by Rohana R. Wasala
What tho’ the spicy breezes
Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle;
Though every prospect pleases, And only man is vile?
(March 25, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Reginald Weber (1783-1826), Bishop of Calcutta, in his hymn "From Greenland’s Icy Mountains" thus vilified the inhabitants of our beautiful country simply because they didn’t belong to his religion. I don’t intend to be uncharitable towards them like that. Nevertheless I can’t help recalling these lines while sparing a thought for the very real contemporary problem of a general lack of civic discipline among Sri Lankans, which contrasts with the natural splendour of our island home.
Sri Lanka is indeed a resplendent island. Nature has endowed her generously. Sri Lanka’s fertile soil, abundant water resources, salubrious climate, ancient history, hallowed culture, lively ethnic mix, friendly people, and what not make her special among her neighbours. Though not free from the vicissitudes of life and the various calamities which are the common lot of all humanity such as economic hardships, political upheavals, colonial depredations, famines, epidemics, tsunamis, and the rest we have been better off than most of our neighbours in the region. We remain so even today. "Sri Lanka, the paradise isle" is hyperbole permissible only in poetry or tourism promotion literature, but the logo "Sri Lanka, the place to be" is certainly not an exaggeration.
Yet , the failure on the part of a substantial proportion of our population to act out of a sense of civic responsibility in many situations makes life difficult for all of us. The problem spares no one. It assails everyone from childhood to old age, from pre-school child to pensioner. Even those who are guilty of deliberately violating the common law, and social norms for temporary personal advantage or convenience in one area become victims of the unpleasant consequences of others’ similar misdemeanour in another area. The bad habit passes from generation to generation. Thus there is a well established tradition of civil non-compliance among some elements in our society.
Out of a myriad available examples I’ll take just one or two to illustrate the problem.
The mad rush among parents to admit their children to ‘popular’ schools every year gives the latter their first contact with the evil of deliberate non-observance of proper civic behaviour. One well known allegation is that these parents sometimes falsify their residence information to overcome the restriction imposed by the area rule, train their children to tell lies at interviews, encourage teachers to doctor marks at admission tests, and they show willingness to even bribe officials. When such malpractices are common, a few people enjoy undue benefits at the expense of their other law abiding fellow citizens. For example, a child whose economically or socially less influential family lives very close to a popular school may be deprived of their legitimate right of admission to that school because another child from a distant place with the right connections has been illicitly accommodated there. Thus the effect of this state of affairs on children is twofold: they become accustomed to the deliberate infringement of the law and violation of social decency committed by parents on their behalf, and run the risk of developing similar habits; they also become victims of the same evil perpetrated by other socially irresponsible adults.
The daily transport of schoolchildren, which provides a source of steady income for many people, often fails to provide them a safe, comfortable ride to and from school. Sometimes, at least twice as many children as a normal school van can carry are packed into a ramshackle old vehicle, and driven to school, unattended by a responsible adult. It was barely three years ago (in 2008) that the floor of a private school bus gave way while it was running, causing an innocent girl of twelve to fall onto the roadway and get injured fatally. The accident happened near Kegalle. There was no news about those responsible being brought to book, or about any steps taken to forestall the recurrence of similar tragedies in the future. But a few months later, the then Transport Minister Dallas Alahapperuma inaugurated, for the children of the place, a new school bus service named after the dead girl Dilshani Prarthana. It took another year or so for the authorities to take a more meaningful step in this connection in the form of a set of mandatory guidelines being issued to private school bus service providers.
Civil discipline is most conspicuous by its virtual absence in the public passenger transport system. There was a time when it was run under good administrators with relative efficiency as a public enterprise that provided an essential service to the people. Under the free market system that the Jayawardane government introduced private entrepreneurs were allowed a share of the bus transport business. Since then bus travel has become nothing short of sheer harassment for the ordinary people who have no other affordable means of transport.
Private bus crews are notorious for their harsh treatment of passengers; there are many drunkards, drug addicts and petty criminals among them. These private bus workers are regularly waylaid by extortionists who demand protection money. To some extent, their sense of frustration could lead them to take it out on the passengers. Driven by their desire of maximizing their earnings, they feel compelled to intensify their fleecing of the poor commuters. They often overload their buses; they charge more than the due fare; they can easily forget to issue a ticket for the fare paid. They are eternally engaged in a suicidal competition with rival bus crews, and drive their buses at breakneck speed in order to pick up more passengers. In the process, they violate all the traffic rules and endanger the lives of the bus commuters and those on the road.
