If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
The article doesn't disagree with you:
> what safety campaigner Piyush Tewari saw wasn't a lack of compassion but an entire system stacked against helping road victims.
...
> He contrasts the reluctance of passers-by to help victims of road accidents with their response to train crashes or bombs blasts. In these cases, he says, "before the police or media arrives everybody's been moved to hospital".
There's also very important information in the article about new guidelines published by the supreme court of India to protect good samaritans.
The police are under pressure to resolve the case and the first person to be taken into custody is the good samaritan.
This is the issue with reports like this - they pick one or two such statistically rare case
No! This is not a rare thing. This is common knowledge. I think the real issue is people trying to put it under the rug because they don't want their country to lose "honor" on a globally popular news site.
Competition is everywhere.
- Want a seat in a University? Compete with, literally a million others for just one seat.
- Want a train ticket to travel within India? Login to the IRCTC exactly at 8 am, and pray that the next 5 seconds is your lucky time.
- Want to travel via local train? Hang on to the windows outside (Mumbai).
Too many people that -- it is dangerously becoming almost culturally normal to prioritize your life over someone else's. Combine this with the corrupt administration, and poor infrastructure... and it is painful to think about.
We're forgetting humanity at the cost of too many humans to compete with.
That being said, there are definitely people who do help. Helpful people in India are in fact, extremely helpful. I've received help myself. But these days, the probability of that happening is perhaps decreasing.
I think this is common to the US as well. Of course I think my life is more important to someone else. That's why I drive like an idiot, cut in line, take without asking, talk loudly on my phone in quiet places, smoke/vape wherever I want, etc.
Huh? The problem with that statement is the sample size. Even if you talked to every Indian person you know (presumably anywhere between 100 and 10000), it will be less than 0.001% of the total population of India.
Edit: Grammer.
For comparison China is expected to start declining around 2030, and fall to around 1.1 billion by 2100.
Anyway, back to the point, I agree with you. Indian's population situation is really insane. Last time I was in India was in 1998 and the traffic situation was totally insane. All the red lights had "relax" written on them in English in an attempt to calm drivers down.
You'd think the 2nd most populated country in the world would be able to chose from that pool of talent; find the right people to help solve these major problems plaguing the nation.
But it doesn't work that way. People struggle to get out. My dad had dreams of returning. He visited after retiring and said the water is still unsafe to drink, the air unsafe to breath and a flat in Delhi was over $300k USD. Decades after he left, the situation has only gotten worse.
I just thought it was a fun fact. I haven't used Geode myself, but it looks fairly well designed.
I think there are too many people in the world overall, and it is unsustainable. The planet could do better with a fourth or fifth of its current population.
A billion people for a thousand seats is the same problem as a million people with for seat.
What is really lacking, is access to information and in many cases people just dont want to pursue said opportunity. Everyone instead wants to do that one thing that made that guy rich.
This if incorrect. Train tickets are available online round the clock (almost). It's the "tatkal" (last-minute / emergency) bookings that opens at 10 AM. The system is under immense load, and despite that the availability has improved over the past 2 years.
Indian rail network, despite its shortcomings, is pretty amazing I think. It moves the nation. It's also one of the largest employers in the world [1].
yep i guess this is a rule: as population increase, humanity decrease
that is why is really cool to live in small towns
Uh, yes? I prioritize my own life over the life of any other individual. I hope others do too, or else I worry about their sense of self-worth.
That doesn't mean I don't care about anyone else, just that I do care about myself slightly more than I care about any random person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wang_Yue
context: "...the story of a man named Peng Yu in Nanjing who was sued by a woman after helping her. The old woman was successful in seeking damages from the man because the judge claimed that the man wouldn’t have helped her unless he was guilty of injuring her in the first place..."
-- https://chinachange.org/2011/10/20/the-good-samaritan-in-chi...
[1] IIRC the recently changed the relevant laws or are currently debating to change them.
