Guardian angel, or government?

DesiGirl relates a heart-rending tale of a relative who died recently in a car accident on a highway in Tamil Nadu. The victim was alive after the accident, but for forty-five minutes her husband fruitlessly tried to flag down passing cars before one finally stopped, by which time it was already too late. DesiGirl's personal response to the incident is intense. She accuses those who didnt stop to help of having blood on their hands, and says that she will always remember the day of the accident as the day humanity died a violent death.

The incident is indeed agonizing, and DesiGirl's reaction is completely understandable. I would also probably react, by instinct, in the same way if I was in her shoes - by lashing out against what is most apparent , the apathy of the people who could have helped but didnt.

But this opens an intriguing question - in society, at what point does individual responsibility end and "systemic" responsibility kick in? In other words, at what point does humanity becomes irrelevant and society takes over?

Arguably, the sense of individual responsibility to others declines as one moves from a small, tight community to a large, loosely-connected group, especially when one moves to public, "impersonal" spaces such as highways. For example, in a small village, a person in visible danger is very likely to get help and attention from other individuals even if he/she is a stranger. This is also true, though to a diminished degree, in small towns with a traditional character. But this character declines substantially in secularized cities such as Mumbai, and nearly dissapears in impersonal, public, and transient domains such as highways. In other words, at the level of the smallest entity (the family or village), a sense of community exists which makes individuals respond to circumstances in their immediate surroundings. As the size of the community increases and familiarity decreases, the sense of individual responsiveness dulls.

Thus, to answer the question posed at the beginning: At no point does individual responsibility exist by itself! Individual responsibility has to be encouraged (or enforced) by the "system" (in this case, the community). In other words, traditional communities (eg, samaj) organised around familial or geographical centres provided a "system" of response for circumstances of individual distress.

On modernization and how society reacts to it, Samuel Huntington writes in Political Order in Changing Societies -

"At the psychological level, modernization involves a fundamental shift in values, attitudes, and expectations. With this goes an increasing reliance on universalistic rather than particularistic values and on standards of achievement rather than of ascription in judging individuals"

So the next question would be: Who provides the system of response, then, in places such as cities where the traditional systems no longer exist? Who provides the system of response in the no-mans land on Tamil Nadu's highways? Who determines, and provides, the "universalistic standards" that Huntington talks about?

The answer is obvious - the state. As individuals move from tightly-knit traditional communities to cities and towns, the state is supposed to become the surrogate community by ensuring a reasonable degree of personal safety through prevention and response. In DesiGirl's case, a more efficient judicial/enforcement system would have encouraged more people to offer assistance without the fear of getting entangled with the law. Also, a working emergency response system would restrict the good samaritan's role to making a call from his cell-phone or notifying the nearest town. These are the universal services that should be a fundamental 'given' for a functional society; something citizens can depend on, and demand, instead of pinning hopes on humanity and the goodness of the soul.

To what degree the state is successful in India providing a satisfactory proxy for traditional society is an open question. I offer a conceptual diagram showing how a nation/society would evolve from the traditional to the modern, as far as public systems go.


















It is convenient to conclude that India is in the transitional region where the roles played by state and community dont add up to the minimum level required; that presupposition leaves the hope that further modernization and economic development will bring in a more efficient and structured public order. What is scary is the prospect that even at an advanced level of economic growth, India will retain a quasi-libertarian flavor in its public domain. If that be the case, travellers had better travel in large groups, have a satellite phone handy, and pray hard.

Born under a bad sign

The other day, I was reading an article on the power of journalism, trumpeting the "journalism of courage" of the Indian Express. It recalled one oft-quoted anecdote from during the state of Emergency (1975-1977) when the press had been muzzled, and the press had to get creative to get one past the censors' noses. One day during the Emergency the Indian Express carried, hidden among dozens of other authentic obituaries on the innocuous classifieds page of the newspaper, this one - "...death of Liberty, mother of Hope, Faith and Justicia" (or something to this effect). Ever since I first read about it a couple of decades ago as a child, I have been fascinated by the dark humour of the act and it comes to mind first when I think of the Emergency.

And I have at least one reason to have the Emergency on my mind - I was born during that period. Though only at the very fag end, when many Opposition leaders were still in jail but JP had begun to clinch his dialitic fist in anticipation of the upcoming (and very very successful) political battle; when Sam Manekshaw hadnt yet sat down with his generals over glasses of fine Scotch to weigh the option of a military coup but Indira had begun to dither for fear that he already had. Indeed, the day of my baarsa (naming ceremony) was the same day that the Emergency was lifted, and many a time have I cornered my mother with the wrenching question - why did you not, symbolically, name me Azad or somesuch?

The answer, though never said, was that my parents had had enough of the Emergency by that time. For, a couple of months prior to my birth, they had gotten a phone call and a disguised voice asked if they were home or not. Puzzled, they waited for a couple of days till an unexpected visitor turned up at their door - it was ___, my father's langotiya friend, seeking refuge with his wife and baby in tow! After getting a PhD from the US, he went to live and work in the rural areas around Nanded in Maharashtra in association with the CPI(ML); he was one of the much-glorified (see Hazaaro Khwaishein Aisi) breed of bourgeois-turned-Naxalite, and was now on the run. So for weeks, the entire family stayed in the talghar (cellar) of our Ahmedabad house, never meeting anyone, surfacing only for meals and essentials. After hearing this tale in my childhood, for a long time I associated "going underground" with physically hiding in a cellar!

"As at birth, so in life". Sometimes when I argue on political matters with people, they remark distastefully that I come across as authoritarian. I beg one thing of them. Like some criminals who get lenient justice in consideration of their terrible childhood experiences, judge me too kindly, for I am a child of the Emergency.

The show must go on

The day after the contents of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group were revealed and it became clear that it carried a pessimistic forecast of the US' chances in Iraq, a cynical friend of mine decided to corner me. He pointed out a graph I had posted here a while ago. "If your graph is true," he said, "does it mean that Kashmir will become unstable again, soon"? Gloom set over my face at the thought and I stumbled away, pretending to be busy.

But I have a big smile on since yesterday, after hearing the American president spell out his strategy for Iraq. Looks like Iraq will continue to keep Kashmir calm, at least in the near future.

Jokes apart, I felt while listening to him talk that the reason for the US staying in Iraq has evolved into something more profound than I would have thought. Why this war started in the first place - to protect Israel from a perceived threat or to control Iraq's oil - can be debated forever, but what America is involved in today seems to be a fundamental struggle for pride and position. Three debacles of far-reaching significance in the past two years - Israel's ineffectual war with Hizbullah, the continued existence of Al-Quaeda (and Bin Laden), and the resurgence of the Taliban - look more like a pattern rather than sporadic failures of foreign and military policy, and America seems to realize that not climbing upwards equals slipping down the slope of history.

"The age of U.S. dominance in the Middle East has ended ...", wrote Richard Haass in World Affairs last month, and maybe he is right. Or maybe not. History might look at America in Iraq and see it as a dying power's feeble and helpless attempts to hold on to its colonies, a la Spain in Mexico and Philippines in the 1800s. Or maybe not. Maybe it takes a finer mind to make sense of such important events and their implications. Me, I just think of the Kashmiris and smile.