After getting excited about the successes, I thought I am going to cruise through my rest of the holidays in India as I was confident to possess an answer for everything through the application of QTIME learning – well almost!
This incident drove me against the wall so much so to make me rethink on what can be considered as progress over decades can really disappear in matter of minutes if the huge gap between the educated and less educated is not addressed economically, politically, socially and compassionately.
Every one has claims for something or the other – might be for themselves or for something of a greater good elevating such claims to community or national levels. However you elevate them, such claims should not take hostage the basic needs that have already been met or addressed by previous claims. This is simply not an aberration, but an issue with the way we educate people.
When law enforcement either turns a blind eye or become helpless, the leaders should think twice before embarking on such claims. This is my pre-cursor to the incident that happened on Bangalore roads that got traffic almost to a standstill for hours. When the entire Bangaloreans are struggling on a daily basis to deal with the traffic chaos of modern nature, why pursue such course of action to enrage public rather than to draw sympathy?
Unmindful of consequences of such acts, the traffic near Maharani’s college on one of the busiest roads that links the central Bangalore to the outer suburbs was stopped for hours due to the activists occupying the road not as a procession, but as a sit-down! I don’t think this kind of sit-downs is called for in the middle of a road when such sit-downs are the necessary part of protests in front of government officers to attract attention of political leaders or to make them get to action.
Since the bus I was on did not progress an inch after a long wait in the traffic, all of us on the bus realized that the traffic stoppage is not due to a traffic jam, but due to this sit-down in the middle of the road by the activists. I don’t know how many such passengers like me had to forgo the ride on the bus and walk past this sit-down to find alternate commute, but the pain felt by everybody was nothing but outrage. Outrage that this has happened, outrage that police cannot do anything about it, outrage that they lost the monies paid on the bus tickets and the outrage that they have to not only look for alternate commute, but the commute could be expensive too on top of delaying all the other things that they had to in the day.
I approached the police superintendent who was overlooking the strike on the road to ask a simple question. What if there is an ambulance that needs to go through this to attend to an emergency? What if there is an emergency at home of other kinds? Will police help the commuters?
The answer was not only astounding, but outright deplorable. Without the slightest hint of compassion to things I said, he asked me whether I have such pressing needs? If I don’t, don’t bother about others. I had the list of questions ready in my head and for each question I asked, the only reply I got back was..please go on.. I think I was naive enough to exhaust my list to realize that I was going nowhere with these questions unless they concern me personally.
Finally, I said I do. He asked me go and sit in the traffic van and they will take care of my needs. I thought this was a surprise that I was not prepared for. Without showing any excitement, I turned around to ask who will take care of that? This was my next surprise – no one came forward and no one showed any interest in me to even bother about asking where I would be going.
I waited for some more time to realize it is utter waste of time in trying to get any sort of help from these officers and started walking off to look for alternate commute.
As you can see, I did not attempt to connect as educating what needs to be done by the law enforcement agency does not fall under my impromptu purview of QTIME learning framework. It is meant for general public in bringing awareness. I thought of sharing this incident here on this blog to highlight the plight of general public when the very agencies that protect them, support them or guide them under emergencies become helpless to do anything through the laws they cannot enforce.