The IPL just ended, and the FIFA football world cup is about to begin. It’s a ‘sporting’ summer, and yet, here I am, discussing about a game which we all play; a game in which we all can be world champions if we want to. I am talking of the Blame Game.
The past couple of months witnessed a political
storm. Even Alfred of Batman fame couldn’t have seen this storm coming. Key
issues were raised, important discussions held, leaders projected and promises
made. The nation’s economy was in shambles, internal security and defense were
in hands of incompetents and the country was supposedly run by a woman whose
greatest qualification was that she was the wife of an ex-PM. It was time for
change, and we all agreed to it. However, what we did after that was very
typical. We decided to elect one person who promised a lot- growth, economy,
development, stability, and decided that he and only he will be responsible for
converting India into a developed nation. Like a magician producing a rabbit out
of a hat, and the audience applauding.
I live in Gujarat, where Modi has undoubtedly a huge
following. To his credit, Modi has done a fantastic job here, and we expect him
to continue the same at a national scale too. But, does our duty end with voting
for our candidate (in most gujaratis’case, it was Modi.)? A couple of days ago,
I saw a man roll down the window of his sparkling Audi and spit out a flurry of
red paan liquid on the road. Probably he would have voted for Modi. I saw a man
break the traffic signal and try to run over the traffic cop who dared to stop
him. He could have even run over him if the cop hadn’t jumped at the right
moment. Probably he too voted for Modi. Daily we see people jumping queues,
breaking laws, creating chaos. Most of them would have voted for Modi. Are they
contributing to the developed India they all voted for? Or they are becoming a hindrance
to it?
The current electricity problem in Delhi is well
known now. The first thing everybody did was to find out whom to blame. The Aam
Aadmi Party blamed the BJP. BJP blamed them back. Supporters of both parties
are currently engaged in a Facebook feud, and might be privately blaming Mark
Zuckerberg for inventing Facebook. I am not justifying BJP here, but why are
people so quick to blame each other when anything goes wrong? The nadir was
when some Aam Aadmi Party supporters were blaming the Indian public for
electing BJP. Seriously?
But this is not limited to the political sphere.
When we were in school, many of our Social Sciences lessons would have
sentences like “India is a poor country because the British looted us for 200
years.” It made me think even back then, that India has been independent for
half a century. How does the British empire still contribute to our poverty? I realized
it much later that the textbook are written by diktats of the ruling
government, and the government too needs someone to blame. Today, we blame
‘Western influences’ for everything bad, including and not limited to rapes,
eve teasing, drugs, alcoholism. Indeed! What were the parents doing when the
‘Western influences’ were influencing their honest-to-God child? Probably they
were busy having the late night dose of alcohol, or were probably fighting each
other.
I often come across worried mothers who say that
they are changing the tuition teacher of their 10 year old kids because the
child in question isn’t getting 95%. I once told one such lady that my mother
used to teach me till I was 15. And then I entered the world of tuitions for
the first time. And no, there was no pressure on me to get 95% (nor did I ever
get that score). She was surprised. Apparently she had one less person to blame
for her child’s “failure”. And the students are no less either. They might be
loitering all day in the ‘hangouts’ but if they don’t score well, they will
first blame the teacher. Interesting blame game, this one.
The more we think about it, the more deep the
problem seems to be. Why do we blame? Psychologically, there is a ‘defense
mechanism’ called Projection in which a person will ‘project’ the ‘socially
unacceptable’ occurrences on another person. It helps us justify our own minds
that we are not at fault. I have come across people with all kinds of physical
handicaps, and to my surprise they seemed to be happier than their normal
counterparts. Partly because they had no one to blame for their condition and
had accepted it as it was. I had experienced it first hand during my MBBS days.
For the first two years, my health was constantly a problem, hindering the studies.
I still managed to pass with a decent score in every exam. Once the health was
back to normal, I found myself without a reason to blame, in case I performed
poorly. It was the loss of a ‘backup’ that hit me and my performance after
being healed completely was my worst in two years.
And when we fail in all our endeavors to blame a
person, we blame God. Because, He is the one who created us all, and hence He
should be the one accountable to us all. Many of us feel that God didn’t do
enough for them. Wrong. God created most of us equals. We didn’t make use of
the opportunities that came our way. God and blaming has another off-shoot. The
terrorists of one religion often blame the other religions and try to attack
their peaceful followers. God didn’t create violence. All religions preach
peace. It is the followers who get violent.
I would like to end this by taking the readers back
to first pitch of the Blame Game, politics, with this quote-
“Democracy is a process by which people select a new
person to blame for five years.”
Why blame anybody, when we can analyze where we went
wrong and pick up from there? Why blame the existing or past governments when
we do not contribute to even basic civic sense? Why blame the teacher when the
students don’t prepare well? Why blame God when we could have done better?
