With moist eyes, my office driver
Basappa told me that he would never work in Kerala again. I understood him and
empathized with him. He had seen his government jeep vandalized and burnt down in
front of his eyes. And he along with his four colleagues had managed to escape
death by the skin of his teeth. ‘Even when we ran into the naxals in Andhra
Pradesh, we were treated well’, Basappa said.
Kannur district in Kerala has a
well-chronicled history of political violence. But this fact never crossed my
mind when our team went to Kannur for the forest inventory work. The first few
days were uneventful even though the local forest staff cautioned about some
public protests in the region. This is nothing new in Kerala and my staff is used
to being interrogated, their ID cards checked and clear resentment shown by the
local people. But what they encountered in Kottiyur range of Kannur on a
fateful November night is terrifying.
The irony is that my staff had not
even heard about the Kasturirangan committee which has recently submitted its
report on Western Ghats to the central government. The report has been
provisionally accepted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the same
news was being broadcast during that period across Kerala. The villagers
mistook the FSI team to the Kasturirangan committee members who they thought had
come to survey their land, measure the extent of encroachments and evict them.
The local forest staff explained to them about the mandate and work of FSI and
so did our staff. But the reasoning fell on deaf ears. The local people are
wise enough to grasp this but they did not want to listen and understand. The
idea was to create an unrest that would effectively preempt the implementation
of the Committee report which would allow the encroachers and quarry mafia to
preserve the status quo. The FSI team was taken hostage, approach road blocked
and a mob of more than two thousand people gathered in no time. Soon, miscreants
in the group began to pelt stones and a young staff of FSI was injured on the
forehead. When blood started gushing out, he was not allowed to be taken to the
hospital. ‘Let him die here’, was the response of the crowd. A small, unarmed
contingent of thirteen policemen who managed to reach the spot was chased away
and our staff was attacked. My staff, which included an ageing driver, ran for
their life with several drunken men in hot pursuit. Fortunately, they managed
to scamper into a thick and steep patch of forests. They spent three hours in
the darkness not knowing where to go. A good Samaritan gave them shelter and
police reinforcements managed to reach the site in the midnight and rescue them.
Eleven government vehicles including an FSI jeep were burnt that night.
Violence happens everywhere and when
there is a mob situation, things usually spiral out of control. But why I am
saddened more today is because this happened in a literate, forward looking and
aware State like Kerala. In 2005, when our first son Adithya was born, we went
to a government hospital in Kottayam for vaccinations. I marveled at the
facilities at the hospital and the clockwork efficiency with which it was run.
The building was spic and span, staff was helpful and the doctors were on duty.
Such well-managed government hospitals are unimaginable in any other part of
India.
But beneath these apparent signs of
progress, there lay layers of maladies which afflict the Malayalee society
today. Highest per capita consumption of liquor, the highest crime rate in the
country, one of the top States in crimes against women, institutionalized dowry
system, insatiable infatuation with the yellow metal, obscene display of
opulence in the form of palatial houses and luxury cars.
Ram Chandra Biswas from West Bengal
has bicycled across 157 countries over a period of 29 years. He says, ‘I have
never received more hospitality than in Africa. In a poor country, you will
find hospitality, humanity, love and peace. In a rich country you will find
anger, jealousy, fear and selfishness’ (Down To Earth, Nov 1-15, 2013). Me and
my wife can say without an iota of doubt in our minds that we have never come
across people who are more peace-loving, genuine, dependable, simple, trustworthy
and wonderful human beings than the adivasis of Chhattisgarh. When we progress
materially in life, do we gradually become more self-centered? Do we tend to be
indifferent to the importance of relationships, love and empathy? Do we transform
into egotist, glum, aloof, stiff upper lip society that is more concerned with
its own ilk?
The rich States of Haryana and
Punjab have the highest rates of female foeticide. On the Noida expressway last
year, a father pleaded with passersby for help after his wife and a baby were
fatally injured in an accident. Nobody came forward for twenty helpless minutes
as vehicles zoomed by. A similar and more tragic case was reported from China
recently. I cannot imagine this happening in Bastar or a village in North
Karnataka.
I remember having read an article in
Geo magazine on the Nazi crimes. The author writes that what is shocking is not
how a crazy dictator like Hitler became the premier of Germany. History has
often thrown up such freaks. What is inexplicable though is how the ordinary
citizens of Germany-young and old, women, mothers, sisters and
brothers-unequivocally supported his each and every action. It is a different
matter that the then victims (Jews-again a prosperous community) are the
perpetrators of inhuman offences now in Palestine.
On similar lines, the USA becomes
more hospitable for outsiders as it is a country of immigrants at heart and is a
potpourri of disparate cultures whereas many Asians perceive Europe, perhaps
with the exception of England, as a closed society which is cold and
indifferent. But European countries top almost every parameter of human
development index. Is it not anthropologically perplexing how human beings
manage to fail the test of humaneness so often?
