An Anatomy of Violence

A murder most obnoxious! A twenty two year old loses his life to a mad man on the run! What price to pay for discharging ones duty? It adds insult to the injury that the state agencies who should have acted in first place to ensure such incident should not have occurred are now politicizing the issue and are busy playing the usual game of passing the buck.

 Two years back I stayed in the Bihar and Jharkhand to execute a project in the states. When I was asked to take the assignment I did not bat an eye lid and within four days landed in Patna. There were two reasons why I took on this rather tough assignment. One I had not seen these two states and other more important was that the states were just yawning from a long slumber to join the mainstream of the country after years of misrule and denial and I wanted to be a part of this.

Whilst I was there, I had several challenges to address starting from ones at personal level and other on professional level to establish myself. I came across sinister characters from a la  Prakash Jha movie too, and slowly learnt the art of avoiding rather can confronting them. I had been told of the rampant kidnappings on the slightest pretext and killings. I happened to visit a place called Khunti which was around 40 km from Ranchi. We were to deploy a new mobile network in the region. Khunti is in the midst of an extremely poor and backward region and was infested with Naxalites. The place has an immense natural beauty with a thick cover of trees, flora and fauna and beautiful waterfalls cascading down. The people live in abject poverty and children run around naked and women do not have enough clothing to cover themselves. There is no road network to connect from main highway and no form of communication in the interiors.

Two days after my return from Khunti, I read the shocking news of one police sub inspector beheaded by the Naxalites at the same place!!

What is it that makes us so intolerant and hot headed compared to the rest of the people in the world? Is this the air we breathe that is so polluted or the food we eat that makes us so?

I look back and see for how different reasons people can be driven to insanity having been a witness to two diametrically opposite situations. The incident at Gurgaon reflects the uncouth and uncivil elements driving the society to a ‘jungle law’ and the other due social aberration of denial and unjust system the poor are driven into lawlessness. The country today stands divided between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ and this gap is only getting bigger. In many respects we are today no better then African states despite our claim to fame for annualized growth rate of around 7% or more. In matters of human values and all round progress we have a long road to traverse even to catch up with some of the ‘Asian Tigers’.

Somewhere we have forgotten of what this country once proudly boasted and stood for as reflected in  Kabir’s saying

‘ Sai itna dijya ja mein kutumb samayae’

‘ Main bhi ha bhooka rahoon Sadhu na bhooka jayae’

Translated as- Oh God, give me enough so that I can take care of my family and they do not go hungry. Also, I may have enough to give alms to anyone who comes to my doorstep.