“How can you possibly value the life of a few terrorists more than the life of a hundred and fifty people on board the plane?” These were the words of the relatives of the 150 passengers on board the IC814 plane. IC814? It is easy to forget, so let me remind you. This was the name of the plane that was hijacked several years ago and was stranded in the Kandahar airport in Aghanistan. No, don’t worry, this is not another article on the problem of terrorism which our country is in no mood to think about.
But when my thoughts wonder about the real value of human life I inevitably remember this incident. For it literally is a perfect example of how what value human life has in the world today. Think about it, 500 soldiers left behind weeping widows and children to capture some brainwashed bas****s only to keep them alive and feed them with tax payer’s money. Then, more brainwashed bas****s come along and say, “Dear children of India, here is arithmetic problem for you. X terrorists held captive by you in lieu of Y passengers on board. Balance the equation. After thinking hard like a small baby not even capable of going to school, the children make a choice. An obvious choice! Can’t blame the children, really! But later these X terrorists, one of them, only one of them, cooks up a master plan with somebody else and they kill thousands and thousands of people in World Trade Center attacks. Amazing equation! Need I say more!
Also think about the following situation. The media is news hungry. They have no news to report as such. And because there is no news, even the stand up comedians are getting desperate for new material. And finally the Columbia disaster happens and the famous Indian astronaut Kalpana Chawla loses her life. This fact, I quote from my memory of a newspaper article but I unfortunately cannot find a e-reference to the same. One of the comedians decides to say, “If Kalpana had blue eyes, I’d sing – one eye blew (blue) here and one eye blew there!” Of course, this comedian was crucified (not literally) for saying this! But I shall not be too surprised if should find comedians somewhere in the world not making fun of disasters.
Next example one can come up with is the Swine Flu epidemic. One striking feature of all newspapers I recall from the newspapers is the advertisements. Companies which manufacture soap products (will not quote the names, they are pretty famous) go around advertising, “Swine Flu protection Kit.” Below are all the possible products they manufacture like bar soaps, hand wash, etc. Capitalizing on the panic! You might say, “Oh, but they were spreading awareness in a sense, be clean and prevent flu!” No chance! I will never buy that explanation. If awareness is what you want to spread, then please put guidelines on the holdings and let your logo only occupy a small space. Nope! It was nothing but the intention of capitalizing on the panic. Why? Even politicians were spreading awareness, but again, their party name and the photo of their leader were so highlighted that people would miss the guidelines of how swine flu can be prevented.
I could go on and on quoting examples of incidents where the low value assigned to the human life can be revealed. I could talk about the photographer, for example, who captured pictures of the brutal riots of Gujarat. He was all smiles in accepting the award for his photo which came to be known as the face of the Gujarat riots. I could then compare him with another photographer who committed suicide, post depression after he returned from an assignment to take photos in a famine stricken land. But it’s okay. I expect nothing to change the value humans have today. But it does leave me with a question – was it always like this?