facade of hypocrisy and still project themselves as emancipator of women.

Now is the time to overhaul this status quo mentality and gear up for an altogether new civilization where there would be no discrimination against women. Let's completely forget those vilified learning that man is superior to woman in every dimension. Let's unshackle us from the spell of those false doctrines and dogmas that paint women as inferior, weaker, helpless and they need man's support to exist in this society. Let's banish all those literatures that glorify man as superior being. Let's move away from those archaic, worthless rituals and practices that in their infinitesimally small measure even differentiate man as holier than woman. Let's remember that according to the indisputable laws of nature, men and women are compliment to each other – without one the other is meaningless.

The world of untruths

We are living in a dangerous world, partly because the “manufactured uncertainty” by the high and might people of our society constantly threatens the very existence of a balanced social fabric; furthermore, if someone aspires to bring the truth to the fore, either the person is forced to keep silence or in extreme situation, if the sinister design of the power monger doesn't allow the expose, the person in all probability kisses the dust, and this conspiracy of power tussle what we experience in our daily life is the handiwork of those people who have mastered the jugglery of deception. A deception that's often painted as social reality wherein the truth that we see, hear, or speak is a concoction of grand design exclusively portrayed by the barons of power.

The surreal scenarios in our society seem more intriguing that the most astounding fictional plots. If we look at the events happening around us, only one conclusive though pops up in our mind – whether there is any amount of truth in the final verdict. Perhaps, we are not sure about that. That has been the tug-of-war among the rulers and the subjects across the world since civilization took its wing.

From politics to business to media, every center of power house has its own design to rule this world. In that lies the undecipherable mystery code that constantly endeavors to clone the diabolic program to marginalize the larger truth. On surface what it always seems a visually appealing frame capturing the most feel-good moments of human excellence, which turns out to be the most sought-after human desire for majority of the world population, is undoubtedly a spurious portrait of half-truth, the rest being a calculative transformation of lies. For a moment we forget the fact that all that shines isn't gold, it's gilding of base metals. Perhaps, this aspect of human perception becomes a perpetual key for the tyrants of society to embark upon a sinister design as how to rule the subjects in an incessant manner.

Let's have a look at the terrains of global terrorism. Leaders of all hues and shades condemn it in the toughest possible way forgetting the fact that the state of terrorism today is a handiwork of some yesteryear's leaders who during post cold war era impregnated the theory of “calculative political destabilization” in enemy countries by introducing some dreaded rouge elements of society, in that they gave birth to a dangerous Frankenstein that has been haunting this world every now and then. Over the period the hobnobbing of power circle with these rouge elements became an underlying syndrome that hardly the public could able to gauge, but at every turning point these innocent people became the victims of somebody's mistake.

Without any apprehension, the series of events starting from 1993 Mumbai blasts to 9/11 (WTC terror strike) to 26/11 (Mumbai terror strike) to the most recent 13/7 terror strike in Mumbai narrates the dangerous cocktail of ruling class and rouge elements whether they are terrorists, maoists, or small-time criminal. A spurious cocktail in which either the so called villains as portrayed by the rulers of our society or the tortured subjects who take on arms to establish their age-old angst against the ruling class has eventually intoxicated the entire society. So what's the real truth behind this dangerous game? Does anybody attempt to delve deeper into the complex aspects of this problem? The truth is we don't want this world to be free of problems because what these power mongers would do then in future. We all are living in a world of serious denial, an inherent human attribute that proposes more dangers than safe and security.

Oh yes, when we struggling here to find out the exact meaning of the truth, the global media baron Murdoch who once proclaimed bringing truth to the public domain is the ultimate gimmick of media is now facing the music for his ultimate truth seeking shenanigans that he deployed to unearth anything and everything at the cost of ethics. For him truth has an altogether different definition that understands the logic of business expansion by not exposing the truth, but by twisting the truth to such a proportion that can attract more readers and audiences to his media products.

Back home, the scandal-tainted government is pushing hard to subvert the truth by restricting public access to information in the pretext that right to information for certain domains of governance could jeopardize the security of nation. In that move lies the vested interest of political class that always desires to be above law irrespective of all wrong reasons. The noose tightens against the truth.

They need solace

Their hallucination laden eyes surreptitiously aspire for certain degree of surrealistic survival, yet the soul inside them rests as sangfroid as pristine glittering dewdrops settled on semi-awakened leaves of grass on a winter morning. They are shackled with myriad of social restrictions, yet they are unbridled from the bustles of life. Look closely into their drowned eyes and you would fail to understand the epicenter of their pangs. They never resurrect from the abysmal depth of intoxication that haunts them every now and then on a sinusoidal trajectory, sometimes high and sometimes low. The reference here doesn't necessarily borrow a cue from a typical Hindi movie sequence, rather it reflects the stark narratives of profound sufferings of millions of drug addicts those unfortunately allured into this world of delusion by the agents of death – drug mafias, traffickers, subdued western hippie culture, and inefficacious state administration – at every turning point of human civilization.

