Is India the most callous nation in the world?
Well, if there had been a World Callousness Index, you can bet your last precious rupee that we would have been up there. In a land famous for its spirituality, it seems our basic qualities of humanity and compassion are in terrific short supply. Indians might spend lavishly to propitiate the gods, but we seem to choke on simple acts of charity.
Koppal Horror
Witness what happened to 18-year-old Anwar Ali, who was hit by a speeding bus in Koppal district of Karnataka on Wednesday. The teenager lay on the road grievously injured and bleeding. He pleaded for help. But instead of rushing him to a hospital, a crowd of bystanders stood there shooting pictures and videos, as though it was a live show of a sensational event.
When Anwar Ali was finally taken to hospital, too much time had been lost and he died soon after.
No doubt, the onlookers who filmed (on Facebook Live? On Periscope?) their ghoulish videos of a man bleeding to death got their fill of Likes and Retweets after they posted them on social media. No doubt, they felt good about the reactions they got.
So how should one describe people to whom the prospect of getting social media credit for a gory video is more important than coming to the aid of a dying man? Plain insensitive or utterly monstrous?
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Shocking Callousness
This incident is not a one-off, though. In recent months, there have been a number of occasions when people chose to click pictures and shoot videos of accident victims instead of helping them. Or they simply walked away.
In August 2016, a victim of a hit-and-run case in Delhi was left bleeding on the road. CCTV footage showed that no one helped him. In a macabre twist, one person came and made off with the dying man’s mobile phone. Again in September that year, a girl was stabbed by her stalker multiple times on a busy road in north Delhi. No one tried to stop or overpower her assailant. The girl died of her injuries while people stood watching.
A stock argument is trotted out each time there is yet another instance of such shocking callousness on the part of our citizenry.
Apologists for bystanders who simply watch a person die say that people are loathed to help accident victims because they fear subsequent police harassment or the danger of getting drawn into protracted legal hassles. In fact, a law to protect Good Samaritans from potential legal entanglements has been on the cards for some time to tackle this very problem.
However, this is only part of the reason for our chilling lack of empathy for the life of a fellow citizen. The sad fact is that Indians are not a very generous or charitable people. Giving time or money to others less fortunate than ourselves is not particularly high on our agenda.
Abysmal Record of Helping Strangers
The World Giving Index (WGI) 2016, an annual report published by the Charities Aid Foundation and based on data from Gallup’s World View World Poll, ranks India 91 among 140 countries on the generosity scale. This puts it way behind its sub-continental neighbours such as Sri Lanka (5), Bhutan (18), Nepal (39), and just ahead of Pakistan (92) and Bangladesh (94).
The findings of the survey tie in with our spectacular unwillingness to help accident victims. The country’s score on the parameter of “helping a stranger” is 43, as opposed to 63 in the case of Myanmar and 73 for US, which are 1st and 2nd respectively on the overall index.
Evidently, generosity of spirit and the desire to help others are not our strongest suits.
No Space for Empathy
Take the country’s billionaires, for instance. Though India has its share of big-ticket philanthropists – Wipro’s Azim Premji, Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy or Nandan and Rohini Nilekani to name just a few – on the whole, the country’s super rich tend to err on the side of stinginess.
For example, the richest Indian, Mukesh Ambani, with a net worth of $22.5 billion, donated no more than Rs 345 crore in 2015 – which is a far cry from the Rs 27,514 crore given away by Premji the same year.
Premji and a few others are the exception rather than the rule. On the whole, the propensity for apathy in the face of the misery of others percolates to the granular level. It filters down to the man on the road, to the passerby – who comes upon a girl being stabbed, or a person hit by a bus – and simply passes by.
Blaming India’s complicated and famously tardy criminal justice system for this apathy is letting people off the hook. In reality, perhaps we Indians are too self-seeking to care.
(The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi. She can be reached @ShumaRaha. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
Also Read:
K’Taka Teen Lies in Blood, Cries for Help as Onlookers Click Pics
Onlookers Click Photos as Mysuru Cop Bleeds to Death After Crash
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