It is a noble desire, no doubt, to wish freedom for every individual on earth. Freedom at least to decide how and by whom s/he should be governed. And yet those that propagate the spread of democracy to every dark corner of the globe; and those that celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall as unassailable proof of the superiority of democracy over all other ideologies probably never envisaged a more potent threat to their cherished ideal than communism could ever pose, namely, apathy on the part of the people.What do you do when people who enjoy the hard won right to self government don’t care to exercise it? Not even in the ‘world’s greatest democracy’. Today, as America appears to be poised on the verge of invading a distant country, Americans seem otherwise preoccupied. A former US ambassador to the Middle East, when asked on television if his countrymen supported an invasion, laughed and observed that they were more interested in the super bowl at the moment. Surf across popular search engines and you are likely to find the question ‘do we have the goods on Saddam?’ squeezed between super bowl trivia, personals, stock quotations, news about Letterman moving house and the gathering storm over Valentine’s Day.According to a recent article, 88 per cent of Americans support the invasion but polls show that one in two Americans also believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.John Le Carre, writing despairingly in The Times, claims that a ‘combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press’. Across the Atlantic, in Britain, which is perceived as the US’s chief ally in the campaign against Iraq, things are as bad. ‘It is utterly laughable,’ Le Carre maintains, ‘that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain’s opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that’s Britain’s tragedy, as it is America’s: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.’Is it indifference? Helplessness? Or is it really just tacit support for a policy of aggression? The last seems strangely anachronistic given how far we have come from the times when war was an integral part of life. Apart from global trends, one would have expected that developments in the social sphere such as shrinking distances, increased life expectancy, improved standards of living and the spread of new age fads such as vegetarianism would bring with them a greater appreciation of the need to preserve life. And to some extent this has happened. No politician in the western world today can afford a high casualty figure with his or her electorate at home. In fact, with the international community recording every move, even a high death rate on the enemy front would evoke criticism. In the recent Afghan operation the possibility that western forces had attacked a marriage party of innocent Afghans threatened to turn into a major scandal.Closer home, India has not yet been put to the test. Though some polls and the success of Narendra Modi’s anti-Musharraf campaign in the last Gujarat elections indicate that many would support a war against Pakistan, there is little evidence of how it would react to an endless stream of coffins on their TV screens. As a television anchor on Star TV, reacting to audience response on a chat show, commented last week: ‘The audience claps when someone talks of war and it claps when someone talks of peace’.So two things are clear. Passively or actively people are still open to, even enthusiastic, about the notion of waging war. The difference perhaps in the modern age is that they have less of a stomach for the actual event. Since it is difficult to imagine a war without consequences how else does one put across a reminder of the futility and waste that accompanies armed conflict? Recently I came across a suggestion that seemed to offer an unusual way of looking at the situation. The suggestion was that the state should give citizens free education and health care free but make them pay for security.Putting the practical aspects of implementation aside for the moment, the idea did make me wonder about things we take for granted, such as our expectations from the state. Should they be based on an earlier time or should they evolve? I mean imagine having to send a cheque, not once, but every month for defence requirements, and much more for war. Would people be that gung ho about sending armies to the front in that case? I think maybe not.
