2016 was definitely not a dull year. Yes, personal experiences differ. Some of us personally have had a boring year, with nothing much to reminisce about. Some of us unfortunately remember the year for not-so-good personal reasons, while some of us probably got our first job or got married or traveled abroad for the first time or came out of a turbulent relationship this year. Personal experiences and achievements aside, if you aren't someone who keeps yourself completely isolated from the world outside, I'm sure you'd agree that 2016 was an eventful year.
This post of mine could be tagged as a tirade against something that I'm going to remember this year for. I shall remember 2016 as a year in which for the first time in my country, I saw a complete disregard for (and in some cases, dismissal of) others' suffering on a large scale. Inherently, we are all selfish. There's no denial that most of us have always been occupied in solving our own personal problems. We waste water, dump garbage on the road, drive recklessly, never miss a chance to abuse each other and so on. However, when there's, say an earthquake, a bomb blast, a drought or any other event that leads to a large scale human suffering, my understanding has been that although not many of us go out and do our bit, we sympathize with the victims. Worst case, we do not dismiss their sufferings.
2016 has been special. After the famous announcement on the 8th of November, farmers had to struggle to buy seeds, numbers showed that agrarian economy suffered, there were cases reported where admitting critically ill patients to hospitals had become tougher, laborers ran out of work, a few small scale industries were shut down and businesses suffered. And if we chose to be cynical about newspaper reports, it didn't take too much effort to see people waiting in queues in front of ATM machines under the sun, uncertain of whether there would be cash left by the time it's their turn to withdraw cash. People died while standing in queues. Although I've witnessed the extent to which the hard core supporters of a certain political party, government or an individual (All three are the same in some cases!) defend some of the actions, I haven't been able to figure out why I still find it shocking that a lot of us have convincingly bought the "short term pain for long term gain" argument and continue to publicly state that it is absolutely fine if people suffer. This suffering, mind you, is because of a decision taken somewhere in a closed room, purely based on personal imagination and optimism.
While no decision taken by the government can be resistant to criticism, arguments in favor of the decision should always be welcomed and I've no doubt in my mind that there are strong arguments in favour of scrapping old notes. However, the refusal to accept that there could be people whose lives have been adversely impacted and that we shall never be able to understand the inconvenience that they've had to go through was shocking! A panelist in the Bangalore Literature Festival this year, when questioned about the hardships that people are going through, said "People die everywhere. They've died while standing in queue for ration cards, people die on football grounds, so what?". I've lost count of the number of people who have effortlessly said "People will have to suffer if the country has to progress". To me, this is one of the indications of how fast our society is degrading.
I could be blind, but in my lifetime, I hadn't seen such a public display of insensitivity on such a large scale in my country. I do tend to believe that most people who've been saying these things do sympathize with the sufferers and it's just that they haven't learnt how to argue in favour of the decision while wholeheartedly sympathizing with the victims. Nevertheless, I'm tempted to not give ourselves the benefit of doubt and would like to believe that 2016 has set a stage for people like our Prime Minister to take any decision without having had to worry about its repercussions for his political party because a part of our society is now both courageous and shameless to publicly endorse human suffering. Acche Din is definitely here.
