As a school child, if you worked hard, listened carefully, and did your homework, you stood a decent fourth or fifth in class. If you were exceptional, you topped. If you played the fool instead of working, you slid down to the bottom. What could be more just? Many of us expect the same treatment from the world as we grow up and venture out into our respective social and professional orbits.
However, shock and disappointment await us. “Life’s like that,” we are told, “No one promised you it would be fair.”
This principle of life is going to crop up again and again. Lots of mediocre people jump the queue in life’s game appearing to be more efficient than they really are. They cook CVs, project themselves subtly, steal ideas and ‘politically’ suppress the really capable people. How you understand life outside school and deal with it can make all the difference.
What’s fair play? Let’s take the metaphor of sport because it’s easy to grasp the principle. All of us have taken part in races in school. Sometimes you won, sometimes others won. Most often you found that you were usually ranked with children in your age group. Clearly a boy of 15 can easily outrun a boy of eight. So we club the seven and eight-year old boys together. Fair isn’t it?
Let’s take a closer look. Two boys may be aged 8, but what if one is bigger than the other? Doesn’t he have an unfair advantage? So we try and correct that. How? We make groups based on height and weight. Fair? Let’s look at it again. Suppose one of the boys comes from a privileged background. He has had a good diet, coaching and daily exercise. The other boy lacks these privileges. So, is it a fair race between the two? You see how difficult it is to ensure everyone has an equal chance even in something as straightforward as this. Let’s superimpose this image on our country. Sixty nine years have passed since we won Independence. Does everyone in our country feel free?
As you leave the house every day and make your way to school or college, you may have noticed people living under bridges and flyovers and pavements. Most of them do not look like local people. Chances are they migrated to your city from other states where work is scarce. They belong to the great population of unorganised labour who may or may not get work every day. Most of them would have either sold their last bits of land which they could not continue to cultivate or lost what land they had to moneylenders in villages. If you were in their place, what would you feel if you saw people walking by and not even looking at you? What do you think it feels like to be invisible? Can you feel what a homeless person may be going through? No money for food. No money for medicines.
Yet another great imbalance prevails in the lives of millions of Indians — more than 170 million Dalits. In place of fairness stands injustice. Freedom and independence do not mean much to them as they face discrimination at every stage in life — starting from school where they are made to feel inferior. Is this fair?
This August, the month of our Independence which we remember with pride, let us not forget the injustice various communities are facing. How proud should we be? How free are we when large sections of the population live with illiteracy, malnutrition and no hope of grievances being attended to?
What do I want?
I want a little breeze
A glass of water
Some warmth
A little sky in this dungeon
A little land for me in this country of mine
Will you give it?
Man
I want real citizenship
Will you give it?
(By Madduri Nageshbabu, translated from Telugu by Velcheru Narayana Rao.)
Close your eyes and think of the poet’s words.
Yes, it is difficult to ensure fair play and equality in our complex world. Does that mean we should tolerate it? To lower our standards is to lower ourselves. We must try. In this struggle for equality, each one of us is a freedom fighter.
Email: minioup@gmail.com