Where one would expect some sort of healthy competition between the government-run bus service and the private-run bus services, which could ultimately improve the quality of the service offered to the public one notices unmistakable signs of an unholy alliance between workers on the two sides. The private bus workers bribe their counterparts on the other side, who are assured of their pay every month, to make way for them by starting a few minutes behind time. So, we can frequently see an overloaded not-so-roadworthy private bus lumbering ahead on a country road followed, a few minutes later, by a virtually empty SLTB bus in mint condition.
Those who patronise these bus services can be equally guilty of violating civic discipline. They sometimes vandalize the interior of the vehicle, by scrawling graffiti on the back of seats, or slashing the cushion. Some persons spread their knees so that a fellow rider cannot sit comfortably on a seat meant for two, for they seem to consider it an indignity not to harass another person in that way. There are many other ways in which some antisocial elements misbehave in such a situation.
Now let us have a look at how some of our people conduct themselves on the road. There are hawkers on the pavement blocking the way, causing the pedestrians to walk on the traffic-congested highway at great risk to their life and limb. Pedestrians themselves violate road safety rules by jaywalking along the streets, or trying to cross over weaving through moving traffic, because they are too impatient to look for a zebra crossing. Law enforcement authorities sometimes make a valiant effort to stop these violations; they actually succeed for a few days. When they relax their vigilance, however, those addicted to antisocial ways creep back and resume business as usual.
It is not only the native Sri Lankans who get harassed by those who lack civic discipline. How often have we seen helpless tourists on our streets and beaches trailed by swarms of touts pestering them with useless trinkets, or plying them with unsolicited information, giving the visitors a sense of being robbed in broad daylight? Can this help promote tourism, on which the government counts so much for post-war recovery?
For some people, the obnoxious habit of dirtying the street by spitting is apparently a pastime. A sufficiently isolated street corner or telephone booth can easily save a few others the trouble of looking for a latrine. Some well dressed motorists quite deftly throw domestic garbage bags out through the car windows onto the roadside, not unconscious of the fact that they are thus dumping them in front of someone else’s house, which adds to the dastardliness of the original offence.
Examples can be multiplied ad infinitum, because there is no sphere of human life that the civic factor doesn’t touch; and the potential for the breach of civic norms is great. For all of us humans (except perhaps for the negligibly few in any society who choose to spend their time as recluses) there is no life apart from the life we live with others. We live in societies. What we do impinges on others’ lives, and vice versa. Societies establish standards, rules, conventions, etc in order to regulate the individuals’ conduct in the interests of the whole citizenry.
The government has set itself a clear target and is following a sound strategy to achieve it. The target, of course, is the economic development of the country and the consolidation of national unity, neither of which is easy without the other. The massive development drive launched throughout the length and breadth of the island is the strategy I mean. In the final analysis, however, nothing that the government has set about doing will be truly effective unless the general citizenry, acting as mature members of a democracy, conduct themselves with a proper sense of civic responsibility.
If we want to live in a prosperous land and be happy, we must achieve that state as responsible citizens, not as solitary selfish individuals. It doesn’t take much to make us happy, nor to wreck our happiness, for happiness is usually a feeling of contentment and security. The consciousness that others care for you just as you care for them immensely contributes to our collective sense of wellbeing. In this respect, the importance of proper civic discipline among all citizens need hardly be stressed.
Albert Einstein did not, apparently, believe in any religion, but he knew how to live a moral life without such a belief. Ethical conduct for him, I think, was basically something to do with civic discipline:
"Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we know: that man is here for the sake of other men – above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends."
(Here by ‘man/men’ Einstein means humanity in general, including women)
Concluded
Private bus crews are notorious for their harsh treatment of passengers; there are many drunkards, drug addicts and petty criminals among them. These private bus workers are regularly waylaid by extortionists who demand protection money. To some extent, their sense of frustration could lead them to take it out on the passengers. Driven by their desire of maximizing their earnings, they feel compelled to intensify their fleecing of the poor commuters. They often overload their buses; they charge more than the due fare; they can easily forget to issue a ticket for the fare paid. They are eternally engaged in a suicidal competition with rival bus crews, and drive their buses at breakneck speed in order to pick up more passengers. In the process, they violate all the traffic rules and endanger the lives of the bus commuters and those on the road.
( Article Courtesy from the Island, Colombo based daily news paper)
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