For those who have the honour
of having a supportive financial background for a while, unemployment can be a
boon as well as a bane. The (most obvious) downsides of it are the lack of
financial autonomy and security. The positive associated with it is the vast
amount of time that it places at one's disposal. If used constructively, this
time can be helpful in personal development as well as for developing a keen
power of analysis. Also, it teaches one to be an efficient financial manager.
This can be explained in the following three ways:
- nececessity is the mother of invention; or
- one tends to ascribe greater value to those things which one possesses in scarcity; or
- the lesser the supply of a commodity is (or the rarer a commodity is), the more costly/valuable it is.
Recently, I had a sojourn to
Chandigarh. The journey was an enriching experience for me because I observed
many things throughout the trip. Also, it was a welcome relief for me since it
was a break from the monotony of my usual routine. I nowhere claim that the
data presented by me is statistically expansive, given that my sample space was
very small. Notwithstanding the preceding caveat, the data presented by me is worthy
to be contemplated upon.
My current job status—"unemployed"—confers
upon me the honour of being a deliberative spender. I undertook my journey in a
state transport corporation ordinary bus, which gave me some insights into
functioning of the society. It's not that I haven't done this before; it's just
that I've thought of writing about these things now. The very first thing that
one notices is the almost ubiquitous dilapidated and many-a-time unclean condition
of ordinary buses—of course,
shouldn't that be so? After all, they are ordinary!
Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) funding clearly
doesn't seem to have been sufficient to curb this occurrence.
The next thing that I witnessed
was a road accident on the NH (National Highway) 72 and the mangled front end
of a car. What caught my attention was the reaction of most of the people
sitting inside the bus which I was travelling in—an interesting field for a
psychologist or a behaviouralist to research upon. Most of the people rose in
their respective seats (as if in reverence) and tried to assimilate the view
from the closest quarter that their erstwhile position permitted. Our bus wasn't going to stop and the passengers
weren't going to offer help. Anyway, that wasn't required either as an
ambulance was already present to carry the victims to the hospital. However,
the sight of an accident—a break from the normal
surroundings and a potential topic of discussion—seemed too good to be resisted
by the people. It is noteworthy how the topics of discussion of the people change
on seeing such a sight. Most of the passengers, who are otherwise engrossed in
casual conversations, shift the topic of their talks to vehicular accidents.
Many people even start drawing conclusions based on stereotypical assumptions.
Or perhaps I feel so, given that I don't have "adequate knowledge" to
pass such dicta.
When Robert Frost wrote in one
of his poems—"We dance around in a ring and suppose, But the secret sits
in the middle and knows"—he perhaps had in mind that the solutions to our
problems, the rays of hope for despairing hearts are all situated amongst
ourselves. It is only that most of us fail to notice and acknowledge their
presence. Many of the road accidents occur at night due to the drivers' using their
vehicular headlight at high beam. In Chandigarh, I saw the solution to this
problem. Within the city, vehicles are not permitted to use their headlights at
high beam. I did not get to observe whether a significant number of people were
following this rule or not. Nevertheless, the presence of a progressive rule
was a cause of relief. The high beam causes a nuisance to the vehicles
approaching from the opposite direction as well as to the pedestrians. Besides
this, though there was a rule prohibiting honking by vehicles at many places, quite
a lot of the people seemed oblivious of this.
Chandigarh city has been
maintained quite beautifully. There was the usual presence of overcharging
autorickshaw drivers. I stayed in a building which was substantially financed
by the Government of Punjab to provide accommodation to farmers from far-flung
areas visiting the city as also to the general public. The accommodation was very
well-maintained and hygienic. Perhaps this facility was the result of the very
influential and rich farmer lobby that has been created in Punjab and some
other parts of North India by the Green Revolution of the 1970s. This became
evident when I saw that though the accommodation was subsidized, the food in
the food court wasn't.
On my way back from Chandigarh,
two ladies (presumably from the same
family) accompanied by a small child boarded the bus. One of them was quite
older and the younger one seemed not to possess the gift of speech. The child
seemed to be her son. Their woes were that they were carrying a lot of luggage.
What irritated—I couldn't keep myself
from using this strong word here—me was the apathy of one of the fellow
passengers (a woman) in continually
cribbing about these two ladies' luggage blocking her way. This was when that
woman looked quite able in all aspects. It is disheartening to see some of the
individuals from our society exhibiting such a behaviour towards persons with
disabilities.
The midway halt of the bus gave
me another insight—this time into the rights of consumers. The bus drivers seem
to halt the bus at pre-decided locations, where they get a cheaper meal and
other amenities. My bus stopped at a place where I couldn't think about having
a meal as the place seemed to be festered with flies. Further, the person
seemed to be selling packed goods at a 25 to 33 per cent sale price above the
Maximum Retail Price (MRP). And this is usually done for accommodating the "cost
of chilling" (beverages) and "for the place being on a highway or a
bus station". One of the retailers was even selling water bottles, which
were meant to be sold only at railway stations (as the text on the bottle neck
clearly stated), at an elevated price. The union ministry of consumer affairs
clearly specifies that a retailer cannot charge a customer a price greater than
the MRP. The illiterate or unaware or unsuspecting people are duped by these
retailers in the name of such excuses. Michel Foucault had stated that
knowledge is directly related to power. The need of the hour is for the people
to be vigilant and the government to be swift in meting out penalties to the
erring retailers. It is not that the retailers are always the ones to be blamed
as people hungry for profits. Many-a-time, these retailers have to overcharge
because they in turn have to bribe policemen who otherwise harass them because
these retailers are not authorized vendors or do not possess a license. A
positive legislation in this direction is the Street Vendors Bill.
Another observation during the
return journey was the loss of wildlife that happens due to vehicular accidents.
Clearly, a step needs to be taken in this direction. Although vehicles are
prohibited from speeding too much while passing through areas abounding in wildlife,
the observed outcomes don't seem to be much convincing. The eroded hills at
many-a-place presented a dismal sight and compelled me to think about climate
change and its effects. I earnestly hope that we are not going to make
anthropogenic factors the cause of extinction of species.
Lastly, I picked up a few
excerpts from the conversation of a lady talking to someone else over her
cellphone. Apparently, the lady had visited a few bugyals (a Garhwali term for high-altitude grasslands) and other adventure
tourist spots in Uttarakhand in the preceding days. This greatly allured the
adventurist in me, who has otherwise been kept subdued since a long time for
want of time and funds. The lady was also narrating about a "Modi-wave"
in context of the 16th Lok Sabha elections and about children from far-flung
areas in Uttarakhand mentioning to her about their elders' going to cast votes "lest
Modi would lose". So much was the effect of bad governance by the
previous government combined with a splendid advertisement campaign by the (now)
winning political party.
A political leader has claimed
about a glass half-filled with water to be half-filled with water and
half-filled with air. When it comes to matters in general about India, I'm not
a doubter, a skeptic or a cynic. I believe that doubters do not achieve,
skeptics do not contribute and cynics do not create. Notwithstanding this, I
also believe that bringing improvement in the ecology is as much a responsibility
of the citizens as it is of the government. On my part, I try to write and
propagate awareness about the issues. If people are able to make a difference
in any way after reading my articles, I will consider that my efforts have
borne fruits.
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