The gruesome accident in Pune that was caused by a drunk youth, driving recklessly in his newly gifted Porsche car has literally lifted the seal on the can of worms that is eating into our social fabric. From one serious mistake to another, starting from a father gifting such a luxurious car to his son, the bar serving liquor liberally to a minor boy, the machinery which took a ‘liberal’ view of this atrocious crime, the political machinery which woke up even at ‘2’ in the morning to be on duty for their benefactor’s son, the official bureaucracy in the form of doctors and medical experts, who colluded to alter and destroy evidence, the parents and grandparent who believed they had all the right and resources to protect their “innocent” child who had no food after the accident and had to be given a pizza is a sequence of incidents which shows callousness, dereliction and delinquency. Authenticating the classic adage that one mistake breeds another, this flawed parenting has brought extreme sorrow and ruin to two families, led to the dismissal of two doctors, arrest of the parents for tampering evidence and may be more repercussions in the days to come.
Why did the outrage happen? It was because the boy was given a simple punishment to write an essay in 300 words, which caused a Nation to take notice. Can you drink your fill, drive as if you owned the road, kill people who you think are obstructing your way, write an essay on road safety and go Scot free? When such things do happen and the associated plot to save the law breaker, we could say the turpitude and corruption has gone deep into the vitals of our social system. While the rich parents had every right to pamper their son, they had no right to let him cause the death of two people. They also had no right to protect their child from the wheel of justice. While gifting such luxurious articles to their kid, if only the parents had been more concerned and conscious about imparting a concern for fellow human beings, morality and character in their child, things may not have taken such a tragic turn. Two things are evident from this, 1) That there are two worlds in India ; one world for the rich and the powerful where there are no rules, no limits, no barriers and no controls. Another for the not so rich and the powerful who have to go through the rigmarole of rules and procedures in search of justice. The second is that the progressive degradation of principles and values in our society is happening at a terrific pace and very soon there will not be anything left to present a semblance of order. The Police machinery at least reacted with a sense of duty and responsibility in this case. Such perverse incidents undermine the principles on which our Nation is built: To secure to all its citizens Justice —————-.