Nithari and Our Degrading Collective Conscience
Arun Kumar
As 2006 closed, Nithari became one more blot for independent India like the Sikh riots in 1984 or Babri Masjid and the communal violence of 1992-93 or the 2002 Gujrat communal riots where the helpless and the innocent have been victims? The killings may not be on the scale that occurred in these events but it is unparalleled in ghastliness. Is it going to be one more event to be rationalized in our collective conscience and soon become one more thing that happened? Is it a part of a trend or a one of event that is only an aberration?
It is not clear whether the children were used as sex slaves and killed or were they a part of an assembly line to provide organs to the well off? Could it be both? Newspaper reports suggest that both things may have been happening. The police complicity in the perpetration of the crime over more than a year since when the sequence of children going missing started, suggests that there may have been substantial pay offs and that implies that money was coming in to the perpetrators of the crime. That would suggest that the children were a source of income to the criminals.
Children have died in exceptional circumstances, like, war and drought but these are not premeditated. In feudal times when women and children were slaughtered by the victorious that was considered to be brutal and perhaps these were motivated by the desire not to leave anyone to take revenge. But is this senseless killing expected to happen in a so called civilized society? In Nithari, there was premeditated murder of many innocent children over more than a year and that is what is shocking. No enmity, no purpose other than profit or lust worse than the feudal killing.
In present times one had heard of stolen cadavers or of the poor patients going to private clinics and coming out after some days in a daze with pain and stitches in their abdomen. Children as bonded labour to provide dirt cheap labour has been known but to use them as if in an assembly line to provide body parts or titillation was an unheard of thing. One had heard of children being sodomized in prisons or cases of individuals who were sick enough to molest a child in their family or neighbourhood. The full facts are not yet out whether it was a case of sexual molestation and then serial murder or murder for harvesting organs. It is a sign that sickness in society is reaching new heights.
Growing Commercialization
In either case, it is clear that commercialization has reached a stage in its onward march where it does not even spare life. One may ask, in our society what is the value of life today? In one case, life is taken for the profit on the sale of organs and in the other it is the lust aroused in the minds of some to such an extent that someone elses life hardly has value. The mind is so numbed for such people that the life of an innocent child is immaterial. The law and order machinery valued the life of children at the amount of the bribe they received and did not do its duty to trace them. Children kept on disappearing and it took little action. There is the minister who said that such things are minor and routine. Clearly, officials, the minister and the police are so brutalized that human values pale into insignificance before money. In this sense, it is not a one of event. This psychological make up manifests itself in a variety of things happening around us.
Those who have committed the crime and those who were supposed to be the custodians of law but who have allowed it to happen by overlooking the crime are equally involved in this crime. Both have done it for money. We have been witnessing serial killings in our society on a large scale through female feoticide. Roughly 9% of the girls are missing. Again it is a case of money ruling over human values. Many view the girl child as a burden in a society where dowry is rampant and lavish weddings at the expense of the brides family the norm. The clinics collaborating in this practice mint money and the local police and the powerful get a cut from this flourishing trade.
All this is a part of the larger phenomenon plaguing our society and it has four important identifiable components. First, more and more, we view individuals as nothing more than a sophisticated machine. No values or emotions need be attached to the individual as would be the case for a machine. Secondly, there is growing illegality to make a fast buck. Money has become the single biggest value. Thirdly, there is a deep penetration of markets into all social institutions and our thought processes. So, there is growing commercialization of all things around us. We increasingly view most things as a matter of gains and losses. Finally, there are rapid changes in our society with the old values breaking down and the new ones not yet in place to guide acceptable behaviour resulting in a free for all.
