(This was written in the aftermath of Virginia Tech and proved prophetical in light of such unfortunate incidents in India as well.) 

It takes a hell of a lot to put the thinking cap on and unfortunately the present case, metaphorically speaking, is one hell of a case. The numbing, horrifying and senseless killings in Virginia Tech must force us to rethink our options, priorities and technological interface in personal life. Or else, mind my words, we are sitting on a timebomb of disoriented youth which will erupt sporadically for next few decades and continuously thereafter.

I am so sorry for being so blunt. But this is the best way to tell it as per my perspective from which readers are welcome to disagree.

The metamorphosis of Learning Centres of the West into the Killing Fields has been slowly but surely evolving for which family, society, Gun Control laws, and technology are collectively to be blamed. No one party is singularly to be blamed but my own instincts tell me that we are apportioning blame onto Gun Control Laws:- something which is atbest peripheral and incidental rather than central to the issue. Let me try to explain why.

Family/Parents: With the break up of joint family system, the avenues of quality emotional support has diminished a great deal. And with Both Parents Working System, it has spelt disaster in the making whose trailer we are seeing now. Earlier there were multi-layered emotional support available for the kids during their growth phases- fathers' support, mothers support when fathers were away, grand-parents and uncles and aunts and nieces. The growth of kids took place under the watchful eyes of more trusted sources than the present ones. Notwithstanding the odd instances of abuses, the system was more oriented towards collective wellbeing rather than individual well being and inculcation of a sense of duty and respect towards others. Life is but a continuation process of give and take and one cannot expect to just take and take. Hence the earlier system was suited to social harmony by cutting on some individual freedoms much in the same way in a Housing Society everybody surrenders some land for development of green space or community hall etc. It is a proven psychological fact that kids who have had more emotional warmth and physical contacts (hugs, games etc.) with parents at tender age tend to have more confidence and well rounded personality than the ones who were not so fortunate. Moreover with a close-knit family, any predisposition towards violence or personality disorders are detected very early in life leading to proper rehabilitation. In all these instances of killings in the schools and colleges of USA, parents were not even aware what their kids were upto or watchful of what the kids were doing, which as per my own standards is an abnegation of ones' own responsibility.

Society: By society, I only mean to say thattoo much and disproportionate stress on  individual rights will have its own distressing and disastrous consequences on collective rights. There is a fine balance between these two rights and individuals who happen to be on the Indifference Curve drawn of these two competing Rights are the best lot.

Media: Media is a double edged sword which will cut both ways. And more so in these times of overdose of information. This information overflow has given rise to copycat incidents which tend to give the perpetrators a sense of warped achievement, even though ephemeral. Kids with personality flaws (disorders?) or ones with lack of self esteem and confidence often take to destructive ways after seeing the same in print or video. Remember that a study says that incidence of suicide is less in those areas where the media reports these incidents lesser. But once these kinds of things start getting reported, an easier way out is shown to those guys on the edge and even though they would not have contemplated something like that on their own, the idea germinates due to media coverage.

Gun Control Laws: A liberal gun control law is not a license to kill! I am forgetting, but in South India there is a place where the custom is to worship arms. And an inhabitant of that area doesnot need license to own arms. (Somebody please tell me the name of that place.) But we don't find people from that area killing everybody else! We should understand that guns are an instrument, much like a knife which can be used by a rogue to kill somebody or a surgeon to save somebody. And remember, Canada doesnot have such liberal gun control laws still this kind of incident (campus shooting) has taken place in Canada as well!)

Technology: When I talk of the technology, I talk about some senseless aspects of technology which is seemingly harmless from outside but might be wreaking havoc inside. Here I am hinting at Violent Videogames doing the rounds the world over which seems to be desensitizing the youth and making them triggerhappy. Once again, these technologies can be used for Virtual Pilot Training or simulations but when our kids are killing on their video screens daily without any adverse reactions or admonishments, what prevents them from continuing the same inside the classrooms?

Having given my diagnosis, I would like to submit my solutions for the criticism of the netizens at Sulekha.

1. The Government should pay one of the parents to be just that-parent. So either the father or the mother should be paid to stay at home and look after the kids till they are, say, 16 years old. This is a small price to pay for a future where we wont be scared of getting killed in school or raped at home. (A recent lawsuit filed in USA has said that incest should be made legal as it infringes on the individuals' rights!) This expenditure should be seen by the governments the world over as Social Sector spending and most advanced form of Affirmative Action.
2. There always have to be a trade off between competing demands and whenever there is a clash between individual good and collective good, collective good should prevail. Keeping this in view, society has to play more assertive role in bringing up their children in conformity with social customs. A concerned and accommodating society would be much better than a detached yet stern law.
3. Guns are just an instruments and these cannot be viified for the folly of their holders. It is the same gun whether wielded by a saviour or a savage. There is a legal maxim that the fear of abuse cannot do away with the use. Hence we cannot say that guns or the lax gun control laws are bad. In India sharp kitchen knives are available all over but we don't hear kids killing a few with those knives. At leat not yet.
4. Technology needs to be guided and directed. It is the same technology that gives energy or does a Hiroshima. But technology which seems to remove from us the fear of ‘real' due to our association with the ‘virtual' needs to be moderated. Or else we would have our youths who would not even know if killing somebody will really bleed them or not! 

