As I Hang my Boots Today

I have long been a foot soldier.

My feet have taken me places

where I left my footprints

though  not on the pages of history.

Because foot soldiers do not merit

even a foot note in history books.

                                          

I left my footprints on the sands

of hot deserts and beaches,

and on the rain soaked soft ground.

But those stayed just till the soldier

behind me stepped on them

or heavy rains washed

or winds blew them away

 

I hang my boots today to go home

butI do not want to talk about the

battles I fought and won

nor those I lost and where I was

left wounded.

Nor shall I remember running

through the maze of incessantly

firing weapons around me

that I thought, was of the kind that 

Abhimanyu did not come out of

but I did.

 

Because I have seen far bigger

and more fierce battles fought

on the streets of cities every day,

battles that must be won.

My battles were too small and

no more than a child’s play

when many children resiliently

fought daily battles of adults.

 

At just twelve years –

the eldest of the orphans, 

their home under the fly-over,

hawks at traffic light so that

he could buy food for his siblings.

He hopes to send his brother

and sisters to school one day.

 

The frail ‘Kaamwali’ barely out of

childhood turns up for her

daily drudgery, at times with eyes

blood shot with fever.

she cannot afford to lose her job.

She must send her son

to an ‘Angreji’ school.

 

The boy on the crutch

who lost his limbs in an accident

pours over the alphabets

on the cold floor of January morning

at the Municipality school.

He must make himself worthy

of a government job.

 

Their battles too, do not make it

to the pages of history.

But I shall always think of them.

These are battles of hope and grit.

I will live my life happily being on their ringside.

 

(Note: I scribbled these lines on the day I retired in 2014)

Objectivity- not Political Correctness would Help Fight Terror

As per reports in an Indian newspaper quoting Israeli sources, post terror attacks in Paris, President Francois Hollande of France had asked Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu to stay away from participating in the Paris march against terrorism but Israeli PM eventually joined the march along with 40 other world leaders including President of Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, who however raised no such reservation. According to the new paper the request was made- not because Israelis are not against the terror but apparently because Israel is seen as the bad guy in the Palestine conflict. Presumably, the Muslims and other politically correct liberals in France would take it as an affront. The incident displays French ‘political correctness’ expressed in full . Eventually as it appears good sense prevailed.

All liberal democracies practise ‘political correctness’ of different shades. Political Correctness is essentially treating people and communities equally and not hurting sentiments of a community by any action. But most people would not go into complexities of an issue and pass judgement on something or someone   as either only ‘black’ or ‘white’, Israel is bad because of its harsh treatment to Muslims and  the underdog Hamas is good- not withstanding their alleged terrorist methods. While politicians may be accused for practising political correctness for electoral reasons, people in liberal democracies do so plainly by their ‘black and white’ sense of good and bad.

Some liberal democracies such as France have however carried their ‘Political Correctness’ into a fine art as already shown. Recent terror attacks in Paris therefore raise some questions about the French political correctness that has allowed known terrorists to remain free to plan and carry out the attacks. What is surprising is that these terror perpetrators and their motives were already known to the authorities in France. They also figured in US terror database with a clear travel ban to USA. Yet France authorities took it easy. One of terrorists had already served a sentence and it was also known that he spent some time in Syria- quite obviously not for holidaying on the sea beach.

Till the time when such attacks were taking place only in poorer countries, particularly India (with state sponsored terrorists next door ready to strike)- the reactions were ambivalent  and indirectly fingers were many times pointed to victim countries with a presumption rightly or wrongly, of their politically incorrect approach and  unresponsive and dysfunctional and repressive state machinery suppressing legitimate grievances of people. The story of India’s side was generally ignored outside the country until 9/11 had happened. Naturally, countries that are lately becoming terror victims are confused- where and how they went wrong.

The Paris terrorists reportedly belonged to the sizeable section of people who have come from former French colonies and became citizens and their descendants. Therefore, these are clearly cases of home grown teror by people who obviously have had relatively a better life in France than they would in their country of origin. But that is only half the story. In France they are relatively, a disadvantaged and deprived section living in poor neighbourhood localities like north east suburbs of Paris (banlieue défavorisée) with overcrowding, huge unemployment and other attendant problems. These people do have a lot of grievances. For example, a large number of them do not qualify for jobs due to poor education and skills. Many of them take to petty crimes which are dealt as routine law and order issues.  They had also held violent agitations in the past.