Growing Illegality
Illegality in society relates to the growth of the black economy. It has grown from about 4% of GDP in 1955-56 to 40% in 1995-96 and possibly 50% by now. In other words, a substantial part of our activity (economic) involves some form of illegality. It has brought into its grip vast sections of society. This scale of illegality would not have been possible without the ruling classes who are supposed to govern society being a party to it. Large numbers are its victims while a small segment, the ruling elite – politicians, businessmen and the executive – are its beneficiary. Consequently, there is growing criminalization in society including in the legislatures. Those who are supposed to uphold the rule of law are a party to its being broken and this encourages illegality all around and it grows. Illegality is now taken to be routine and winked at (the UP ministers statement mentioned above is a part of the brutalized consciousness we live with) or treated as nothing out of the ordinary since one is so much a part of it.
The political class, the bureaucracy and the police not only take growing illegality as routine matters but also they benefit from it and encourage it. For instance, police collect hafta and encourage illegality in many activities so that they can collect more of it – illegal construction, encroachment, illegal factories, willful pollution, power theft, etc., are a part and parcel of activities that are winked at. Today, in society, the usual is the unusual and the unusual the usual. What should not happen happens and what should happen does not. The citizen facing harassment gets completely alienated and those who can, join in, rather than fighting corruption. Resistance to illegality is on the wane both amongst the rulers and the ruled. Those fighting illegality are a tiny minority and marginalized. So illegality of all kind flourishes.
Valuing the invaluable
Growing commercialization in society has meant putting a value to things that we had earlier not thought of in monetary terms or had believed could not be compensated in monetary terms. For instance, education and health were thought of as invaluable or relationships in a family or the beauty of a sea beach. Now education and health are sought to be given a monetary value. Hence commercialization in these sectors is now rampant. Teachers are supposed to be the creators of the future of society. Health was termed as wealth. These were the noble professions where it was considered crass to even think of paying back the teacher or the doctor. Payment was only a token of appreciation. Today, by and large, neither the teachers nor the doctors think of themselves in those noble terms and society also does not think of them in that way.
Feoticide has been on the increase since girls are considered to be a financial burden on the family. Life is hardly important when it comes to commercial considerations. In a profit maximizing world, costs have to be minimized. People are taken to be nothing more than optimizers increasing their profit to the maximum. Irrespective of all else. Social values are only a restraint and add to the costs so best done away with. A child can be a source of profit for the maximizers. They can serve as a part of an assembly line to produce organs for the rich, especially if they are not ones children or of the elite who can raise a stink. Children of the poor do not matter so they can be given poor quality education in government schools.
In fact, today, child labour is a source of profit maximization for many producers. The childhood they miss or the low skills that they will always be stuck with are of no consequence. It reflects our attitude to our children and therefore to our future. The costs are postponed to the future because the profit has to be maximized today. Similar is the case with the recent announcement of a spate of SEZ and the massive displacement of the farmers and the poor that it will generate. The elite is unconcerned with this since it will progress and make massive profits. So its instrument, the state, will displace large numbers come what may for profit of businesses. It does not matter that the farmers do not wish to move. They do not count. If the wealthy in New Delhi or Altmount road were told that their properties will be acquired at low prices in the next few months for development, will they vacate without a fight? They will flood the courts with stay orders and so on.
Today, do we recall Kumbakonam where a large number of children died in a fire in a school? Have we learnt any lessons from that to provide proper school buildings or are we waiting for the next tragedy because children of the poor hardly count for much. Many schools in Delhi meant for them have been found not to have drinking water or toilets. This is profit maximization for some policy makers and the elite who do not wish to pay taxes and hide a large part of their income. Not only children, we place a low value on workers also. They can be paid a below subsistence wage to make a higher profit. Privatization is partly based on the idea that various services can be extracted cheaply from workers by the private players. What of the families of those workers and the workers working extra long hours that is of no consequence. If youth burns out by the time they reach middle age, that is of no consequence to the employer.
