Charter for world citizens

On Republic Day last week, victims of a building collapse in Ahmedabad prepared to move back into their new homes four full years after the ...

On Republic Day last week, victims of a building collapse in Ahmedabad prepared to move back into their new homes four full years after the Gujarat earthquake that caused large scale devastation in the state. On a street corner there was a poster that said, 8220;One month after tsunami, five years after earthquake8221;, indicating that quake victims could spare concern for their distant neighbours even on a day of mourning. Indeed, the recent tsunami disaster, the most devastating crisis of our times, has touched hearts all over the country. Newspaper reports claim that donations have crossed the mark set by the Gujarat earthquake. And a slew of celebrities, film stars and politicians have shown a vocal and extremely active concern for the affected by paying visits to the scenes of devastation and organising fund raising events.

Compassion is good. Religious texts, philosophical discourses, fables and homilies all drive home the message that to help others is to help ourselves. With the emergence of 24-hour television news channels and globalisation, however, compassion has been put on an entirely new footing. Ever since Bob Geldof flamboyantly stirred the conscience of the West for the starving millions in Africa, it has become an accepted notion that people of power and means should care about people less privileged and in crisis, not as a matter of religious or moral persuasion but as a civic duty. The persistent demand for humanitarian intervention by the United Nations and by powerful governments in situations of strife and famine on the other hand has bestowed a similar responsibility on states. Add to these, two significant assumptions: that people must care for those who are geographically and psychologically distant and that both the tragedy and efforts to help will be the subject of round the clock media attention; and you have compassion, far from being a private matter, becoming a public one, a tax of sorts on world citizenship.

Humanitarianism, however, as the West has discovered, is no simple matter. Over the last few years we have seen debates over conflicts of political, economic and humanitarian interest within donor nations. We have seen issues of sovereignty as far as donee nations are concerned. Does the aid reach the affected? Should an armed invasion ensure it does? Can one demand a change of political leadership? Can one demand a change of cultural mores? Does one have the right?

All these are questions that are still being debated by the rich countries of the world. For large, semi-developed countries such as ours the new form and emphasis on humanitarianism raises other, quite different issues.

The most serious one is perhaps of discrimination. Unlike citizens in the developed world, a vast number of Indians live in dire circumstances. Poverty, ill health, caste discrimination, gender discrimination 8212; these are perennial problems. Can we, against this backdrop, afford the sort of prominence the West gives to disasters without perpetrating an injustice against those of us who live with these privations on a daily basis?

Thousands in the country8217;s largest metropolis Mumbai, for instance, have had to undergo, over the last few weeks, the painful experience of watching their homes being demolished. Many have been left stranded without a roof and no means of earning a livelihood or educating their children. Yet there has been little publicly expressed sympathy or support for their plight. On what basis then do we let our compassion be stirred?

Why is it that some kinds of tragedies, drought or train accidents for instance, are less likely to receive sustained coverage than earthquakes? Why is it that victims of violence from communal conflict or terrorism are not perceived as sympathetically by donors as victims of natural disasters? Would people who donate generously to a flood or cyclone relief effort spare a thought for tribals ousted from their homes for developmental purposes?

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The point is not that natural disasters do not need attention and wholehearted national support. They most certainly do. But to be fair, the empathy evoked by a calamity should be used to heighten, not dull, our responses to the more routine injustices. Take for instance the business of feeling for those geographically and psychologically removed from oneself. If, after the current international fashion, people from one part of the country can be made to feel for the troubles of their distant neighbours following a natural disaster, then there is no reason why they should not extend the same consciousness to other matters. Then Andhra-ites for instance would demand action on kidnappings in Bihar. Maharashtrians would cry about bombings in Kashmir. And the people of Madhya Pradesh would stage morchas about the troubles of the Northeast.

It may sound a bit idealistic. But then, isn8217;t that what twenty-first century humanitarianism is all about?