Immigrants anywhere may feel somewhat marginalised but large scale unemployment particularly among their second generation (who have not seen the difference in their parents’ countries of origin), blows up their feeling of victimhood. It is the frustrations with their lot in their very own country that pull them towards anything available be it crime or terrorism. For many it is the easiest thing to identify themselves with their ethnic or religious roots to become foot soldiers of criminal or terrorist enterprises. Terror outfits borne out of extremist religious ideas have a bigger appeal to them without any pressure of guilt or qualms because they are told they would be fighting on God’s side.

The answer to the issues of their unemployment and crime should be appropriate government programmes for guiding and providing more opportunities for education and skill building so that they get jobs. But the answer is certainly not looking the other way when they are being inspired by extremist religious ideas because there is every chance of it growing into violence and terror attempts. The authorities in France perhaps in their concern for not deviating from political correctness of tolerance and not restricting individual of right to express and follow their faith, spared even those  spreading terror message/ propaganda and in the process perhaps have actually allowed or at least made it easy for the terrorist acts by some fringe elements to happen.

It would of course be easy to blame democratic and liberal laws in rich countries with too much of political correctness is built in. Some would say the Chinese and Russians have better handled such situations because they are not encumbered by any notion of political correctness.  China and Russia already restrict many freedoms and therefore any chance that terrorists could take does not exist. Yet they too had suffered terrorist attacks.

However, the best example of a country successfully containing terror attacks in recent times has been the second largest democracy- USA. Being itself a country of immigrants, the country has been providing equal opportunities to all its residents, immigrants or otherwise. They have not scaled down their professed friendship with Israel but continued to provide equal opportunities to Palestinian immigrants to achieve success in their adopted country.

While the 9/11 attack- the only big terrorist attack in USA was a rude shock to Americans as they never expected it, there has been no significant case of home grown terror at any time.  Post the 9/11 attack, USA have not significantly curtailed the freedom of their citizens except may be snooping on suspect private telecommunications.  But what they have done after the attack has been largely to strengthen their security apparatus, intelligence gathering, creating databases and sharing them with other potential target countries (as is now revealed in the case of the terrorists of Paris attacks). They took some wrong steps while initially trying to get their act together such as, excesses at Guantanamo Bay prison, CIA’s interrogation methods in third countries, use of torture like water boarding etc. But these appear to have stopped subsequently and yet they have been able to foil several potential terror attacks, nab or eliminate terrorists in time or stop them from reaching American shores. 

Has then US discarded their political correctness? At New York some years back, I was pleasantly surprised when informed that ‘Deepavali’ is one of the festivals celebrated at the White House. It continues to be celebrated and also ‘Eid’ was added to list festivals for celebration at the President’s residence.  Clearly political correctness (as seen at the highest seat of power) is retained and practiced. But it is just not permitted to override objectivity.

 The fact that France left the terrorists loose in the country to plan and execute attacks despite receiving clear intelligence from USA perhaps imply- they were more concerned about their political correctness. Lessons from France’s unfortunate experience are not only for France to draw but for other countries including India as well. 

Why plastic ban has not worked in India?

                        I read a story of an interesting legal case in the US press. A few years ago, three young businessmen in California who were importing   tiger tails- a marine life product from Honduras to USA, were awarded a jail sentence of 8 years each for use of plastic packaging material by their suppliers. They were charged under what is called ‘Lacey Act’- an US act for wild life protection that sought to penalise American citizens for violating wild life protection laws of foreign countries.  The businessmen were held guilty of collaborating with their Honduran partners of illegally packing tiger tails in plastic wraps while Honduran Wild Life laws mandated paper wraps for Tiger Tails.

The three businessmen were most shocked when they were arrested and charged. All along they never felt they had broken any law in running their business or otherwise. Equally shocked were the Honduran suppliers who did not even know that such a law existed and  it was not only them but all their competitors were using plastic bags without any exception.

