Outcry of a Citizen

It’s June 13^th 2014, Friday morning 9:10 AM, Delhi just began its day after an overnight rain that silenced the heat wave of the past two weeks.

It’s still drizzling and I hear an emergency siren of a vehicle and then take a glance at it, turns out to be a Fire service vehicle. My first reaction to self, how an earth could something go wrong on such a pleasant morning. But something did go wrong and the Delhi fire service vehicle was in a hurry. I was behind the vehicle, which was struggling to find its way and the address of the place of mishap. They don’t have a GPS unlike the developed countries, I told to myself and even if they did have one, it would not have helped much, courtesy the chaotic lanes running in all directions.

It moves further ahead and finds itself stuck on the road because someone has left his / her car parked in middle of the road. It’s a narrow two-way lane and one way was already blocked with the fire service vehicle moving in the opposite direction. I was right behind the vehicle cribbing about the way people misuse the roads and pavements (which are hard to distinguish). It’s a residential area and the owner of the car might not even be aware that the car has created a traffic jam. It’s a common thing that I get to see every morning and evening in old rajender nagar, New Delhi, but today was something different. There is a fire mishap, which needs urgent attention, and even seconds were important to save the lives of people, the place and stop the fire from spreading further.

I was not surprised that the fire service employees did not call any authority to complain and penalize the car owner, because, firstly they come across so many such illegitimately parked vehicles on a daily basis and secondly it was important for them to address the priority at hand. But still I felt they should have forwarded the complaint to someone to tow the vehicle away. The driver of the fire service Dept. deftly moved past the car but it took more than 10 minutes while a long trail of vehicles including an ambulance waited for its way. I only wished that the ambulance was not addressing any one else and was part of the fire services crew. The fire services would have reached 10 min ahead if not for the Jam and I only prayed that the delay did not lead to any casualty, which could have been avoided.

Sadly even after the entire episode, the driver of the car was not seen and perhaps didn’t even know that all this happened by a careless action of his / her.

We all care for our dear ones. How would we respond when our own house is burning in front of our eyes and our kith and kin caught in the fire while the fire extinguisher / ambulance arrives late because a literate but uneducated and irresponsible fellow citizen blocked the way of the fire service vehicle.

Should we feel outraged? I would say No; we don’t have the right to be outraged, because we are part of this problem.

These acts of audacity happen because we allow them to happen.

Many of us blame the Government, authorities for any mishap / accidents because its easy to blame, because, we don’t want to think about the problem and its causes. All we would want to do is give our opinion on the subject, generic statements like “Government should ensure that there is a proper system in place”.

Would such so called system run independently without support from Citizenry? I highly doubt that.

Sure, Government is the one which makes law, demands tax to provide services back but does that mean we all should wait till the Government arrives while a family burns or some one dies because of the sheer negligence of someone who does not have the brains to think of the implications of his / her actions. 

How many of us really work towards being better citizens and towards a better society. Do we apply our civic sense in each and every step of our daily life? If we question ourselves honestly, the answer will be a big NO. Assuming we are citizens with civic sense and then what? What next?

Do we ever question someone who is not applying his / her civic sense. Why shouldn’t we stop someone from violating a rule / law. ? Can we not confront someone by standing up for the right thing?

Two weeks ago, a lady conductor was stripped on the bus by a miscreant near Mumbai. Her only mistake was to ask the passenger to stop abusing an elderly bus driver. The miscreant kicks her, drags her outside the bus, and strips her while everyone watches a Grand Indian Tamasha. Should the people in the bus wait for the Police to come and protect the woman? Wasn’t it necessary for people to stand up and ask the miscreant to not abuse the driver in the first place? None could stop this. But when things blew out of proportion and the lady was man handled, shouldn’t our modesty be outraged and not just the conductor’s, Should we not take things (doesn’t mean Law) into our hands when something goes wrong in our presence? Why not prevent a mishap instead of waiting for the authorities to cure the same. ?

These mistakes of our fellow citizens go unnoticed and unpunished everyday in every city / town of our country. We would not even bother to suggest someone who is blocking the road, not to do so. We care for nothing when someone barges into an already established queue. We feel annoyed, disgusted and perhaps frustrated with our fellow citizen’s attitude but we would not go and explain the inconvenience being caused. We would not, because we are afraid to speak up The Right Thing, we are afraid to be tagged as A Good Samaritan, A Sathyawadi, we are afraid to be tagged as a Gandhi, We are scared to be dubbed as someone who does Social Service Voluntarily.

The highlighted words are the awards that a citizen receives, perhaps as taunts from friends / family/ fellow citizens when he / she is being civic or teaches some one to be civic.

As a matter of fact we run away from the good things because they stand out. They are exceptional. We don’t want to be looked upon as an exception in a society which has become used to bullying, abuse and hooliganism and if I can put it this way, all we want is to be a Normal / Average Indian, who doesn’t question till it’s his / her problem and sometimes not even do so instead keep sulking and cribbing about the society.

Most of us might feel that we are good and law abiding citizens but what we forget is that abiding law is as important as stopping someone from violating the law. We have to begin to question today for a better society and a better tomorrow because no house should burn and none should die because he / she could not reach the hospital on time courtesy a fellow citizen lacked civic sense.