Thinking with the D word

Credits : Photos.com

A couple snuggled into each other on a park bench, a four year old boy swinging between the arms of his parents, two boys threading through the traffic in their grey uniforms, shouting at each other and anyone who cares to listen or the baby girl above in the arms of her father; these are some of the things that most of us see, most probably more often that not. How people interact with each other is perhaps one of the most interesting things you can observe (without creeping them out, of course!), that too tirelessly.

I do this too, when I feel lost or confused about things going on in my life (more on that later) but that isn't what this post is attributed to; it is to point out a few rather worrying unifying features I've found in my country's social fabric. Made more worrisome by the fact that it is like long-term depression; you've had it for so long that it feels like a part of yourself. I don't know how much of this is there in the rest of the world, but I suspect more than what we would like to imagine.

Most sensible people know what democracy is and why we have it. The reasons, many and varied have already been penned down by millennia of great thinkers,philosophers and leaders. I don't think I can even make a scratch on the surface of what they have thought of. However, relatively fresher is the question 'What does it means to be democratic ?' and it is one that definitely worth asking.

For most people it means going every five years to get one of their nails oddly painted and cast a vote in the process. That's one aspect of it that everyone knows and warrants spending of copious amounts of money and campaigning. It something that world politics, economy, global policies and even wars revolve around. But it isn't all. Every day, every single tabloid or magazine you look, you can see astounding amount of criticism of the governance we have, of corruption and misrepresentation and in general a great feeling of injustice: that the people we choose neither know what we want nor do they do what is in our best interest. It is undeniable that the political system needs strong reforms but on the other hand how the government and polity works is the best representation of the people who put them up in the first place, for good or for bad. The government might appear to be a monolith that isn't malleable enough for the common man, even if he was sick of it, yet it is made of people who came from among us and it is they who run it to be what we aren't particularly fond of.

Perhaps it isn't only the system's fault; there is the society that we have built and are actively propagating to shoulder copious amounts of it. Ask yourself this question: 'Am I a  democratic person ?' Our society is based on interactions; or more fittingly it is the interactions themselves and a few rules that govern them that we call society ! In these interactions, on a day to day basis are you democratic ? While making decisions involving yourself and others: say whether to hold a class this afternoon or to go for that project that looks a bit risky but promising, do you ask the people involved what their stakes are and what do they think of this decision, whether they're really okay with it ? Are you willing to give their concerns equal footing with your own and to spend the time to tell them why you might be right, instead of just overruling them or relegating them to be inconsequential ?

Violence against women stems from the fact that for the proprietors, the opinion and the priorities of their victims are not worth anything. A lot of needless violence like what is unleashed against peaceful protestors of all sorts worldwide in the recent past stems from the fact that their well being and what they stand for are considered to be of much less importance than the authorities'. You cheat because you think that effort someone put in studying or practicing for hours isn't as important as the effort you probably failed to take. A lot of economic inequality comes from the fact that we consider our comforts far more important than others'. On a larger scale environmental damage and pollution owes its origin to the human feeling that they're the center of the world, that no other thing's well being and continuity matters as much as their own.

As a people we have a sore scarcity of democratic mindset. We want rules and to blindly enforce or follow them, perhaps a relic from our colonial past. It is much more widespread and far reaching than you might imagine, having firm roots in the education system. At home, you might have no option but to listen to what others have to say since you're part of a family but that isn't the case in school. I remember having a terrible Malayalam non-detail textbook in my 10th, the year I was supposed to face the board exams. It was so terrible that I couldn't even just ignore it: we had to write a 15 mark essay (out of 100) on this. So every exam that came up, I would write four pages trying to tear apart the book into shreds and would consequently spend an hour or two in the teachers hall when the papers were distributed. Most people could not digest that fact that an opinion contrary to what most people hold is in fact, acceptable.

Or think even simpler. Why do they not let children go and pee if they really want to while a class is going on? Are we preparing for such a despotic mode of governance that you have to raise your hand to drink water, sitting in your own seat drinking from your own bottle filled with water from your home ? Is it really that hard to accept that these are individuals whose concerns and opinions are as important as everyone else's and that you can't just make them blindly do what you want them to.

Democratic decision making isn't always the fastest or smartest way of doing things.It is hard too; you might not always get what you want. Yet it is something we have to learn to do because it is an integral part of humanity, mutual respect and dignity and all those idealistic things you read about in books all the time. You can't definitely do away with deciding things on your own and rest assured, situations will arise where you've to overrule others for everyone's best interest, like overruling unreasonable demand of someone's.However both these styles of decision making and thought processes are two sides of a coin. Unless you have one to supplement and restrain the other, we might never reach the dream of democracy or equality or of a better world devoid of violence and poverty. Perhaps instead of crying out all the time about what is wrong with the world, we should look inside ourselves a little bit.