As long as my memory takes me back in time, I remember my father telling me “jaldi ka kaam shaitan ka hota hai”, which loosely translates to "anything that is done in a hurry is the work of the devil", so always take your time in making any decision or any work. But as far as my teenage memory takes me, I remember reading the work of hurry been done by statesmen and the repercussions coming upon us – the common people.
Let me take you 75 or so years back in time from today. England had won World War II, Nazis had fallen but in reality, England had lost- lost its power and its colonies. And If I may quote Dr. Shashi Tharoor, he says “The sun had just set on the British empire”.
The English were now unable to maintain their hold over their colonies and India, its biggest cash cow, the foundation of the so-called “GREAT BRITAIN” had to be left now. Lord Mountbatten was appointed and sent to India to do the transfer of power in and under 4 months which was actually estimated to take 5 years and over. But now as India was none of their concern and was just costing them their fortunes by being just a liability, they just wanted to get rid of her in a 'hurry'.
Now the hurry did have many repercussions over time but in my eyes and views, the gravest of them was the partition of India. It was originally thought to take 18 months at the least to draw a line on the paper at the desk of some lord which would determine the destiny of a whole subcontinent. But hurry was the prime concern of those sitting in the British parliament and so they decided to send over a lawyer who had never visited or understood India and who would never come back again because he had the blood of millions of Indians and Pakistanis up on his sleeves.
Sir Cyril Radcliffe, took maps and survey data that primarily focused on the religious demography and decided to draw a line on the map seeing the data at hand which were years old and were not even sure of being credible enough. The lawyer looked at individual districts and the ones with a Muslim majority were included in Pakistan and the ones otherwise were taken in India, while knowing that the Muslim majority districts had a sizeable amount of other religions residing as well. Sir Cyril Radcliffe later said that a proper partition would have taken years but the bloodshed could have been avoided.
Image Source: Google
But it is not as if we have learned from our mistakes of the past. Even today we see numerous examples of hurriedly taken decisions becoming distress of the commoners. Day after day news came up showing that Hindu girls were converted forcefully by their lovers and it became distressing. So what does the government do, they make a special law in order to safeguard minor and naïve girls falling prey to such religious predators, the idea was good but our government was too taken away by emotions and personal agendas which did lead them to draft a new law which has now become the pain in the a** for us.
Today while scrolling through my social media, news came through from a credible source which said two teenagers returning from a b’day party in UP’s Bijnor area were chased by a group of people and later taken in custody by police in an incident filed as a case of love jihad. The boy was forcibly trying to convert a Hindu minor of 16 years of age. The boy was later booked under charges of abduction and under sections of the SC/ST act and POSCO Act.
So, our super-intelligent police, who in Bihar took 11 hours and an IPS officer to decide which police station should register the FIR for murder in the capital city of Patna, was able to register and book a boy under such grave and serious charges in spite of the girl saying that there was nothing of that sort.
The central government took an agenda of breaking the cartels maintained by the APMCs by doing some changes in the farm laws and making farming more centered towards supporting the economy rather than being food security for the nation. If we look at the crux of the bills then they are fine and good (in short they say that a farmer who was till now not allowed to go and sell their produce in the free market other than the APMC can now sell their produce by their will through any medium anywhere anyhow, and contract farming will be there under which the farmer and the corporate may enter a deal/agreement for a period of 5 years with a contract that will be made on the guidelines of the government and looked upon by the center with many T&C).
But again HASTE & HURRY doomed the nation and the statesmen decided to not refine the laws and left major demerits in it leading to many suspicions and dangers looming over the thoughts of the farmers.
The government did not make appropriate regulations regarding who will be able to buy, the government did not take measures to ensure a non-biased justice system for the farmers, they did not make the battle between the free market and the APMC fair by making free market free of tax and levying around 8% on the APMCs, the government did not look at the stability of the middleman as you cannot destroy someone’s livelihood overnight and here we are talking of thousands, the government did not make enough efforts to make the contracts in the favour of the farmers and many more demerits. Hence something which was to be seen as a boon has come as a feared curse for the nation.
Image Source: Google
Time and again we see our statesmen taking decisions and making implementations in a hurry which go on to destroy the peace of the common people.
This blog would seem rather a bit biased as I have not mentioned any failures or a better phrase 'haste mistake' of the previous governments but yes there were many since the starting of time, be it the emergency by Indira Gandhi or the decisions by her predecessors. We, the millennials, have seen and understood the rule of the NDA and UPA government and we should now understand that the parties mere have different names. Ending this petty article which mentioned people from the British era to the present by just repeating the words of a great writer/poet William Shakespeare, “What’s in a name”.
Comments