From personal experience I do not believe this is the real reason for why a family is left dying on the road. When I travel to certain countries in Asia I notice that there is a severe lack of morals and ethics. Heck in China, drivers back up over accident victims that they just hit to make sure the victim is dead so as to avoid a lifetime of hospital fees. I mean, this is murder done in the name to avoid paying a fee.
What you see here in India is part of this same lack of ethics and morals that pervade certain cultures. People are honestly capable of great evil.
What makes one culture more ethical than another country? I believe that the anthropological correlation lies in wealth and population. If a country is of high population and poor, then you will see more of this type of behavior.
High population cities that are wealthy like tokyo or singapore are not like this at all while in the rural areas of nepal I've seen a sherpa carry an injured european stranger on his back down a mountain to base camp.
Of course this is all anecdotal. There really needs to be a scientific study on ethics and culture. It would be a very touchy subject though as the results of the study will implicate some cultures as more 'evil' than others.
You don't say? There is a mighty good chance it is even worse: this is a brain trait, and we know that brain traits are at least partially due to DNA. Anybody who dares to research this one is completely nuts, with or without tenure.
>Anybody who dares to research this one is completely nuts, with or without tenure.
What is interesting though is that in the field of anthropology there is total awareness of a certain fact. Throughout all ancient and historical human cultures, women have consistently been to certain degrees less privileged and more subservient to men. There is no definitive reason why this is the case, however biological imperative has not yet been ruled out. It's "nuts" but this is a case where political correctness has not yet suppressed what is otherwise a scientific observation.
More interesting is that I was made aware of this fact by an anthropology professor at UCLA. She specifically believed that it was biological. She thought that women in general do not want to be leaders. (keyword: She)
I suspect that this is largely due to men's greater capacity for violence than women, due to having proportionally more muscle mass.
When the most powerful people throughout history are not simple minded violent brutes, it becomes unlikely for men to be in power due to physical strength or violence.
Personally, I do not believe that the reason is biological. Other than that I'm as befuddled as the rest of the anthropological field, I don't know why men have consistently been in power throughout the majority of human history, but the correlation cannot be denied.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-01-17/china-s-i...
This is one of those subjects where people like to put moral consequences on the bystanders when it's the rules and larger structures of the society that matter.
Driving in India is completely insane and after about a week of white-knuckle driving you kind of just go with the flow and convince yourself that it must just work. While that is true the definition of it 'working' is totally unexpected for a westerner. Driving conditions are extremely adversarial and accidents are frequent. People are injured and die all the time. It's the kind of problem that absolutely needs to be solved at the regulatory/policy level.
Just for the sake of curiosity let us compare statistics of road accidents between USA and India. I'm taking the 2005 US road accident data as a reference: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/02/03/car-crashes-kill-400...
So according to the statistics from the above article, approximately 40,000 die every year in USA with 100 people dying every day due to road accidents. That is approximately 5 per hour. In India it is 100,000 per year. The population of USA is 318.9 million compared to 1.252 billion of India. If you put it in perspective, 0.013% of total population die every year due to road accidents in the US while only 0.00798% of total population die every year due to road accidents in India. So by looking at these calculations India "seems" to be a lot safer than the US (in-spite of horrible traffic rules and no proper emergency services). The issue is not the stats but proper implementation of emergency services which might help in saving a fraction of the total lives lost. But the real issue is regulating traffic (which is more erratic in the cities than in towns/villages in India).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
That's using a lower number of deaths for the US (but it really is closer to 35,000 in recent years) and a larger number for deaths in India than you did.
The reason is that you're taking the population of the USA where over 80% have licenses to drive (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/hf/pl11028/ch...) and comparing with a country where most people don't own cars:
While nearly a third of people living in metros own personal transport, only 15 percent of the rural population own their own vehicle.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/catalyst/driving-indias-...
I think you would really want to compare serious accidents per vehicle mile driven to compare effectiveness of policy and driving behavior across countries.
Hope this clarifies my intent :)
http://www.snopes.com/chinese-drivers-kill-pedestrians/
In a country of 1 billion+ people you'll always get these stories.
Since as we know, we get in them in the west as well, the media will drum up, child left to die by road.
When we all know the drivers just didn't seem them or didn't know what happened. But that's a crappy story.
