Rights to Security

Security is one of the major concerns that India is facing be it national from China and Pakistan or be it national security from the Maoists or Naxalites. Thousands of CRPF jawans and police forces have been inducted to secure our land from the perils of danger. However, the policemen or the force is a mere puppet these days serving merely to the ‘powerful VIPs ‘ who are financially and politically secure in their lal battis’.
Such a privileged force was obviously then enhanced for our ‘honourable Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was supposed to attend the convocation at the IIT-Kanpur and address the Merchants Chamber of Uttar Pradesh on July 9. The roads were blocked for the aam aadmi and traffic was diverted 6 hours prior to his arrival in the region. Yes, for six hours, intruding those blocked lanes was being deprived from the aam aadmi for whom the incumbent government and the same PM have claimed their fame to the votebank. It’s the votebank where these aam aadmi have large depositaries. Dude, (VIPs and not the PM) you are entrusted to pay an interest for the same.
During those hours, on these roads when a mother of a ten-year-old, Aman, bleeding to death, was visiting the hospital was refused to go forward even with an emergency of saving the life of her son. She was rebuffed on the grounds of security concerns. The woman says her husband and daughter were stopped at every signal and were not allowed to go further leading to the demise of her son who succumbed to death while the police caused delay in attending the hospital.
However, the DIG of Kanpur remained deterrent by saying that security was not inhuman and that emergencies are allowed to go. Adding that the security lapse too cannot be avoided in case of the Prime Minister, he said the police force cannot be blamed for the death.
This opens a Pandora’s Box about the price of security of the citizens of India along the lines of the VIPs. As Suhel Seth, MD, Counselage says that “We have become desensitized to anything that doesn’t happen to our own self”.
This dictum leaves the victims gaping at the refusal to give importance to the life of a dying person for reasons of a minister’s arrival. Though a PM’s life could be of high magnitude, however, another life here cannot be compromised for the less probable death of a PM many cities away at that moment.
Be it the CRPF jawans in J&K killing youngsters amid protests or this Kanpur incident, it is true that our fractured system of security serves the ‘precious lives’ when those lives are politically and ‘crorely’ bucked up.
Here accountability is in doldrums as the parties like the BSP, PDP, Congress or the BJP, all have shown little sensitivity towards security of the common man and let their sweet manipulative spokespersons with their well-nuanced sympathizing statements divert the core issues.
What’s the cost of a life, rather which life? The lives of Tufauil Ahmed Mattoo, Mohammad Rafiq Bangaroo and other similar nine lives in J&K and Aman in Kanpur have been marginalized while the safety of few unnecessary politicians still grips prime importance.
Well… Mr. VIPs the interest rates of the RBI is likely to be hiked on July 27, but the Aam aadmi is even deprived of deciding the interest rates of their lives deposited with your votebank.