The judge however, had all the facts that he needed with him and no one contested the fact that packaging material used was plastic. He had to only make sure that the Honduran law existed in the statute and he found it did. He had no choice but to send the accused businessmen to prison with minimum mandated sentence of 8 years (California law mandated minimum tenure of sentence). Many Honduran citizens themselves came to know of the law only when they read of the case in press.  The most likely scenario might have been-   initially when the law was notified, people tried to cope and used paper but paper used for a product coming from sea waters may have become wet and messy and so they decided to ignore the law and continue with plastic and eventually forgot the law.

Drawing on the story of Honduran businessmen’s loss of memory of their wildlife law- would you therefore be surprised if five years later Delhiites forget about the ban on plastic in their very own city, where already a ban on plastic bags exists. Taking a cue from ban enforced in many developed countries- many Indian cities have already imposed a ban on plastic bags - foremost being Delhi. It is a highly laudable act. Nobody needs to remind us how plastic bags cause havoc to environment. But has the ban been enforced successfully?  I can tell you only about Delhi and being India’s first city- I presume it would be the story of all cities in the country. If you visit kirana stores or vegetable vendors in any part of Delhi you won’t believe there is a ban on plastic bags in force because everybody – all sellers and buyers are routinely using them.

Why and when do people in a very large number break a law with such impunity?  Well, they seem to do so when law adversely affect all or most of the people unlike in case of a law against stealing which is inconvenient only to thieves.  In developed countries plastic banning cities have brought in again brown paper bags paid for by the seller or cloth bags paid by the customer which are not a very expensive substitute for them, considering that  average incomes in rich countries are much higher than in developed country. For tiny kirana stores, wayside vegetable vendors in India and their customers however- these are not very attractive substitute not only because of the cost but also from the point of convenience.

 Shoppers in developed countries usually buy pre packed groceries and vegetables placed by retailers in brown paper bags in a super market and carry the shopping cart right up to the car in the parking lot. They do not miss the plastic bag so much. Not so for developing countries like India. Plastic bags are a huge convenience to carry groceries and vegetables while walking home or taking a bus from the bazaar compared to old days when raddi news paper bags were used. Newspaper bags become soggy when meat, fish or wet vegetables are placed in them. No wonder – plastic bags are hugely popular.

Besides the question of convenience as in the case of plastic ban, perhaps there is also a gap between the perceptions of law makers and those of people as to what is good for people.

The story of the three men I am sure would be summed up by many in the words of Charles Dickens as “Law is an ass”. Most people‘s reaction would be- the three poor guys were just not lucky.  So many people routinely and mindlessly break laws everyday and get away. Plastic ban apart- think of other laws which are routinely violated everywhere in the world. Prohibition whenever or wherever was imposed, invariably led to smuggling and bootlegging. Likewise, no country in the world has been able to eliminate prostitution completely even after heavily criminalising such activities. Despite best efforts to protect people from temptations of gambling by most countries, some form of gambling- official or otherwise always exists in a country, be it on horse race, dog race, cricket, football, elections or whatever.

The hopeful development is that more and more countries are now, becoming less conservative and more open to revisiting such laws. Slowly there appears to be a growing realisation that making laws exclusively and purely on moral, health or religious grounds may be counterproductive.

Drugs in small quantity are permitted to be sold in some European countries. Marijuana is slowing getting legalised at least for medical use in some American states. In most developed countries – alcohol is freely available except with a ban for those below a certain age. Most of Europe is relaxed about prostitution but has in place protective laws on advertising and against trafficking and exploitation of women.

The essential point in making a law should therefore be to ask- would this law be respected by most citizens in a country.  So, it should also be for legislations on environmental issues like plastic ban even if it may not meet the prevailing standards of correctness imposed by some other countries.

Isn’t there is a case for tweaking such laws in a way that people respect them and they become easily enforceable. Shouldn’t the powers that be consider removing the plastic ban because it just cannot be enforced and seriously look for commercial use of plastic waste?  I am told there are many possibilities with technologies already developed or being developed. Some that I came across in internet, talk about using it to make hydro carbon fuel or materials for road and building construction. If that happens, everybody would get busy trading waste plastics and not littering.  We can go on using plastic bags without any qualms.  How about a thought on that?