People help people in obvious severe immediate need and take risks doing it. It's human nature.
They get bystanders effect and sometimes they won't know they are in severe immediate need (A sleeping homeless person vs someone unconscious) but they don't ignore them because they will be sued.
Blaming people because of bystanders effect is poor form.
> Blaming people because of bystanders effect is poor form.
My point, perhaps poorly made, was also that the larger societal incentives are to blame. Many people respond as we would hope. In the aggregate, people tend to respond to the pressures applied to them.
Mind you, I'm not saying Indians are safe drivers. Indian driving, I freely admit, is spectacularly unsafe and makes me worried. There are a host of factors that cause this unsafe driving, including:
- Roads built for way smaller cars
- The sudden liberalization of the economy in the 90s leading to way more vehicles than the roads were designed for
- A lot of people owning a vehicle, and having social expectations from them about automatically knowing how to drive (I'm not kidding, and we're talking stick shift here)
- Traffic policemen numbers from the middle of the last century
- Mushrooming urbanization and the resultant low level of trust among urban populations
...but "some kind of mass insanity is going on in India because my brother's Indian father-in-law ran a bunch of red lights at 2am" is ridiculous.
Its not a race thing, but maybe it is a culture thing. We certainly have our share of asshole drivers in the USA, but it doesn't at all compare to what I've seen elsewhere, in terms of quantity / quality.
The apology is meaningless; this has nothing to do with buttons. I merely pointed out a generalization based on an random anecdote, based on no real experience of the situation. Acknowledging it as such would help.
The prevalent attitude seems to be that traffic rules are more like guidelines and can be broken if it seems "okay" to do so. Driving on the wrong side of the road is for example quite common, and most people do it to avoid making a long U-turn. Someone who I knew was driving a car and had a head on collision with a scooter travelling the wrong way on a highway, and the scooter had three passengers on board it (it's called "tripling" and is also pretty common). Sometimes you get to see cars reversing on highways with fast moving traffic, because they missed a turn and wanted to go back.
Things could probably get better in the future though. In New Delhi, for example - according to a new law, if you are caught in a traffic violation (such as ignoring a traffic signal), you lose your license along with the right to drive for three months. I saw somebody's status on Facebook that this happened to them, so it's not just an empty threat too.
If you switch sides, the traffic will aproach from your back, and that's a lot more dangerous.
Part of the stress in US is because of the different side driving, but also a lot because I have to keep in mind a TON of rules - lane markers, speed limits, lane changing etc.- and everyone moves in super high speed so any mistake can be fatal.
In India, on the other hand I just need to take care of the signals and otherwise wherever my car can fit, I am good to go. If my car rubs a bit against another car or a small bump here and there - no big deal. Driving in the night though is stressful in India also and I avoid it.
According to Wikipedia[1], there are 56% more traffic fatalities annually than in the US. Compared to the UK, it's 472% more. I don't think it's merely a matter of perspective. The data indicates it's much more dangerous in absolute terms.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
To give you one data point - almost ALL cars in the US/UK will have Air Bags. My guess is that MOST cars in India do NOT have an air bag. Additionally, this figure also included two wheelers, which will obviously have a higher fatality rate.
India might be having a lot less accidents than the US (and possibly because of low speeds), but just because most vehicles do not have air bag, the fatality rate could be much higher.
In any case, I am not really arguing that India traffic should not improve. Just that the perceived 'stress' level might be just because of a relative comparison against a different 'system' of traffic.
Nothing about any of that says stress free. Even if the traffic was perfect, the streets lined with absolute filth is enough to stress anyone out.
The anarchy that you talk about is simply a result of diverse driving platforms sharing the same space. Indian roads need to have a wide variety of vehicles (2/3/4 wheelers) because 95% of the country simply cannot afford the cheapest car that sells in the US. We can't have wide roads with speed limits because its just too expensive and India is a dramatically poor country.
This model works for now and hopefully India will skip the insanely high energy American model on the way to the next.
You're really not going to like driving in Germany, then.
