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Let's scorn hypocrisy

As we become less and less capable of handling real, burning issues we turn more and more towards absurd, solipsistic, irrelevant non-issues. These non-issues then increasingly hijack the nation's mind share and ultimately everyone, from journalists to politicians to bureaucrats, becomes an active participant in this foolish, shameful charade. Cake becomes the issue. Not bread.

A report brought out by the United Nations Development Fund for Women last week, to coincide with its global campaign against gender-based violence, shows that 200,000 Nepalese women and girls and 300,000 Bangladeshi children are sold to brothels in India and we are now the largest transit point for the trafficking of women to West Asia and other parts of the world.

They also estimate that 2 million women in India earn their livelihood from selling sex and one out of every four of them is, horror of horrors, below 18. Mind you, this is not exactly new or unknown to us. This is happening every day. Everyone knows this. Everyone sees this. You; I; the police; the politicians. But, for some curious reason, this is not an issue. This is not an issue because every one of us is a part of this racket. Someone gets his sex from it. Someone earns his hafta from it. Someone finds his headlines in it. Someone gets his votes from it. That's why no one wants to challenge the system, let alone change it.

So what do we do? We focus on idiotic issues. Close the bars at 11. Stop all shows at 11.30. Shut down the restaurants at 12. Make all entertainment beyond these hours illegal. Why? The reason is obvious. To extort. Whenever you ban or forbid something, someone somewhere makes money out of allowing it to happen on the sly. By closing down bars, restaurants, cinema halls and video parlours beyond a specific hour all that we are actually doing is encouraging more people to indulge in illegal activity. For a fee.

Statistics show that more people in Bombay and New Delhi are killed, shot at, robbed, mugged, extorted and harassed not after 11 at night but in broad daylight and before huge numbers of witnesses. In fact, most crimes are committed when people least expect it and familiar night crimes, like smuggling and heists, are happening during office hours. Even robberies, thefts and murders now take place in the full view of audiences. In modern India, crime has become a spectator sport. Whether you are killing people, poaching wild life, cutting down trees or extorting businessmen, the criminals of today are happier doing this in front of large audiences so that their message of terror does not go unheard. So how does it help to shut down the city at 11 and stop people from earning a livelihood or enjoying themselves after a hard day's work beyond the Cinderella hour?

In fact, opening up the city after dark could possibly reduce crime. People will have something to do after work. This will diminish family tensions, cut down frustration levels, create more jobs, enhance the quality of our lives. In a recessionary economy, it will also help to open up new windows of opportunity and enterprise. How can you deny the people this? In every front, employment or shelter or food or education, the State has failed miserably. It has only created opportunities for the already pampered classes to make more money through its many much touted, much misused welfare schemes.

Okay, forget crime. Look at freedom of expression. The right to be heard.

We jump up, at the slightest pretext, to ban a play on Nathuram Godse. We fight and argue over whether a silly film on lesbianism should be banned or not. We spend miles of newsprint on whether a kissing scene should have been censored or not, whether Salman Rushdie should have been allowed in the bookshops. Or whether a politician can be shown gunned down on the movie screen. But have we ever made an attempt to go to the very basics, to stop the State, the police, the politicians and their goons and hoodlums from manipulating our votes at election time?

Go to any polling booth in UP or Bihar, Orissa or Haryana and you will see thugs hanging around there and stuffing the boxes. You will see the same people coming back again and again and casting their votes in different names. If you go after noon, you will almost certainly find your vote already cast by someone else. Everyone knows this. The winners and the losers. In fact, every party uses the same mafia. Only the prices go up each time. Yet none of us are ready to fight this menace. Instead, we try to manipulate it to our own advantage.

No one is interested in changing the rules of this rotten game. We are too busy tilting at our fashionable windmills. Sounding off on irrelevant issues and pretending that the future of India depends on whether a play is banned or a film censored.

Let's take a third example. Taxes. Everyone knows who the real tax evaders in India are. They are all big people in big businesses that enjoy the protection and the patronage of the State. They are the guys who fund the elections. They call the shots at Budget time through their complex network of allies in the bureaucracy and the political system. Their lobbies work overtime to protect their business interests and every tax law is framed, as we all know, in a manner such that loopholes are left for them to exploit. So that they can escape the tax dragnet and pay the least possible.

Yet all our tax collection efforts focus on the small businessman, the professional, the guy who has a mobile phone or a scooter or a club membership or, poor chap, has made the mistake of taking his girl friend on a cheap holiday to Phuket. We forget the simple fact that the Phuket holiday comes usually cheaper than a holiday within India. The international flights are cheaper. The hotel rooms are cheaper. Even the taxi fares in South East Asia are cheaper. But, for some stupid reason, our tax collectors are convinced that the salesman from Prabhadevi who has gone abroad on a discount fare is more suspect than the trader from Dombivli who flies his family to Ooty. I suspect there is not just stupidity but an element of sheer envy that colours their vision.

Wherever you look, you see the same thing. What we, in Bengal, describe as searching for a needle while the big, fat elephant escapes through the wide open gate. You shut down pubs at 11 but you allow prostitution to carry on freely. You scream yourself hoarse against a play on Godse and yet you allow your rights as a voter to be crassly compromised. You encourage the fat cats of industry to get away with wilful, wanton tax evasion while you create a system to harass the small guy who, more often than not, is punished for a technical mistake.

If we want a liberal India, a free India it is time to cut out the bullshit. It is time to repaint this scenario, scorn the inbuilt hypocrisy of the system and look for real issues. Not rubbish. Bread; not cakes.

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