Ignorance: The Greatest Virtue

"Ignorance - The lack of knowledge or education." That is how WordWeb Dictionary puts it. Its a noun according to the dictionary. I feel its a verb. Something that people do. While the word may be refering to not doing something, I strongly feel that this is actually doing something.

What

Well, ignoring!

 

"Ye Dekho SRF ke log, yahan bache kaam kar rahe hain aur ye baith ke khaana kha rahe hain. Kuch karte kyun nahi?", I asked.

SRF stand for Social Responsibility Forum, the community service cell of our B-School. One of its members(AS), a fellow hostelite, was having dinner. There are a lot of kids working in Mumbai who are underage. Those working in the hostel mess look like they belong to this category.(Though its difficult to guess what the age of a person is by just looking at him/her.)

"Wo 14 saal se upar ka hai. Ye bahut chotte chotte lagte hain, par 16-17 saal ke hote hain", VT said.

"Bula ke pooch to kitne saal ka hai", I said.

"Accha abhi bulate hain", AS said.

They called the kid and asked him his age. "Satrah", he said. Seventeen!

 

A few years back the court had passed some ruling, after which there was this ho-hallah by the media and the government bodies against child labour. A movement is what it was called. But that movement like most other movements lost momentum and everyone got back to some new issue or the other and forgot about this cause. The glamour wasn't there anymore, it wasn't the 'in thing' for the media anymore.

Anyway, during those days, one of the houses in my neighbourhood was raided. The police asked the children what their age was. They replied 14, 15, 16,.... The chap who complained, his obligation towards the society had been completed. The job of the police, to react to the complaint, was done. The children, who everyone could clearly see were no older than 13, got back to their lives as domestic helps. The owner of the house got back to his life, the 500 odd bucks that he had given to the police could always be recovered by getting the children to do overtime.

If you are not aware of the scenario that exists in the Indian society, you must be wondering why the children said their age was above 14. Well, figure out the answer to this question - What would they do if they told their real ages and, thus, lost their jobs?

 

"Accha ek baat bata mujhe bhai. Maan le ki wo chote hain umar mein. Agar un logon ko yahaan se kaam se hatva doon toh kahan jayenge woh, socha hai kabhi?", AS asked me. The same question that I've asked you.

I could see that he had his mind closed, he was in a mood only to score some points in the conversation. I decided to end the conversation with a smile, a wry one.

 

That child might have been above 14, it is possible. However, that is not the point over here.

The biggest problem that I can see with most of the NGOs etc is that they are run by people who are working for their satisfaction and not to eradicate poverty, or AIDS, or Polio, or Malaria or whatever it is that they are working against or for. The people there are not working towards the goal to be achieved. they are working for their satisfaction.

I see people giving money to beggars everyday. You can see the satisfaction that they get. Many of them have asked me why I don't give money to them. I almost never give the honest reply. Because my honest reply is a question, "Have you ever thought what would happen if you stop giving money to beggars and everyone else also follows suit?"

I've never got an answer from their mouths, it is their faces which reply, "No". They've never thought about it.

The fact is people are ignorant, they are ignorant about the consequences of their actions. They don't think what is right. They just do what they've been programmed to believe is right by the society, the environment around them.

 

In this particular case of child labour, if the NGOs start spending money and other resources on the problem area which is not the child labour but instead poverty and lack of education, it would be much better for the society. The NGOs are working to heal the wounds that have been inflicted upon the society, not trying to prevent the society from getting hurt. That is the same as what the government is doing. They just sit and analyse what has happened and after that do what they want to. There are floods every year. Why don't the NGOs and the government get together and analyse what are the flood prone areas, analyse the causes for damage, then relocate people accordingly? Or even better why not employ people(1) to develop canals to route the water to drought prone areas(2) and in the process avoiding floods (3). The above sentence comprises the solution to three major problems - it requires just one act, but the people concerned are not willing to do the same.

Why don't the NGOs sit and think what is the cause of child labour(you already know it, don't even need to think) and work on that aspect? Why don't people look at the root cause of the problem and eradicate it?

The answer is simple - Ignorance. It is a virtue for people. They would sit and think only about those aspects which affect them.

Why don't we have as many NGOs working for the welfare of the tribals (not the ones who come in direct contact with the 'civilised society' but the ones who are living in the jungles totally cut off from civilisation? Because helping them would not help them in minting money, or because it wouldn't give them satisfaction since they don't quite come in direct contact with the society or because of some other reason. Actually, in this case the problem is quite opposite - since they are able to get all these and much more - all the fame internationally- they are 'helping out' the tribals, yes, they are. What they don't realise is that they are not the ones who require help. The way they are living is their 'lifestyle', their culture, their society. They are only disrupting the normal lives of the tribals by trying to help them. Again, they are simple being ignorant of the facts!

Who has the time to think about those problems which don't affect them? So, everyone chooses to ignore.

Ignorance is, thus,  the greatest virtue.