Seriously though - the Germans are amazingly good drivers (easily the best in the world), and it's mostly because their training is so thorough. This results in their having a common driving culture, so that going 300 km/hr on their remaining unrestricted/uncongested Autobahn is quite safe.
In america, if you injure a victim in a car accident and no one is around, you still have the option of killing the victim and driving away to avoid getting caught. The inventive is the same, you avoid insurance increases and hospital bills. Yet this rarely happens in America!
You could probably substitute "America" in your argument with "Germany in 1920," yet the German population killed millions of people. Is the problem the people, or the system that enables the evil that all of us are capable of?
This is something I have spent a lot of time contemplating lately as I watch people texting while operating multi-ton vehicles at any speed, let alone at 80mph(130kmh)down the highway. I have witnessed a notable increase in single vehicle rollovers under optimum driving conditions on the US highway system in the last +/- two years. Thankfully, I have yet to arrive before the 1st responders but if I ever do, I will forgo the "they brought it upon themselves" judgement and assist my fellow man/woman, if need be. Yet, I still wonder, how many could have been avoided if distracted driving laws already on the books were enforced?
The comment was one of personal experience, what they've witnessed.
We should be careful with this kind of statements. I remember that in Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman describes an experiment which shows that most people don't actually take action when the responsibility is shared among other people. Of course most people think they would.
Oh yeah, when the pro does arrive, don't take it personally if he/she is brusque or 'rude'. They are sometimes brutally efficient.
This. Also, for some medical personnel being brusque and (apparently) unattached is the only way for them to not crack under seeing death every day.
It's a fucking hard job and I highly respect everyone in the field.
She'd been sat at the side of the road for at least half an hour in rush hour and one other person had phoned in but not stopped. I didn't know about the bystander effect at the time but ever since then if I see someone I distress/hurt I act straightaway on the assumption no one else has and it won't hurt if they have.
I was slightly ashamed of the people in my home town that day tbh.
The most important aspect is basically that your chances of getting help goes up dramatically if you address specific people and ask for specific action ("you in the red shirt, please call 911" rather than "help").
Once people understand that there is a problem, and nobody else has it in hand, and they've been asked, chances are they will help, and once one person has started helping, the odds that more people will help of their own accord goes up significantly as well.
Incidentally this translates to many aspects of life. If you ever want a group of people to take action, address specific people and get them to start. Once someone starts it becomes far harder for others to remain idle, and the first people are far more likely to start if you specifically task them with it.
It's easy to say that you would help when it's a hypothetical situation. It's much harder to actually do it when the consequences are staring you in the face. Maybe you still would, but you can't really know how you'd react until you've actually been in that situation.
Indians are not fundamentally different from you and I. The main difference is the situation they're in.
Edit: In the US we have 'Good Samaritan' laws for most of that. It is possible I could do more harm &/or be liable for my actions. Yet, I refuse to not do what I believe is 'right' out of fear. Yeah, my lifestyle & welfare has suffered(sic) for my principles in many facets of life, but principles require sacrifice and I am comfortable with my choices so far.
I support what you feel, and I too would put up an aggressive stance of helping the individual, but the cost is a lot higher than just my personal efforts. I put a lot more people through the misery.
> "The foremost reason was intimidation by police," he says.
> "Oftentimes if you assist someone the police will assume you're helping that person out of guilt."
Some people...
Until last year I would have said the same but then I learned about the harsh reality in the Dominican Republic: A rich person who helps will always be blamed even if one arrived at the crash site an hour after the crash. In case of bodily harm to the victim, the accused goes to jail until trial (which can take weeks or even months). You can even get some insurance that covers you for that case - if you have that, you can go into a hotel in Santiago that was converted into a luxury prison. And of course the accused is asked to provide for all 50 or so people in the victim's family until s/he can work again - because none of those 50 people has a job and they depended on the victim's low paying job to feed them all. And one cannot count on a fair trial since corruption is so widespread that even judges are for sale (friends were ordered to pay severance package to a former employee based on a 12 year long employment - they arrived on Hispanola 9 years ago, started their business 8 years ago and had all papers to prove it...)
