4 Jan 2007

A matter of convenience

I’m sure all of us have heard of one way streets. But, have you heard of a one way street for pedestrians???? Well, guess what, it exists. Or rather it existed for a day. On New Year’s Eve, Bangalore’s Brigade road was sealed off for traffic and made one way for pedestrians!!!

While the reason given by the administration is convenience and prevention of XYZ, one wonders to what extent are we willing to go for convenience.

We have given up our freedom of speech for fear of hurting religious sentiment. We don’t mind being strip searched at airports for “better” security. We agree for the U.S. government to go through our credit history and email inbox if we book airline tickets into the USA online. We agree to Google going through our mail for content driven advertisements since they give us a 2 GB mailbox. I could go on and on. But what is the use? People aren’t going to fight for their rights. It is just convenient for us to look the other way.

Corruption, rape, murder, terrorism, poverty, hunger, AIDS are happening around us. It is CONVENIENT for us to allow the government to look after these issues. We look the other way as long as it doesn’t affect us.

One cannot help but wonder, “How much is too much?”. Will we only wake up and scream when the monsters knock on our door step?

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