Of civilian rights and duties

AGKSPEAK

We are all equally culpable for Mumbai's woes this monsoon

What I've Liked
It's very difficult to have been in Mumbai on the 26th of July and not want to talk about it! Everybody has an amazing 'rain-story' to tell. The one common factor binding all these real-life dramas is the startling humanity of the city that shines through in every one's experience.

It is as if the rains washed away years and years of accumulated grime and grease to reveal a heart of pure gold. And that's what the ad, which I have picked for this fortnight, so beautifully captures.

The headline couldn't have phrased it better- "You can flood a city. But you can never drown its spirit". It goes on to say "As Mumbai lost its legs, its people reached out with their hands".

A statement that I can vouch for as I witnessed an almost surrealistic flood of initiative and brotherhood, surge to set the city back on its feet. Young lads whom you normally dismissed as louts and wastrels, came forward on their own and used their muscle power to lift stranded cars, push buses and lorries out of the way clearing up traffic jams.

Street dwellers, past whom you would otherwise drive thoughtlessly splashing muddy water all over their makeshift dwellings, offered free tea to the rich memsahibs trapped in their expensive cars. SUVs loaded with sandwiches and water would suddenly materialise and smiling young men would go around distributing food (again free of cost) to everyone who was stuck in those unending jams.

As the ad says, "that is the spirit that even the fury of the Gods cannot dampen". Most of Mumbai threw their homes open to total strangers. And by homes it was not just brick and mortar homes "" I know an executive who gratefully spent the night on a corrugated cardboard in a watchman's cabin!

You were either spending the night in someone else's home or you had a stranger in yours those two nights. I have never in my entire life, ever seen so much rain, so much water "" but that's not what has stayed with me "" it is the outpouring of genuine, unaffected brotherhood that has left an indelible impression on me "" a city where "strangers became family overnight".

Truly.

What I've Learned
Good governance begins with You.
There is a Telugu version (Aparichithudu) of a Tamil film called Anniyan. In it there is a hapless young man who goes by the nickname 'Rules Ramanujam'. He is considered naïve just because he has a keen sense of his own responsibilities and rights to the State as well as the State's responsibilities and rights towards him.

The storyline of the movie then branches off to create quite a thought provoking tale but it was Ramanujam's character that has set me thinking "" of how a citizen is truly expected to behave.

The young man is so reasonable that he is dismissed as being impractical. All that he asks is for people to be fair. As he is to them. As a line in the film goes 'one good cricketer cannot win a match. It takes the whole team'.

His point is that petty rule breaking, small bribes, little thefts will never go away unless everyone stops it himself or herself. And the worst part of a little crime is that it doesn't end there. On the contrary, it sets off a chain of irresponsibilities that snowballs into one giant catastrophe. Very much like the little poem/fable "For the want of a nail....a kingdom was lost"!

But all of us continue to commit the crimes, are personally responsible for triggering off a series of crises and, then, blissfully ignorant of the consequences of what we have done, blame the government of failing to clean-up after us. Our dogs and we relieve ourselves on the street and we complain that the government is responsible for the leptospirosis epidemic.

We fling garbage out of our cars and homes and complain that the government is responsible for the huge pile up of epidemic-causing garbage. The recent floods are proof that it is our individual lack of civic sense that is responsible for this wide-scale breakdown of the system.

Not only should we all individually start respecting our civic amenities, and other facilities, we should be responsible enough to stop other people from abusing common/public property as well. Only then can we start pointing fingers at the government.

Till then we are all equally culpable. There is no such thing as a 'small' mistake. To quote the film again, "If five crore people steal 5 paise each would you still call it a tiny, little inconsequential theft?"

Yes, 'Rules Ramanujam' had quite a lesson to teach me. I only wish we had many more like him.

Email: agkbrandconsult@yahoo.com