So no, I would not always help anymore.
I think India is doing the right thing: Enabling people to help by creating the laws that protect them from becoming a victim themselves.
This is the root of so much evil in India. It is probably the largest issue facing this country. Every citizen should have a fundamental right to a speedy resolution to their grievances.
In Germany, it's mostly the criminal justice system that suffers from massive case overload - it takes sometimes over a year to get the first trial in a simple pub brawl case or a small store theft - and that disconnect between infraction and punishment has been shown multiple times to result in more infractions (because thieves will think "ah, won't happen anything anyway").
I get why people want to claim India is a 3rd world country (and, for what it's worth, parts of India ARE, given e.g. sanitary conditions!), but one should not compare based on the efficiency of the legal system. Some might say that the USA could be considered a 3rd world country under this comparison, given that you can land in jail for civil debt, end up life-long in prison for small thefts (3 Strike Rule), end up on the chair for dealing drugs, ...
It means a country that was not aligned with either the United States (first world) or the Soviet Union (second world) during the Cold War.
Indians are insanely good drivers given their actual traffic conditions. I just spent two months there and as (fucking annoying) as it was to walk through the crowds with motorcycles whipping by, inches away from me all the time, I wasn't very concerned with them hitting me. Anecdotally, everybody appeared to be watching everyone else on the road—otherwise it would have been sheer insanity because their infrastructure is horrible.
Thai drivers on the other hand. . . .
http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1871331,0...
http://www.metnews.com/articles/2009/bill080709.htm
http://www.montereysar.org/SARMembersDocs/Good_Samaritan_Lia...
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...
2) There is no equivalent of 911 in India. You can call the police but they usually don't have ambulances. Most cases you will have to take the injured in a private vehicle to the hospital.
3) Harassment by police is a real thing in many places. They will suspect you of being involved in the accident. At least in my state (Kerala) there has been conscious effort to resolve this and seems to be working.
4) There is government hospitals who will treat you, no questions asked. But these are not present everywhere, and many don't have adequate resources (Operation theaters, Intensive Care Units etc) in many of these. So there is a chance that you will have to travel to bigger hospital to get appropriate care.
Anecdote. Few years back , I was driving to my home when police flagged me down and asked me to take a lady injured (she was pillion-riding on a two wheeler) to the hospital. Took then to fairly large government hospital (which is also a medical college). The attending doctor asked me whether I was involved in the accident and the told me I can leave. I informed the relatives of the injured (got numbers from her companion) and left.
Source - I live here
There are many honest policemen/women (as well as dishonest ones) but if you are pitted against someone well-connected politically or rich or (usually) both then chances are police is going to side with them and you will probably lose regardless of who is guilty. Unless something extraordinary happens,like you get showcased in the media.
It is not only police. The government machinery on the lowest level is inefficient and corrupt. You need to pay a bribe to get a power connection to your home, a drivers license etc. If you refuse to do so, you will be forced to spent your time in following up, complaining to superiors. It is doable to some extent but you will spent significant amount of your time and energy.
This is my experience in one of the better states in India, which makes me wonder about the rest of the country.
I often hear news of this service being extremely efficient and the reports of bystanders not helping accident victims are rare from that state. This has to do something with the literacy rate as well as an efficient emergency service. Most of the cases of "no one helps you in India" cannot be generalized is my opinion.
Edit: Found: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32993891
How can such low levels of humanity be reached at a hospital?
I wonder if that was true, whether it's still true, and what the situation really was or is.
That is what I was replying to in the immediate parent comment.
As to your comment- even if the hospitals definition of emergency is generally 'common sense', it may differ from ones expectations. Further, it seems (I may be wrong) that emergency rooms are given a great deal of leeway especially in edge cases that may not be general, but probably occur more often than one might expect.
Hospitals (that take Medicare payments) are required to screen for emergency medical conditions and provide treatment to stabilize any emergency conditions found through the screening if you present at an ER; they are not required to either screen for and diagnose or treat any other conditions.
