Singapore and Dubai. Two Asian city states. Prosperous, neat, rule of law, slightly stringent and having substantial Indian diaspora, though still in minority. Ask any Indian living there if he wants to stay there or in any city in India. Chances are that almost 100% of them will say they want to continue staying there. If at all, they may want to migrate to some other western country rather than returning back. This is what free India is after more than six decades of getting freedom. This is despite when in India we have almost undiminished freedom, for which we fought so hard and which we cherish so deeply. Compare it with these two places. Do they have such an absolute freedom? At both these places not only the law is tough but it is enforced quite strictly. In fact, if I’m not wrong, both places have such strict laws that possession of drugs may mean capital punishment. At one place Indians may not be the second class residents but actually be 3rd class, with locals being the first, then westerners and then Indians. Even then I’ve not found anybody unhappy there or willing to relocate here. Same absolutely free people here have happily and willingly become significantly ‘leashed’ at these two places and are enjoying life.

US of A. Cradle of democracy. Oldest democracy. Leader of the ‘free’ world. An amazingly large percentage of world population would like to move there. But it is only in this free country we keep hearing with regularity about a lone gun man shooting many people for no fault of theirs and not linked to any terrorist movement. It just so happens that he was depressed. One data says that as many as quarter of the population there has visited a shrink sometime or the other in their life time. Google search says that around 9% population is suffering from depression there. Has the freedom, which we all cherish so deeply, given them happy people and society?

Which is what is the crux of my today’s thought. I have absolutely no intention of comparing the life in these two cities or the USA with what we have here or the various rules and regulations there. The issue is – are we happier as individuals, societies and nations with absolute freedom that we seem to have here in India and so called leader of the free world, or it is better to have a ‘leash’ on this freedom for us to be happier. This is why I say ‘Freedom unchecked’.

I have absolutely no intention to argue that freedom is not desirable or for that matter I have any lesser faith in free India. My thought emanates today from a virtual rebellion that we see in our society for any kind of societal norms or the rule of law. It is almost like ‘I decide what I like, what I want to do, how I want to do and when I want to do, what I want to say, how I want to say etc.’. Others and the society be damned. I have rights and they supersede everybody else’s. This is beautifully explained in the recent video of Deepika Padukone, ‘My Choice’. To quote some words here – its my choice to marry or not to marry, my choice to love a man or a woman or both, my choice to love temporarily or to lust forever….and it goes on and on. This thought has resonated with many, particularly women who’ve felt caged in the societal norms in India for ages. But the larger context here is that it places the individual, ‘self’ above everyone else. Completely ‘unleashed’. Individual freedom subordinates all norms and rules, including the laws of nature. This is significantly what is already present in the US of A. My question is whether this unchecked freedom of my choice will result in happy people and happy society? Or we are chasing a mirage?

Just to give a quick comparison on freedom and discipline I’d compare three sectors. At one end we have defence services in India who are the last bastion of disciplined or ‘leashed’ people. ‘Poor guys’ have least of freedom available to them. On the other hand we have a government owned public utility where the employees are completely free and ‘unleashed’. Somewhere in between we have private sector, where though corporate governance, sexual harassment committees, staff welfare measures committees are there, life is not of complete freedom. People who don’t operate within certain norms and don’t deliver results are likely to be penalized. So a highly ‘leashed’ entity becomes the last resort for us in any civil calamity, be it floods, earthquakes, tsunami, child getting stuck in half-finished bore well etc. On the other hand, if we have to fly somewhere the government owned airline is almost the last priority for us and we prefer to fly private carriers. We find it difficult to trust the entities with ‘unleashed’ people in any sector, be it airline, telecom, hotels, hospitals etc. and go to places where we have ‘leashed’ people, i.e. the private sector. This is not to undermine any sector or the people there, but to compare them in the context of freedom the people enjoy at those places and the predictability of their conduct with others, particularly when the same ‘unleashed’ people are put on ‘leash’ by the all-powerful government and asked to do difficult jobs. So we saw Air-India and other civil agencies involved in rescue work in Yemen along with armed forces.