Marketization and Unchecked Profit Maximization
Commercialization creates markets where earlier they did not exist. This is supposed to enhance economic efficiency. The notion of efficiency is itself based on the idea of consumer sovereignty which is that the consumer knows best and whatever she/he wants should happen in the economy. This might occur legally or illegally – legally if it is allowed by society but illegally if society considers it to be undesirable for the individuals. Thus, if someone wants narcotic drugs or sex or trade in organs these would happen but since society frowns on them, they will occur illegally. Women should aim to be like Cindy Crawford or Aishwarya Rai. They have to be made to feel inadequate and their bodies used to sell things so they can be treated as a product. This degrades both men and women. It is legitimate to create demand for ones product by various means even if that product has little value. It can be done by creating life style images using sex and violence or other means.
Profit making has been raised to a new high pedestal in India, especially after the New Economic Policies were launched. Whichever way it can be done has become legitimate. Titillation in entertainment is routine and is supposed to be a sign of progressivity and modernity. In the name of freedom of speech anything goes. Mores have changed with time. Self restraint is not desirable. One of the features of todays markets is the principle of `more is better because that is supposed to increase the individuals welfare. Thus, moderation and sacrifice are signs of stupidity. Gandhis idea of voluntary poverty and restraint on ones consumption is only a curiosum for the fringes but not a popular idea. Our leaders pay lip service to Gandhi and then indulge in the worst kind of waste of public funds and display of their ill gotten wealth.
Rapidly Changing Social Values and Valuelessness
There is a growing shallowness in the life of the elite. Media supports it, especially TV with its emphasis on `a sound byte as news and heavy dependence on feeding the public sex and violence. Political leaders are the corrupt ones, discredited and with little stature. Since they say one thing and do another, they are not seen to be sincere and only acting. Since film stars and sportspersons are better at it, they have an advantage and are becoming the leaders of society. Businessmen (who are adept at money making) are the new heroes since they are seen to be successful in market terms. Success is seen in narrow terms of money and fame and not values. A film star may be a tax evader, a womanizer, mixed up with smugglers and mafia dons but that is immaterial since so are the politicians. At least he is an entertainer while the politician is not even that.
Indian society has been transiting rapidly in the last century from a traditional mould to a westernized one. The elite sections are educated in the elitist western system and increasingly imbibing western values. The lower sections, for good jobs, are trying to imbibe similar values. Thus, the earlier system of values have rapidly broken down under the onslaught of the western domination and the penetration of markets into our consciousness. However, new values to replace them have not emerged. The checks and balances of the western systems have not evolved here and anyway that took them several centuries to put in place. Values are not created by the market since it is amoral and immoral and has no inherent values of its own. It is society which evolves values. However, since the copying of the western system has severely curtailed our dynamism it has also curtailed our ability to evolve the new value system suited to our requirements. We may be underdeveloped but we can be civilized if we try.
Conclusion
Commercialization which is increasingly treating women and children as commodities and individuals as sophisticated machines has also destroyed the rule of law through growing illegality which is going unchecked. It is creating a situation worse than the senseless killing of the innocents in feudal times where now killing has been used to profit from childrens bodies. Nithari is then a part of a trend and not just one of event and that is the much more disturbing part.
Can human happiness come purely from things that are external to a person? Today, individuals are alienated, weakened by the market and consumerism and highly insecure. Much of advertising depends on keeping one dissatisfied and it tries to not only exploit but also enhance ones weaknesses. In the name of freedom of expression, all manner of commercialization is promoted. Any one who suggests restraint is branded as paternalistic and sought to be put on the defensive. In this view, man is nothing more than a sophisticated machine, a part of a bigger machine whose task is its own self-perpetuation for more and more production and not human happiness. Like one can cannibalize a machine to keep another going, in such a system, children in Nithari were a source for doing just that. There is no place for human conscience in all this it is a luxury and a redundant one in the market. It increases costs so profit maximization requires one to attenuate it to a minimum or even press the delete button. Much of the political class, business class, bureaucracy and police have done the latter and have a brutalized consciousness.
All that can go wrong in society will do so since commercialization is disturbing the fine balance between the various facets of life evolved over time. After all, wrong is only a social category sustained by social mores and a conscience both of which are now severely degraded. Increasingly, nothing matters anymore but the market.
Email- arunkumar@mail.jnu.ac.in