If we don't take care of these things now, we would be waiting for a Virginia Tech in India later. The fault lines are already there, and are getting firmed up. And these might erupt in their own sweet time.

Virginia Tech in India? Not Just Yet.  

PrideOfMatchingham

17.04.2007

(This piece was written last year and the same is reproduced here.) 

In his sensational book Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner have successfully and quite revealingly argued and proved with statistics that the reason for drop in crime in New York from a peak of 1980s to a decline in the 1990s was NOT because any of the following reason  

1. Innovative Policing
2. Increased reliance on Prisons
3. Changes in Crack and other Drug
4. Aging of Population
5. Tougher Gun Control Laws
6. Strong  Economy
7. Increased Number of Police
8. Others (Gun buy back, capital punishment etc.)

But it was because of the landmark Supreme Court judgment in Roe VS Wade in January 1973 extending legalized abortion to the whole of country that the crime graph declined steeply during the 1990s! Stumped?? Well, read on.

When a woman doesnot want a child, she usually has a very good reason.She may be unmarried or in bad marriage, too poor to raise a child or too unstable, unhappy, alchoholic or drug addict. She might be too young or might not have had eucation. For any number of reasons, she can feel that she cannot provide a home environment that is conducive to raising a healthy and productive child.

Studies have proved that childhood poverty, single parent household, teenage mother and low maternal education raises the propensity to commit crime Hence the very factors that drove millions of American women to have abortion also seemed to predict that their children, had they been born, would have led unhappy and possibly criminal lives!

In the first year after Roe VS Wade, some 750000 women had abortion in USA (1 for every 4 live births). But by 1980, the number of abortion had reached 1.6 million (1 for every 2.25 live births!) where it leveled off. The most dramatic effect of legalized abortion was that in the early 1990s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe VS Wade was hitting its late teens years- the years during which young men enter their criminal prime- the rate of crime began to fall.What this cohort was missing were the children who stood the greatest chance of becoming criminal. And the crime rate continued to fall as an entire generation came of age minus the children whose mothers had not wanted the child. Thus legalized abortion led to less unwantedness, unwantedness leads to high crime;legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime!

Now my surmise is on the similar lines.

I had argued in my post ‘Virginia Tech in India: No, Not Yet' that more the younger generation is fed on violent videogames, the more they get disjoint from reality and thus the distinction gets blurred leading to regrettable violence. After all these kinds of violent behaviors were not witnessed during the 1980s when such kind of games were not available and computer was not as developed as it is now. A virtual practice of killing removes whatever rudimentary reservations one might have had about it and thus these are the ones who might be more prone to violent behavior which has become the bane of some of the American Universities. Hence we need to take a view (ban?) on these videogames. The immediate effect might not be perceptible, but the long term effect would be just as profound as legalized abortion had on crime!

With the break up of joint family system, the avenues of quality emotional support has diminished a great deal. Earlier there were multi-layered emotional support available for the kids during their growth phases. The growth of kids took place under the watchful eyes of more trusted sources than the present ones. Notwithstanding the odd instances of abuses, the system was more oriented towards collective wellbeing rather than individual well being and inculcation of a sense of duty and respect towards others. The earlier system was suited to social harmony by cutting on some individual freedoms. It is a proven psychological fact that kids who have had more emotional warmth and physical contacts with parents at tender age tend to have more confidence and well rounded personality than the ones who were not so fortunate. Moreover with a close-knit family, any predisposition towards violence or personality disorders are detected very early in life leading to proper rehabilitation. In all these instances of killings in the schools and colleges of USA, parents did not seem to have any clue about their kids.

The cost of keeping a person in jail is about $ 25000 per annum in USA. Even in Indian situation, the cost must be somewhere about Rs. 25000 pa. Add to this the cost of policing. If per capita cost of policing is Rs. 10000, then we are likely to save Rs. 35,000 pa by preventing a child from turning a criminal. If the government were to pay, say, Rs. 30,000 (just a figure) to one of the parents to stay at home (till s/he comes of age) and be a good parent and a policeman-at-home, then we are not only producing productive and sound future generation but also reducing expenditure on policing and concomitant monetary cost of criminality, violence and disruption on society. In that case police will spend their time, energy and resources on hardcore criminals and terrorists. One Godra costs us hundreds of crores, one Gujrat Riot costs us many hundreds of crores, one Mumbai Blast costs us thousands of crores. Given the fragile social condition here, payback time for our investment in our own future might not be long.

Time to think, is it?  

PrideOfMatchingham

31.07.2007