> An unintended side-effect of that is that it's sadly not at all uncommon for people to show up to the ER for non-emergency services, then stick the public or the hospital with their bill if they can't pay it.
Note that hospitals are not required to screen for, diagnose, or treat non-emergency conditions without regard to ability to pay when a patient presents at an ER.
Such a law would be virtually impossible to enforce in any reasonable way; yes, you can make the odd example of someone, but are you going to spend massive effort on tracking down every passerby on whatever surveillance video might exist should they fail to give aid? If you were said passerby, wouldn't you just get away from the scene all that much more quickly to avoid the greater likelihood of being caught up in the mess?
While I disagree with your thinking, I do have to say you're clearly qualified for politics as this sort of logic drives a significant part of lawmaking... certainly in the U.S. and I suspect in other places around the world as well... maybe even India.
In this case a procedural reform in the courts might help. If someone who looks prima-facie like a good Samaritan is being charged with something, and if the court is too swamped to deal with it quickly, they should just drop it.
That could help with the police too -- the reason police harass people is to try and get bribes. People pay those bribes because they fear endless red-tape if the try to fight a spurious charge.
I don't see anything in the article about people being punished for trying to help and making things worse. People get punished just for trying to help. Things go south before a good samaritan law would come into play.
If you find a body in India, you run the other way.
If you take an injured person to hospital you get a bill.
The most charitable way I can think of to describe that might be "one of the stupidest things I've heard in a long time."
Maybe it's guilt, or maybe it's because the bystander is not a terrible human being?
Sure the case might fall apart in court, but that means going to court and defending yourself, a not inconsiderable expense and time commitment.
Then suddenly everyone will want to help.
The only problem is this will also cause fake incidents for fraud purposes. Or people who purposely cause accidents to "help".
But if they can solve that issue, might work?
Currently if you report an accident or get the injured person to a hospital you'll be treated as a witness and have to attend all court proceedings. The law should differentiate between a samaritan and a witness (unless the samaritan also wishes to be treated as a witness).
sounds like FUD. why should a witness have to attend any time other than one time to testify (usually as a friendly witness, i imagine forcing hostile testimony is even rarer). court proceedings can include filing various forms which are done by one person or not done at all (causing delays). I don't see anyone dragging you to court to file papers that you have nothing to do with... Unless they are charging you with something and arresting you or making you serve on a jury (india doesn't even have jury trials), why would you have to be at the court multiple times just as a witness ?
> I don't have to be entangled in all sorts of legal issues.
The way to avoid being entangled in legal issues is 1. avoid doing things you know are illegal and 2. avoid pissing off someone (who will see that you get prosecuted for failing at 1).
The PIL (filed by SaveLIFE foundation) that enabled this issue to be brought to the notice of the Supreme Court clearly states that 88% of the people who they surveyed had attributed this hesitation to fear of legal and procedural hassles: “These hassles include intimidation by police, unnecessary detention at hospitals and prolonged legal formalities,”.
The problem is that these guidelines are not enforceable unless they are turned into a law.
FUD = _fear_, uncertainty, doubt
> unnecessary detention at hospitals
hospital has no power to detain you, unless they are committing you to the psychiatry ward. You stay for the same reason you bring that person to the hospital (to help).
I understand that people in india are afraid. But my point is that it is a fear based on uncertainty and doubt due to ignorance of the law and other reasons (economic) mis attributed to "legal formalities". Its a polite term to use when the real reason is you have better things to do (your own problems to deal with).
> guidelines on how to treat Good-Samaritans.
they sound reasonable and within expected legal procedure to begin with... the reason they might have been issued is because of the FUD, not because the law already doesn't say the same thing...
I've even had cops drive by me broken down, I was quite incredulous (this was before cellphones when you could call for help).
As an Indian I can tell you that that viewpoint is incorrect. Culture is the last thing that would come in between a good-samaritan and a person in need.
