Jaat Aarakshan

Law and order : absent
police : absent
administration : absent
government : absent
HUMANITY : absent
The  'jaat aarakshan' row recently in Haryana looked almost like a government school classroom!
Five days of 'house arrest' with a lot of mental toil was what it meant for me and I'm sure a lot many people who witnessed the law and order system in Haryana getting slaughtered at the hands of a few anti - social elements.
India stands proudly as the largest democracy in the world and every indian citizen thus bears the right and freedom of expression. Going by this, it was perfectly alright, when a community, feeling the need, peacefully sat down at places, voicing their demands for reservation, harmlessly. Some people took this, or rather exploited the scenario as an opportunity to cause unrest in the society, looting shops, showrooms, setting places ablaze - schools, hospitals, markets , killing other people, attacking residential areas and causing all kinds of possible damage to life and property for their own insatiable vested interests. Infact, it wasn't just about life and property, there was much more to it. People lost their only sources of livelihood, generations of hardwork and toil was brought down to ashes, some of them did not know if they could ever be able to overcome it, there were families to be fed behind them, irreparable emotional damage.
One after the other ,those anti social elements looted and laughed past, they walked and marched on the roads as if they owned them, shamelessly celebrating as if it were some achievement ( it were perhaps!) and the police just stood ( invisibly!!)
This was what happened.
The five day long ordeal that left everyone around feeling helpless.
Heated debates and long discussions on tv followed. The media called those anti social elements as ' jaat andolankaris' or ' updravis'  and part of the same group of people who were
demanding reservations. It might be true but then they could have been from any community   including jaats , for whom it was nothing but an opportunity to do whatever they wished to in the curfew areas, and so they did (meticulously!).
Meanwhile the present government was struggling (tip to toe!) , trying to put things into place, the others took it as a chance to  gain some public support and this time they chose 'sympathy' as the tool. TV sets were drenched with a lot of tears shed by some politicians here and there. How could they have not grabbed the opportunity to play politics! The melodrama though could have been avoided.
In the entire incident, it looked as if the original issue had got hazy towards the end. It somehow got distracted and took a new turn. The movement lost momentum as it had got shifted into causing destruction. As expected, the government assured of taking action, forming committees and coming out with a positive result. Lets see how far it goes.
An incident it was, a grave one at that. Now that its fortunately over, lets hope anything like this doesn't happen again. The state had come to a halt and so did the entire system. It is time for the police, the administration and the government to get acting and stop being a wallflower.
A week without internet (no WhatsApp , no fb!!) made people talk, talk to each other, talk to family , look at things with heads up, feel and respond! But then this is utmost possible optimism!!
By the way, did you read that alia bhat joke on "jaat aarakshan"?!