An Encounter with a Human Rights Activist

This is one incident i can never forget...

It happened during one of the numerous guest lectures during my first year of MBA. As part of our CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) course we had one such lecture by an old Parsi lady who was a lawyer.

This much hyped term 'CSR' has become the buzzword today, but if one has to attend 30 hours of lectures harping on just one basic idea, then it looses all its sheen pretty quickly. Not that i am against CSR but i am definitely not in favour of the way it was dealt with, add to that a guest lecture and a speaker who will fall to any level to just prove her point and win a debate with a classroom filled with 120 MBA's and what u hav is a potentially explosive situation and that is just what happened...so here it goes...

The lecture began with the customary introductions. Until that day,i had only heard these activists on TV, so when i was party to such a discussion myself, i was shocked...

She started by blaming the government (much like all of us :p) ...but soon she dragged the media, the police and the judiciary into her list of useless instruments of state and society...(this was just the build up)...so ofcourse it meant that the only saviours of mother India were these human rights activists...(God knows where they disappear immediately after terror attacks..but they are definitely around to save the terrorists from being hanged)

She made many points some were acceptable but most others were not appreciated by the class...but people kept quiet and just looked at each other and scoffed at this lady who in her attempt to prove herself right equated Bhagat Singh and the Naxals. The only reason why I had kept quiet for so long was because i didn't wanna get into a verbal duel with a college guest.

Then she picked up the issue of Mumbai slums and unfortunately for her she asked us if we thought it was right to ask slum dwellers to vacate their shanties.

This was the opportunity and i am glad i siezed it...i said it was right and that just because someone had illegaly squatted on a piece of land, that in no way entitles him to own the land and by accepting his wrong doing we were only encouraging others to do the act & the fact that most of these were Bangladeshis who had been given all these privileges just because they were easy vote banks for political parties. There are definitely exceptions but they are definitely miniscule in number. Where do you think the 12 lakh Bangladeshis (these are only official figures of Bangladeshis who entered India as refugees) disappeared??

She hadn't expected anyone to oppose her so bluntly, so she tried to kickstart a debate....but ma'am u dont get into a debate with a classload of MBA's who got into this institute by preparing for 100 such burning issues and who are here after fighting a much tougher battle every time they entered a Group Discussion room (this was in a way our means of earning a livelihood).

Thankfully my classmates jumped in at this moment...i think they were waiting for this opportunity and with such well read colleagues u really hav nothing to worry about...soon facts and figures from the leading dailies and magazines and news channels started pouring in from every corner of the room to prove her wrong....obviously she did not accept any of these as she had already discounted the existence of media at the beginning of the session.
What followed was a really heated discussion and a complete disapproval of her school of thought.

I know she has the right to have her opinion but so do I and although even i personally do not accept the impartiality of media, i definitely cannot accept the freedom fighters of my country being equalled with some criminals who are being funded by the enemies of my nation just because some activist wants to portray herself as the next Mother Teresa.

I can only imagine what a debate with Medha Patkar would be like...;)