> Second, helping others may not be as much a moral imperative as it is in a Christian culture
Are you implying that Christians don't exist in India? If they do, then why are Christian Indians not coming to the rescue of those who met with an accident? This is a completely incorrect take on the situation. Mixing religion with a social issue is dangerous. Indian culture is good enough that we can accommodate any culture and have been doing so for centuries. To say that we do not have moral fiber is an insult. If that was the case why is it that when there is a terror attack or a natural tragedy in India people help in huge numbers? See the number of people out there to help in the recent Kolkatta Flyover accident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XmvROEYYps
So why do you think that Indians are more than willing to help when there is a natural tragedy / terror attack but not when a single person/family meets with an accident?
You may have been misled there because Indian culture isn't homogenous. Even from a Hindu thought perspective, as per Chapter 17, Sloka 20 of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says
दातव्यमिति यद्दानं दीयतेऽनुपकारिणे। देशे काले च पात्रे च तद्दानं सात्त्विकं स्मृतम्।।17.20।।
While I'm not an expert, loosing translated, it means that one must do charity without expecting anything in return. Doing so, in the right manner and in the right place is the epitome of goodness.
I interpret that to be a pretty clear moral imperative to help someone in genuine need.
- There will be some people who believe that this was deserved - There will be some who believe they should help right away - There will be some who want to help but have no financial or social resources to do so - There will be some who'll act as bystanders to avoid Police investigation - There will be some who'll do the bare minimum help (maybe find the victim's id and call someone) but then run away...anonymous help
There are many different Indians (often within the same city, same neighborhood)
I'm not saying that this was a sophisticated understanding. These were random American service men send to support the airlift to Burma. All I'm saying is that this was a common phenomena in the early 1940's in at least part of India and it's unlikely that it was the result of the British-Indian judicial system of the time.
Which is weird because as someone said before, I could not sit and watch someone suffering in front of me without attempting to assist too. But if you're inserted into a culture that says "don't be a good samaritan unless you want to be sued for it", you have to think twice.
That doesn't make the bystanders apathy any more tolerable. I'd like to think I would help someone in need even if I went to jail for it (you never know what you'd actually do unless you're in the situation, but still...)
You have no idea how bad indian courts and jails are. You would not want to go to jail in India. It would be miracle if you get to see a judge in India between absentee judges, strikes, power cuts ect. Absolutely noone will give a shit about you being incarcerated unfairly.
"The foremost reason was intimidation by police," he says. "Oftentimes if you assist someone the police will assume you're helping that person out of guilt." Apart from the fear of being falsely implicated, people also worried about becoming trapped as a witness in a court case - legal proceedings can be notoriously protracted in India. And if they helped the victim get to hospital, they feared coming under pressure to stump up fees for medical treatment.
I always wonder about this when I see people arguing against socialized medicine. Should accident victims be left to die like this? Any answer besides "yes" implies some sort of government intervention. In the US, since 1986, ERs must treat everyone. This basically gave us a really bizarre socialized medicine system with horribly inefficient funding and procedures.
If they were able to bill insurance, or the person, later, then the fund would be replenished.
So it is possible to say "yes" and not have government involved.
A quick story in Pakistan: A brain surgeon had a lot of success doing brain surgeries and received much fame, award, and status worldwide, and even though he started out modestly helping the poor and less fortunate, fame and greed got to him, and he became more demanding in terms of payment.
Well, a man brought in a young individual involved in a car accident who had received a big blow to the brain to the hospital where the doctor worked. The young man was a passerby to the accident and a complete stranger. He begged and pleaded this world famous doctor at the hospital to operate, but the doctor wanted payment. He eventually offered his own car keys as a security deposit for the time being while he would try to raise money in other ways. The doctor accepted the security deposit and began to operate. It was too late, however, because when the doctor opened the curtain he found the injured individual to be his son about to take his last breath. The doctor went insane and died.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prNYOW0_kms
PS - Even if my memory is from another source regarding Japan, the documentary showed me a lot I didn't know.
In terms of "don't involve yourself", I wouldn't say that's really true. The very few times I've seen anyone in trouble, people have rushed to come to their aid. I live in the countryside, though, so it might be different than the big city. Social duty is a big part of Japanese culture, though, so I can't really imagine people ignoring others in distress.
