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Author: Abeed Khader
Watch This video before you read on should be able to make everyone think how much importance does ‘intentions’ have while someone is devising a legislation/public policy over which the people have no choice in one way or the other.
As empathetic human beings, most of us wish to be able to contribute in some way to the upliftment of disadvantaged people. The contribution can vary from monetary support, moral support, financial/personal advice, providing directives etc.
I believe all such contributions are highly appreciable. It takes a lot of consistent, relentless, individual and team effort to make this world a better place. But what happens when your contribution leads to something negative? What if it created the exact opposite to the result we were hoping for?
You might have heard stories about some grown youngster who was gifted a high-performance automobile by their very generous relative, but sadly got involved in a fatal accident. In such cases; who can be blamed? Leaving out the obvious personal guilt the relative might be feeling – do you think there is any scope for blame on the relative if the youngster was of age? In similar scenarios, it is all a matter of choice and responsibility from the person who is receiving the help/aid/gift.
The tricky part of creating a legislation/public policy over a certain disadvantaged group is that the one who formulates it should take into account that the particular group is not necessarily going to be strong-armed into a particular kind of behavior that the formulator expects as necessary for the policy to work. Sometimes there is a drastic difference in the vocal demands of someone who is being the political front of a community and the expected demands of someone who is from the ground zero of the community. A quite recent example was the huge red wave of farmers that protested in Maharashtra – All over social media people were discussing on giving or not giving more handouts to these people, whether the loans should be waived or not etc.
A couple of our friends from Centre for Civil Society (Barun Mitra) and Free A Billion (Kumar Anand) were on the ground that day, interacting with these protestors. They went about asking different people in the group about what actually they wanted to achieve with this protest. It was surprising to know that even though it was part of the written list of demands, the loan waivers and subsidies were among the bottom of their priorities. Having the right to sell their produce at whatever price they wish for without interference from a middleman, Right to property to avoid the government from forcefully acquiring their land for projects etc. were among the most personal demands of the farmers. In India, we see a lot of political elements leveraging such scenarios of communication gap. What if this is turning into a vicious cycle of dependence and failure? Are the intentions alone enough to justify this?
This piece solely expresses the opinion of the author and not necessarily the organization as a whole. Students For Liberty is committed to facilitating a broad dialogue for liberty, representing a variety of opinions.
