The Hindi film of the 1970s, Dushman, starring Rajesh Khanna, has a lot to take away from it, considering the world we’re living in today. The film narrates the story of crime and punishment, but in a different way though. The punishment pronounced to the lead actor in the film for recklessly running over a human being, by his rash driving, is shouldering the responsibility of the family which lost their breadwinner.
Though it is not directly linked to the matter at hand, these dots, if connected well, make for a perfect story of mitigation of misery in human life. The matter at hand now is the Kerala floods.
Today, the people in Kerala find themselves stuck between the Centre and the state, while neither comes to a consensus on the funds required to rebuild Kerala.
My question is, why should any one or two public entities have to bear it all? Who is mainly responsible for these unscrupulous activities that are resulting in dangerous levels of global warming? Is it only the governments that are giving permissions/licences to humongous number of industries that eventually end up violating most environmental laws and harming the nature? If governments are giving permissions, who are taking them? It’s the industries/ corporate world. While it is a largely believed rhetoric in the second world countries that industrialisation is synonymous with growth, one needs to question who this growth is really meant for.
When you have no people left, who will remain to reap the benefits of such growth? If growth has to compensate for the damages done to human lives, the agents of growth have to own up responsibility and ensure repairs like rescue, relief and more importantly rehabilitation. In short, they have to rebuild lives.
Take the cases of these disasters: while some call them natural, others blame it on man ….and the wrath they spell on human lives… Nobody disagrees that human lives need to be revived and rehabilitated because the entire cycle of supply chain of politicians and industrialists will disappear if people aka citizens aka voters aka consumers are wiped out.
So it needs to be made mandatory for corporations/ large-scale industries to join hands with the government to restore and rehabilitate people – A steel industry to supply steel required to rebuild houses, cement industry cementing the holes, paints industry to paint houses and buildings (and lives), electronics industry to provide home appliances for the people to cook a meal, automobile industry to pitch in for the functioning of transport systems, etc.
Nobody heard of 2% for CSR two decades ago. But it is a reality now. So why not DRR –Disaster Repair Responsibility and a 2% mandatory allocation that excludes other social welfare activities carried out by private/ public companies be started now. IT’S THE NEED OF THE HOUR.