India today is learning a lot from the ‘free and progressive’ world. We are matching and outpacing them in many areas. Today Apple i-phone 6 is available in India almost simultaneously as it is in the US. Everybody is far freer today than let’s say three decades back. We have whole lot of people who are working hard for child freedom, women’s emancipation, free speech bordering on libel, same sex marriages etc. Alas! I belong to a generation when we were not so free. Teachers still punished us and caned us, parents slapped children not so infrequently without leaving any permanent scars, we had to obey our elders and allow the family’s interest to stay above our own and we still had ragging in our institutes. If there’s a survey conducted in my batch mates about how they see the ragging that they underwent in those days now, I’m confident that a very large majority shall say that it was good for us. To a large extent it converted boys into men. Also, if we have happiness survey of our generation when we were ‘leashed’ I’m again confident that a huge majority will say that children of our generation were a much happier lot. So ‘freedom unleashed’ and child rights of today may not have really given a happier childhood. And obeying elders meant that families were more cohesive and intact.

Speaking about freedom and rule bound society, I feel absolute freedom is available only to animals in a jungle, because domesticated or animals living in human environment have to follow rules. So an animal in a jungle is absolutely free. He goes where he wants, eats when he wants, sleeps when his biological clock says so, mates when he wants and with whoever he wants to and has no commitment towards the offspring, except the mother who may nurture the baby for a while, fights physically and kills when there are disputes, has no pressure either from the society or the law to behave in a particular way, and the list goes on. Human being was also the same initially. But then human being is also most evolved in the animal kingdom. Having lived a completely free animal life in the earlier days of evolution it slowly started creating rules and communities. These rules, which were created for a specific reason at a particular point in time, slowly became the societal norms even though the original reasons for which they were created were either no longer relevant or were not being associated with the norm. Having said that, these rules which were created over a period of time made life easy to live and predictable. Everybody now knew the basic rules of the game or how to live in a society, which created some kind of order and predictability at the cost of losing that much of freedom.

Just to give an example, imagine what would happen if we didn’t have a rule to drive on one side of the road. This simple rule ensured that we are able to drive safely on roads. Imagine what would happen if we don’t have the institution of marriage. Imagine if we had no rule about sleep time, work time, eating time etc. Imagine if we all did exactly what we wanted, when we wanted. Imagine if we had no structure of a family and we lived with whoever we wanted, whenever we wanted. There can be innumerable number of rules which we follow on a daily basis which make our lives simpler and predictable. But every rule that we create comes at the cost of losing some freedom. This is what makes Dubai and Singapore preferred places live. Predictability, clear definition of dos and don’ts even at the cost of losing some freedom makes life easier, better and happier.

History of mankind has seen many tribal laws and dictatorships where the rule of law became too tough to live with, having many ruthless punishments for transgressions of these laws by all or by some. That’s when I guess the idea of individual freedom started coming in. That’s when the rebellion against certain rules started and people became more and more vocal about getting absolute freedom. That’s also when we started going back towards jungle and started demanding absolute freedom. So we hear the wish list of some people in the video ‘My Choice’.

Today in many ways in the name of freedom and individual rights, ‘self’ is becoming more and more important. In the process of questioning norms and rules there’s a tendency to do away with all of them rather than going into the merits and demerits of them, discussing and finding contemporary alternatives. There’s a sense of rebellion towards all kinds of norms and rules, whether they are of family, society or the state. Result of that is at personal level family structures and societal structures are crumbling and at state level we have so much freedom that transgressing any kind of law is sort of our birth right. Same free people who don’t believe in following any law here become most law abiding community in other countries and start enjoying the orderly life there. They’d come to India for few weeks in a year to have their fill of ‘freedom quota’ and return happily to live a life of relatively lesser freedom elsewhere.

My Little Thought Of Life in this context is that we make norms and rules to live a happy and orderly life, in families, societies, organizations and nations. In the quest towards individual rights, self and self-interest, it is not appropriate to discard all societal norms and disobey all state rules. Let us not move towards jungle raj. This is what ‘Freedom unchecked’ will give us. Today the basic building blocks of the nation, which are the family and society, have already weakened substantially. Weak blocks don’t create strong buildings. Let us question, debate and modify norms and rules rather than rebel and seek absolute freedom. But so long as the norms and rules are there, let us not observe them in breach. Freedom is a precious gift to us. And when the gift is precious, we need to take extra care of the same. It becomes our duty not to give bad name to this precious gift by misusing the same. In a free country, individual rights and self-interest are indeed important but in the name of freedom let us not seek ‘unchecked freedom’ or lawlessness and jungle raj.

Incidentally, last evening I was returning from somewhere and my car entered ‘no entry’ lane by mistake. I was stopped by a cop. Despite his giving me indications for something else, I preferred to accept the error, paid the fine and took the receipt. If only we all make this a DNA for all of us there’ll no reason why we’ll find Singapore and Dubai better than our own country.

To my friends and readers, I wish a happy life which is free but not anarchic with unchecked freedom.