Where have the moral gone?

This one was a long pending issue in my mind. Just that I had the patience to write it out today. Have you seen Angadi Theru, a Tamil film (Shopping Mall in Telugu)? The thought ignited then, and now it’s giving me sparks of pain whenever I hear / face / read / see about the struggles of village parents  in their quest to have their daughter get settled with a married life.

Agreed that money plays the game of life, but what if it starts to consume the life itself? Textile companies in Tirupur have a unique HR policy. What the corporate firms term it as year-end bonus or 5-year bonus; they have customized the scheme simple enough to be understood by the parents who have children aged between 14 and 20 years, living in remote villages of the state. Little did the children knew that it is not the hi-fi, mall culture they will witness in the city they enter, but hell; a hell where a person unknowingly begins to suffer a slow painful death. Yes, am talking about child labor and child trafficking and inhuman labor practices and forced dowry practices and so on…

The recruiters working in Government registered units themselves hunt for bringing in the kids in their teenage. And their parents are those who in the quest of seeing a cash of one lakh rupees generously send the kids to towns, neglecting the thought that their education is henceforth stopped. The thought of satisfaction we get when we hear that these are the parents who at least didn’t kill / abort the girl child as when born goes into ashes at the juncture where the same parent forces the girl to be sent to work for the lump of cash promised by the recruiting company at end of few years of service. And is the girl ready to work in a firm that follows such a HR practice? How will the work environment be, for a company that follows such an inhuman policy? The children (I refer them as children and as I said, they are aged between 14 and 20 years) are made to work in 12-hour shifts with breaks as bare as five minutes and a thirty minute lunch break. Their fragile bones not strong enough to support such a work-life, though there is no life in the work they do, most people come out of their works in few months. And the lump-sum promised? Oh, it’s clearly mentioned in the bond that the sum will be provided only at the completion of service to the firm.

The money dreamt to be used for the marriage of the girl now places the marriage itself in doubt. If it is believed that government can peek in and change the situation, the government supports the dowry, the demon, itself in an indirect way. Sumangali scheme (from Tamil Nadu government) is one where a sum is deposited in the name of the girl-child just born that gets matured when the girl reaches eighteen. The matured amount then only changes its position from a bank-locker to the hands of the bride-groom whom the girl gets married to. If at least the money is forced to be used only for the girl’s studies, the girl would have realized enough of the world to find a match for her that doesn’t warrant a dowry.

You thought am referring only to girls? Where do you think the boys have gone? Most boys get frustrated to the core that they begin to hate life itself. (At least girls have some bigger patience!) Their mind oscillates so much that they become of addicts to various bad practices (you know what they are…).

Is there a way to stop such practices, at least, in the future? - Only if proper awareness is made on a mega-scale. To me, the mega-scale means the way by which low-budget films (for instance, Angadi Theru, itself) become blockbusters – just through word of mouth. Just because I don’t know the count of children brought to the cities by such means doesn’t mean I am citing just from few rare examples. I have had my share of childhood days followed by a healthy teenage. Just that I want my juniors to have the same.

One law to rule them all

Once a discussion between two of my friends began like this... one guy expressed in his own way that quota based on caste in educational institutions should be only based on economy and not on caste. The other guy too expressed a similar idea. The thing is they finally ended up deciding that if only the laws were implemented properly there wouldn’t be any problem at all.

Here comes my fantasy - So what if someone comes up with an idea to make an attempt and bring out a law that commands all other laws? It’s something like “one ring to rule them all”. Someone has to be given the authority to ensure that at any case, this one law is implemented strongly such that all other laws have to follow this one?

I even have a hint of an idea that there might be a law already to make other laws to be followed. But still let that ‘someone’ please make an attempt to ensure that this law is followed then. Weren’t we all excited about the LOTR concept? Can’t we find a person like Frodo in this country of 1 billion people? (Frodo’s job, here, is to ensure that the ring ends up in safe hands, and not destroy it).

Suppose if the Ministry that handles such a law performs well, then there is a chance to not just for the people to believe in our Justice system but also the millions of pending files in all the High Courts in India can be brought down considerably. We should also not forget that the Government of India is a party in a large number of cases. In more than 80 per cent cases related to Education, government is a party. The question is that why the government needs to fight its citizens at such a large scale.

And I recently read few facts that India even lags behind countries like Bangladesh in terms of number of judges per million populations! We have a meager 10.5 judges per million while Bangladesh has 12 per million and some developed countries like Australia (42 per million), USA (107 per million) are the table-toppers as usual.

It’s really frustrating to see our country name at the bottom of the list in almost everything, be it the examples said above (or in Olympics Medals tally for that matter!). For a country that has so many superheroes in the name of Rajnikanths, Amitabhs and Chiranjeevis in the reel world, there should be someone found in the real world immediately.

Let the Superhero even be with Grey shades (like Frodo who of course had some obsession for the ring as days passed) and the only thing we want is the final objective being met in the immediate future. I was obsessed to write this (I don’t know what to call ‘this’! Be it an article or just a piece of crap) because I don’t want India to become a developed country when her common public are not given their due justice.

People’s belief in the country’s judicial system is my first in the check list I have to vote India as a developed country. Honestly speaking, I will not even dare to think a dozen times if at all to file a lawsuit for any injustice set on me because I will not think twice to settle a dispute outside the court. After all though I do believe our judicial system I don’t believe the efficiency of our judicial system.

And as for me, to at least think of India as a developed country, all the pending cases (nearly 40 million) in the High Courts and other courts has to be finished off. And statistics says, at the current rate, it will take another 125 years!!