The question of ‘place’

One of the reasons why our society is facing so many problems – placing our country at the very bottom of many global lists that document human development – is the curious notion of a specific ‘place’ for individuals within society that we still hold on to.

Perhaps this notion was inherited from the British under colonial rule or perhaps it existed much before that period. It exists in many other nations as well. But in our part of the world, it is so strongly embedded that it deprives millions of anything resembling an even opportunity in life.

Many of us – in fact most of us – may have heard parents tell their children as they drive past a streetlight in their car that the children who come up to their windows to beg, who sit on pavements in makeshift tents as a part of roving gypsy families or who swim in Lahore’s now highly-polluted canal, are ‘dirty’ and therefore not worth thinking about. Yes, in the spirit of charity, a few coins may be handed out. But many people make sure not the touch the hand of the little boy or girl who extends it.

In the same way, in almost every residential area, families tend to stop their children from playing with others who they deem to be from a lower class or a less privileged socio-economic background as they are not worthy of their company.

Meanwhile, the offspring of the elite are so ridiculously pampered that tens of thousands – even millions – of rupees are spent on birthday parties and gifts and parents ensure a retinue of staff hovers constantly over their child on the occasions when the parent, usually the mother, cannot do so herself. The result is a generation of privileged children that is completely removed from reality. There may be occasional planned school visits to an orphanage or a children’s hospital – although even these trips have become rare due to ‘security concerns’ . But the people who inhabit various rungs in a highly stratified society simply do not interact with each other and know little of each other’s worlds.

The idea that people are at a certain place because this is where they deserve to be is surprisingly common. The wealthy openly believe that the  driver, maid, doorkeeper, gardener, cook or the other essential people who make up such an important part of their lives are doing the jobs they do because this is what they are capable of and what they deserve. Even surprisingly enlightened people hold on to this bizarre view. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The gardener you see digging the earth in a well-manicured garden which does not belong to him may, in another life or another time, have been an architect, an engineer, a surgeon – something quite different from where his present life has led him. This has nothing to do with ability or intelligence. It has everything to do with the structures in our society that hold back opportunity from so many people and only award it to a few.

There are, of course, exceptional individuals who have broken through the barriers and climbed far higher than their allotted rung in life. However, far too many people have no choice but to remain trapped within their socio-economic position and attempt, at best, to ensure that their children climb just a little higher. While some succeed in this, many fail. It is a cruel society to live in.

But this cruelty appears to be invisible to most people who live within it. In a park, families picnicking at times when the cheerful monsoon weather permits this, will chase away the small children who gather to watch or simply eye a stray football or balloon. This is not entirely unexpected and is, in some ways, a natural reaction. But somewhere, the sympathy, understanding and the resolve to uplift children who lead lives that make them physically unable to flourish has to be built.

This cannot happen in our highly segregated schools – as each institute caters to a particular bracket in society – and it cannot happen in most other walks of life. Even when children do interact, for example, on sports fields, parents have been known to ask why their privileged child has been made to play with children from a less economically prosperous background.

The sense of entitlement is obscenely obvious. At competitions of any kind – whether they involve spelling, sports, debates or the other usual extracurricular activities that we offer young people – parents and pupils from more privileged backgrounds and the best-known schools simply expect to win. They believe it is a birthright. Nothing should stand in their way – not even a more talented child or an abler individual who happens not to belong to the right social class.

Almost certainly, this is true in other nations as well. But the creation of larger middle classes and better opportunities for those from less economically-sound backgrounds has at least produced a field of some kind – even if it is a sloping rather than an even one. We simply have no field at all and no space in which to play any kind of game. There is just a jungle out there and people born in certain places know that they will move ahead in society.

The laws and the way they are used even gives them, quite simply, the right to kill and get away with it. Individuals have used this right when they choose too. We have seen the outcome. Money, it appears, is far more significant than preserving the right to life, creating fair chances and giving people a chance to demonstrate their abilities at an equal level with their peers. The entire hierarchy of language that we have created contributes to this. But there is also much more complexity involved in the whole equation.

There have been attempts to try and improve matters through the use of charity. In our country, charity is perhaps all that we have to offer on an immediate basis. But it should not be the lifeline that people depend on. Putting the child of one household employee through school may indeed be a good deed while donating money to a reputable institution may be another. But it will not solve the problem as a whole. Nor is it dignified for people to receive individual donations from others.

These donations should come, of course, in the form of taxes. The high taxation systems of the Scandinavian countries – which feature at the top of the list in almost every indicator of educational, health, and social welfare – are one example of how this can work.

Yes, the rich may complain. But we have a social responsibility to pay for others with whom we share a state. Unless there is some equity within it, there will be disharmony in the form of theft, riots and chaos that impacts all of us. We can escape the kind of lawlessness that we see in more and more of our cities – the kind of constant threat we live under – only if we work towards this end.

There needs to be an understanding that social status has nothing to do with opportunity. A child we see running barefoot down a street, kicking along a tattered ball, could, in another life, have been a leading scientist, an expert anthropologist and a dedicated teacher. The fact that we do not offer this chance means that we are robbing our country of the talent it possesses and wasting the potential abilities of millions of people.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com