What's more enigmatic and perplexing is the social response to these people. Yet in the midst of cavernous psychic ensnarement, their singular plea for resuscitation bounces back from the deaf ears of many insensate people like us who in all probability though believe to tread on the human spirit of connection, but here deliberately choose to turn a blind eye to the state of dastardly victimization. What's more disturbing is when the iron fists of state machinery multiply their bereavement through various tactics of harassment. Their sorrows never subside.

What's essentially required here is a human touch to the terrible psychological wounds that these victims carry along their tormented journey for which everyone of us is a passive culprit for not embracing their problems that initially stem from depreciated emotional support of family members. We as family members ignore some serious symptoms of emotional imbalance that these drug addicts exhibit before their initiation into this dark journey. We are so engrossed in our self-centered passion for individual excellence that a minor human aberration of a near and dear one is even looked down upon. When the delicate problem snowballs into an enormously dangerous proliferation, we feel the heat and by then a minor behavioral issue of an individual gets transformed into a larger social predicament. Can we be little vigilant and considerate as a fellow human being to such slender issues that grapple the entire humanity? They just need little but genuine consolation.

Curbing the free speech

When IT has made India one of the fastest emerging economy in world market, the regulatory move against virtually free online media including blog sites and other social networking sites is a clear indication of the fact that the rotten politicians and bureaucrats in this country are trying to tighten the noose against unbridled free speech, primarily because the ongoing exposures of their corrupt practices in unconventional media like Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, etc., have attracted huge public attentions and reactions, which become a deterrent to their clandestine corrupt practices. In the recent Anna Hazare's crusade against corruption, the social media played a significant role by spreading the awareness across the world, and this became another jasmine revolution.

Now that politicians think the educated, IT-savvy citizens are well-informed and their collective free speech can bring down their supremacy in a society that they have legitimately exploited for decades, which furthermore won't be possible and this fear psychosis has triggered an authoritarian regime like situation to nip any future online revolution in the bud. This is a serious contempt of freedom of speech provisioned in a democracy. No matter how blasphemous or hateful be the views on an individual on any subject, that should be given a benefit of doubts in the ambit of “personal interpretation”, not as interpreted by a motley group of “pseudo-intellectual bureaucrats” who have continuously blocked the social innovations in this country.

Every time when a corruption news breaks out in this country, people blindly blame politicians without analyzing the length and breadth of the crime, but the time has come now to look beyond the lopsided view. The systemic corruption in India is a phenomenon dangerously propagated by the bureaucrats since independence. Their feudal attitude to keep every policy inherently flawed has stumped the progress of this country. If we have witnessed any social, economic or technological revolution, be it market liberalization, IT revolution, or mobile revolution, in this country, that has been possible just because of the sincere efforts of some good politicians, technocrats, and intellectuals. Though there are very few bureaucrats who have helped executing the policies with due diligence, the majority of this power block have continuously manipulated the system on their side, and the recent move on curbing the free speech in a democratic system is again their misadventure to prohibit public reactions, but this act of despot will never succeed. Controlling the internet framework across the world by any local government agency has never been successful, and this wild act of authoritarian governance will rather raise more conflicts in a working democracy.

The Adventurism of Social Media

“Social networking sites are bloody suckers for Internet users,” blasted one of my old school cronies. He may be right on his own context. And why shouldn't he retort that way when his wife, an ad professional in a reputed agency, dated her boss regularly in rendezvous decided well in advance in cryptic parlance over different social media. Then she, in all her resounding conscience, smarted up to the occasion in the pretext of certain professional engagements with her clients. Sounds quite banal and inappropriate. I felt pity for this poor chap when he narrated his sordid saga to me last week. I couldn't stop laughing for the simple reason that how immature was my poor friend in jumping to the conclusion and blaming his wife's escapade to the ill impact of social media in entirety. Well, that's another nondescript instance like a pesky item number in a well-packaged movie. But on a serious note, social media had nothing to do with the misfortune of my friend, it's another social aberration that may happen anywhere in any society. It could even have happened without the presence of social media.

The biggest gift of social media is collaboration and reach. A decade before when netizens started using email and chat as collaborative tools, the communication process was two-way – the sender and the receiver; however, with the surge of social media, the real collaboration or multi-way communication became possible. For example, someone twits on any issue, it reaches out to the entire community, and that's the beauty of social media which empowers its avid users with a platform to collaborate on anything and everything under the sun. This is another pillar representing the free speech in a democratic world. The impact can't be marginalized by justifying its effects on social dynamics. The entire world is opening, in a sense that the floodgates of information from billions of social media posts is reaching out to the empowered, decisive consumers in a big way. Imagine how the Wikileak's adventurous journey in digging out the gravel of bureaucratic red tapes and informing the facts hidden behind the sinister design of ruling class hegemony across the nations. This is just the beginning of a new age information war, the next episode would be more dramatic, powerful, and effusive to sweep away the entire human race to a point where the war of words could be more powerful than the impact of a nuclear bomb.