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Tolerant about all the wrong things........Anil Dharker
Two photographs that appeared in our newspapers on the same day and one that they fortunately chose not to print, tell a story that goes far beyond them.
One picture is of children lying down on mattresses on the floor of the Thane Civil Hospital. The second picture is the face of a young man, strikingly good-looking with the expression of eager anticipation of the future which a 19-year-old would have. That's Aman Kachroo, a first-year student at a medical college, "ragged" to death by four senior students. The third picture obviously held back because it wouldn't be a pretty sight would have shown a man's right eye with its 'lens dislocated by impact. Part of the lens has entered the vitreous gel in the posterior of the eye and his eye has caved in. The left eye is in a better condition though you wouldn't think so from the description, "a part of the upper eyelid is torn and a part of it is missing. The lower lid too has a 3 cm x 0.5 cm tear ...." These photographs represent a day in the life of India, a day like any other because wherever you go, there is an accident waiting to happen. The children for example, were happily playing Holi butdidn't know they were using toxic colours which would posion them. The man who lost his eye was travelling in a suburban train when he was hit by a water balloon weighted with stones. As for poor Aman, he was studying to be a doctor at the Dr Rajendra Prasad Medical College at Kangra near Dharamsala. While writing this I noticed that there were other picture possibilities: there was a six-year-old daughter of a construction worker who slipped on a staircase in a building under construction in Kandivali. Or there was the boy who had a long iron rod going right through his body and had to travel 100 kms to a hospital to get it removed. The boy, miraculously, survived; the girl, expectedly didn't. The common link in all these horrifying stories is that they do not horrify us. The second common link is that they are all man-made accidents. The third is that these incidents will happen again to someone else who will be unlucky enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. And why is that so? It's because we are a tolerant nation, and we are tolerant about the wrong things. We could be tolerant about religious freedom, we could be tolerant about artistic expression, we could be tolerant about relationships between the sexes. We could be but we aren't. We are tolerant, instead, about bullying, about criminal behaviour, about gross neglect of safety, about the subversion of justice. For how long has ragging been tolerated? The word suggests young people having fun, but ragging is in fact brutal and brutalising behaviour of the worst kind against which severe strictures have been passed by the courts but to which college authorities turn a blind eye. In the case of toxic chemicals in Holi colour, the police have arrested four shopkeepers, but shouldn't they be hunting for the manufacturers instead? And having arrested them, press for exemplary punishment, so severe, that it will act as a deterrent for the future. As for those diabolical water balloons, they have become a tragic part of every Holi in Mumbai. I can't believe that the police can't find these criminals. The boy with the rod and the girl down the stairs are victims of our total disregard for safety. How often have you driven behind an open truck which has iron rods protruding way out behind and tied together with heaven knows what kind of rope? Why do developers get away without providing even elementary safety precautions forworkers on their building sites, sites on which completed buildings will earn them fortunes? Unless all of us take these issues seriously, we will continue to see these photographs in our newspapers every day.Perhaps there are a couple in the paper you are holding on this Monday morning. The writer is a commentator on social affairs
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