I WANT MY CHILDREN TO GET OUT OF THIS NATION

I am a father of two children, both just out of adolescence and pursuing their bachelor’s degree. Both my children are better than average, and both want to live in India and work here. I, however, want them to move out and stay away for the rest of their lives or at least the better parts of their lives.

This is not what I have always wanted for them. I am also a teacher, teaching biochemistry to college students for the past twenty years. The last class that I engaged for all outgoing batches till last year was about telling them what this country has done for them as far as their education was concerned and just why they should return to India after a few years abroad. I am also proud to say that a huge number of my students went abroad to the best of the institutes and, more importantly, returned to work and to give to India whatever they can. From last year I have stopped telling them this. Instead, I now tell them to go out and stay out! And that is exactly what I wish for my own children.

What has changed for me to shift stance one hundred and eighty degrees? Let us see.

What is happening at Agra and Gohana today? Just recall what happened at Rajasthan just a few months ago. Recall what happened at several towns in Vidarbha as a repercussion to Khairlanji murders a month or so before that. Recall what happened at Delhi and then in several major cities a few months back in response to the government’s debatable proposals for compulsory reservations to OBCs in the cream of the Indian institutions.

I am not going to raise your standard questions repeated ad nauseum by the media personalities and the emotional inanities of the reporters of the electronic media where even couplets and full poems come handy to push a point. Ghalib, Iqbal, Meer, Firaq, Sarveshvar Dayal Saxena all come handy to establish the point that these reporters want to make. When even rationality has taken a back seat it is just too much to expect discussion on a trend that is obviously developing. I have grown so disgusted with the entire coverage that I have virtually stopped watching news on TV except for hearing the headlines.

What is happening in Gohana today? A ‘dalit’ has been murdered. That is indeed bad. Murder of any young person, regardless of caste, is bad. But since when have we started reacting to a murder in a manner that more deaths take place? In the media, this is a murder of a dalit by people belonging to other castes. But is it certain that a dalit was killed because he was a dalit? If he was killed because of some other matter which did not involve bias against his caste, is the media correct in branding it a muder of a dalit? Does such branding not anger people of the same caste and spill the protest over to other towns and villages? Is media not responsible in such cases? Are the dalits right in protesting in this manner everytime the slightest atrocity seems to have been committed? I am not saying that atrocities are not committed. That will be turning a blind eye to something that is unpardonable and does happen. What I am asking and what I believe the people and the media should ask is whether it is correct to hold entire cities to ransom everytime even a slight perceived atrocity is committed? Are these not the questions all of us should be asking ourselves? More so the media people and the politicians?

Forget Gohana. May be I am utterly wrong in seeing it the way it should be seen and may be it is really a dalit’s murder by upper caste people just because he was a dalit. Let us discuss Agra. Four people of one religion were killed when a badly driven truck overran them. There was a festival on the day and these youths were going back home having attended a function. When such an event happens, it is always sad and tempers do run high. In my own city I have seen people getting hold of the truck, burning it down, catching hold of the driver and beating him to pulp, blocking that road not allowing the bodies to be taken away for postmortem and cremation and generally protesting against the state of the roads, the rash driving and such things. But I am yet to see a whole city held to ransom over such an incident. I am yet to see petrol pumps, shops, other trucks which have done nothing, motorcycles, scooters, other establishments being burnt down because a few persons have been killed in an accident. Agreed that all 4 persons in Agra belonged to one single religion. But everyone who dies in an accident belongs to one religion or other. And, have there never been accidental deaths previously on a festival day? Do you think that the anger of people of any religious community boils over spontaneously to such an extent that an entire city burns and all work comes to a standstill? It can happen, it happens all the time, but not over accidental deaths. Violence and arson on this scale over accidental deaths can only be engineered. And yet, is the media asking this question? If it is, I have not seen, heard or read them asking this question. Are politicians talking constructively over this? No. It can be a politically wrong question to ask what with everyone bothered about the minority votes and one party bothered about the majority votes. But since when has the media started bothering about what is politically correct?

What happened at Khairlanji in Vidarbha? Although there are whispers that the muders of dalits in that village were actually a result of long standing land dispute, it is more or less agreed that these people were murdered because of caste reasons. I do not want a debate over this and I agree that this was what happened because it does happen even in an India which is far more educated and is supposedly living in the 21st century. What I want to talk about is the method in which protests were made. First of all the protests were made months after the episode occurred so that one cannot even in their wildest imagination call them spontaneous and therefore due to genuine public ire. Then again, the protests occurred in cities and towns far removed from the place where the incidence occurred. On top of all this, stones were pelted at people’s residences without any rhyme or reason. But what was most scaring was that we, and many people like us, knew the night before where the attacks will take place the next day! The plan was hatched at different places and the news filtered from there to us so that we could warn several of our students beforehand to not to venture in those localities that day! Business stopped, movement stopped and nothing got achieved. What did the media do? Nothing, except accentuating the caste angle. Should they not have talked about the planned nature of the attacks?

What has Arjun Singh done in this recent past? Does anyone in his right mind think he has acted to the benefit of any caste in this nation? Is it that all so called OBCs are deprived of chances? I do not think so. I know many OBCs who are very highly educated for generations now and quite rich too. And the portion of such OBCs is not miniscule. Was it not undue haste on the part of Arjun Singh? Was it not only right to have collected the figures of OBCs truly deprived and then to have acted if at all any action was needed? What was his reply to the meritorious students whose agitation was spontaneous? Was his reply not of a tone that reflected scant regard for merit? Did his action and the poor and predictable response of all parties ever hungry for all kinds of votes not divide Indians on the caste basis further? What did the media do?

Okay. Let me come from a different angle. Let’s forget the politicians and the media. What are the academicians doing? Should they not at least write about these things. Should they not protest against the methods of these protests and the attempt by the Indian parliamentarians to divide the nation? Should they not take some symbolic action which hurts where it counts?

Finally, should we not be asking these questions seriously? Should the media not be doing something about this? Where has the media of Ramnath Goenka’s caliber gone? Is it that they too have learnt the security of political correctness and want to hide in that cocoon for obvious benefits? Have the profits become so important, the TRPs so important, the government favour so important that all responsibilities can be shrugged off? There is a lot at stake. Will we allow all the recent progress and the promise of future progress to be sacrificed at the altar of ill advised actions such as these?

If this is what it is to be, I cannot at least be a liar. I cannot tell my students to return to India and work for it. I may as well ask them to waste their lives. If science can be served by them better living in other nations, so be it. If India does not want to benefit from the merit and creativity of its youngsters, so be it. I want my children – biological and otherwise – to get out of this nation!

I have stopped taking that last class.