Peepli Live- A Tale of Farmers' Suicide
A Tale Of Village Practicing Witchcraft!
A poignant truth - A sad tale of Indian democracy
Sariska, A sad tale of a dying ecosystem !!!
Child Abuse- A tale of shame and horror
India’s paradox: As the nation develops, more farmers commit suicide
PEEPLI LIVE!
The Prime Minister and BJP leader as well as many others in and outside politics have seen the Bollywood movie 'PEEPLI LIVE'.The film makers intended that heart rending scenes of the curse of farmers' suicide might make policy makers as well as society in general sit up and ensure that such tragedies never happen. In effect the film hopes to act as a change agent .Change experts tell us that change can come only when an appeal is made to emotions. Logic, reason, facts and statistics have no impact on most of us --so goes the well worn argument.
But what has been our past experience in this regard? Have our decision and policy makers not seen tragedies in the past--bonded labourers, riot victims, khap killings, starvation deaths,flood and earthquake vicims etc?Has all this exposure to heart rending tragedy led to a change of heart leading to concrete action? Instead what transpires is this--the PM makes a high profile visit to the affected areas,the government announces a relief and rehabilitation scheme amounting to hundreds of crores ,TV channels stop covering the tragedy and seek fresh pastures to enhance TRP's and the country moves on to discuss the Indian cricket team's performance in a T- 20 match or worse still to speculate on the likely wedding between a model and an actor!
Why is this so? I believe I may have part of the answer.There is a compassion fatigue in our country. So many people are suffering to such an extent that one throws up one's hands saying 'What can I do?" Then there is a cultural deficit.Charity and compassion are not top most in our priorities except in drawing room conversation and in religious discourses. With individual salvation as our prime goal we believe in the policy of' each for himself and the devil take the hindmost'. After all if a person is suffering it is his past karma that is catching up with him!
Contrast this with the attitude and behaviour of the people of that most 'decadent and materialistic' of nations, USA. Data shows that the people of that hopelessly 'money minded' country give away to charity over $ 250 billion dollars every year, an amount that is strangely equivalent to the money stashed away by the Indian rich in Swiss bank accounts!
American billionaires have pledged to give away to charity ,most of their wealth. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet plan to visit India to persuade Indian billionaires to be equally generous. My suggestion to Gates and Buffet--save the cost of the air ticket and add that amount to your donation to Somalia .Indian billionaires have other pririties. I base my cynical advise on the experience of charitable organisations in India who have found it almost impossible to get a few dollars more from our ultra rich--exceptions apart.Incidentally people in our country will open their purposes--if at all-- to religious purposes and to Godmen .It's their ticket to moksha.
Corporate trainers and other change agents find it easy to impart knowledge, slightly harder to impart skills but are at sea in changing attitudes and behaviour.Gurucharan Das has this advise to corporate recruiters ''Recruit people based on their attitudes.Aptitude can always be taken care of'
K.R.RAVI
WWW.KRRAVI.COM
