The sweet thing about revisiting school days is that even the person who had the most horrible of times at school always remembers school with a gleeful smile. Being a student of a school that had just one bus (meant only for ferrying staff), I always wanted to get into big school buses. At times, even at the risk of getting punished by strict school authorities, I sneaked into the back seat of a school bus and travelled the length and breadth of the valley!
A couple years later, as I began to differentiate between right and wrong, a simple dispute over a game of soccer led to a skirmish. I remember losing the game, and also remember strongly feeling we were hard done by the referee. We wanted a rematch. It wasn’t given. We broke into a fight in the dining hall, culminating in stoning of glasses of the one and only school bus. Since it was a residential school, we were caught and punished. The very next morning, the bus had brand new windows, as if nothing had happened.
That was years ago. Later, I bumped into a theory that went by the name of “Broken windows” in a book by Malcolm Gladwell, discussing how little things can make a big difference. I was so fascinated by this book that I ended up reading around two dozen books from the ‘people-who-read-this-also-read’ list. As the theory goes, you do not let yourself get bogged down by little things just because something big is bothering you.
The reason I was reminded of this theory is the recent burning of a college bus in the capital. The shocking thing about the whole incident was not the nature of the violence adopted in the name of protest, but the fact that it failed to garner much media attention. Nonetheless, with movements like Occupy Baluwatar, I was seriously hoping that we would soon see more protests about things that go wrong in society.
I guess the bus burning is a vindication of the fact that the private education system of this impoverished country is the sole reason behind its present state. How? The answer probably lies in various employment generating schemes that the government comes out with each year, trying to put at least some of the unemployed youth to work. I hear a huge sum is distributed ‘freely’ in such schemes without any collateral. Had the system been able to produce an educated bunch of youth, they would have found a way to contribute positively to society. Unable to do much apart from having strong political beliefs, there is very little for them to do other than build the roads and sweep the streets in some Sheikh-ruled country.
Everyone in this free land has right to opinion, as much as the right to anything else. The right to become a billionaire and be featured in the Forbes list, the right to be the self-proclaimed party president for life, or anything else. Some of the people whom I talked to about the burning bus incident strongly felt that the institution whose bus was burnt to bare structural frames was as much to blame as the perpetrators. They made their opinion clear that no educational institution in the country has the right to bar students from forming a union, and hence the act of burning the bus was justified. They did not say that it was the perfect way of showing discontent, but did not condemn it either. That amused me. To borrow a line from a famous song, I felt ‘Amused to death’ (by Pink Floyd).
How on earth can someone openly take the full responsibility for the incident, and not draw the attention of law enforcement agencies? When I asked my friends this, one quipped that “probably it’s because a certain law enforcer is busy these days.” He probably thought that the Chief Justice should be held responsible for not doing anything about it. Since I know no law, I am not sure if that is the case, but am tempted to think that he could have done something, at least condemn the incident.
Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly) nothing happened. The head of an organization openly took the responsibility for the incident, and moreover, successfully managed to bring entire schools to a complete closure for a day, across the country. If the success of their protest were to be gauged on the basis of how many schools were affected, one has no choice but to accept that it was successful.
As much as we pride in taking seriously cases like Dekendra Thapa’s, we cannot afford to ignore cases of ‘burning buses.’
That reminds me of the rhetoric that we have become accustomed to. That no one is above the law, and every person found guilty will be punished. Ironically, forget political leaders, even chiefs of security forces have gone on record to say that action will be taken against the culprits. They did take action, but only against men and women from their own institution. I wonder what kind of security we can expect from a society where the responsible force can only take action against members of its own organization! Getting back to the point, as much as we pride in being a society that seriously takes up incidents like the one of Dekendra Thapa, we cannot afford to ignore the cases of ‘burning buses.’
There’s a big board outside a police station that confronts me every day as I go to work. It displays not just the death count in road accidents in the previous month, but also displays the incidents of thefts, robberies, and number of apprehensions recorded in that month. This is exactly what the broken window theory is all about. One must ensure that everything is being done to ensure there is normalcy in day-to-day life. Bigger incidents do happen, more regularly than minor ones in our case, but again there are as many incidents of pick pocketing as of minor thefts. I am sure the board that confronts me daily without fail is trying to do exactly that, and succeeding. Honestly, when I stare at those numbers, I do get a sense of security, a calmness of sorts, that it’s not an abnormal society that I am a part of. It’s only the burning buses that send chills down my spine!
Finally, the stupid act of stoning the windows of a school bus remains fresh in my mind. Time and again, it emerges when I meet school friends. We had assumed the head teacher would name us as culprits, punish us, and tell everyone what we had done before replacing the broken windows. Now, everything makes sense. That was school, and this is a nation. As much as there are drastic differences between these two, you cannot rule out some similarities when it comes to running them.
Hiteshkarki@gmail.com
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