As a brief diversion, I recently went to Tokyo and was surprised by how many more homeless people there are now than there were roughly 10 years ago. People seem inured to that kind of distress (as they are in any big city, I guess), which is too bad.
1. You can get all knowledge about the caste system from the interwebs. Especially read up on "Manu Smriti" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manu_Smriti). The caste system that was practiced centuries ago does not exist today. So whatever you read on the interwebs take it with a grain of salt. A lot has changed for the better.
2. Caste doesn't come into picture in day-to-day life (unlike race where you might be harassed for the race you belong to as there is no escaping your racial features).
3. Caste plays a major role in marriages. Inter-caste marriages are discouraged by a section of the society. This is more prevalent in northern parts of India in comparison to the south.
4. Education/Government jobs have a quota system for lower castes. This has become a reason for hatred between the upper and lower castes because it doesn't encourage meritocracy.
5. In some really orthodox parts of Indian society (which is very small) segregation exists where lower castes are not allowed for example to take water from the same well as the rest of the village.
6. Violence on lower castes still exists in some villages.
However I can happily say that I have hardly come across any casteism myself. Maybe that is because I live in urban India.
Is it on your ID card? Can you tell via their accent? Is there anything stopping someone from moving to a different city and pretending to be a different (better?) caste?
> Is it on your ID card?
EDIT: The only place where you ever need to fill your caste is in your application for ID card or while applying for an University. However, your caste is not printed on the ID card though you are provided a certificate for it (that you need to provide in case you want to avail any government benefits). You can see an example of Voter ID card here: http://3.imimg.com/data3/RA/DI/MY-513699/pvc-electrol-photo-...
This is an example of Aadhar Card (similar to SSN in the US): http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2yVnN-Mji48/VK6hZ6KAWAI/AAAAAAAAG-...
> Is there anything stopping someone from moving to a different city and pretending to be a different (better?) caste?
That won't work. The issue is that no one wants to "leave" their caste. There is no better or worse caste these days. It was the case centuries ago where the Brahmin caste was considered superior to the rest (when Kshtariya Kings ruled India). That is no longer the case. In the ancient times, education was only restricted to upper castes. These days we have quotas (almost 50%) in education/jobs sector for lower castes.
The only place where caste has a major impact is in marriages and politics. If you love a person from a different caste and your in-laws are against your caste you'll have a tough time dealing with that situation. Unless your in-laws are total whackos (see news reports on honor killings) you should be able to convince them. Those who can't convince elope and get married.
When it comes to politics casteism is rampant. If you belong to a particular caste and your caste does not have enough representation in that constituency you are standing from you are bound to lose (irrespective of whether you are a good candidate or not). Each caste votes as a group and only vote for their own candidate. The reason for that is all castes in India want a slice of the pie. Some castes want higher quota in education while others want quota in private sector etc.
If you hear stories about how bad the caste system is in India take it with a pinch of salt. Most of it is politicking. There are however a few real cases of caste based violence that mostly go unreported by the mainstream media as the people involved in that violence do not have political patronage.
If you hear someone saying that they want the caste system to be abolished what they really mean is the modern caste system (of which I gave examples of) rather than the traditional caste system (that which existed centuries ago and of which you find a lot of articles/writings on the interwebs).
Or are they conveniently becoming desensitized when only a person/family meets with an accident?
Don't you see how ridiculous your statement sounds now?
Or look at it in reverse...have you ever traveled to a far off place and met someone who was from, say, your home state/province? Back at home, you'd feel very little connection with them since the live in a different city from you and you're surrounded by people in your city whom you feel closer to. But meet that same person half-way around the world and suddenly you feel closer to them. They're now more part of your tribe than those around you.
We're tribal animals, by nature, and our capacity to help and tolerate the suffering of those we consider to be in our tribe is significantly different from those outside our tribe. If aliens invaded, you'd see almost all racism and human conflict disappear almost overnight. We'd become a human tribe struggling against an alien "other". But absent that, we'll continue to subconsciously divide ourselves along tribal boundaries. In your rabid defense of India from what you perceive is an attack on one of its customs, you're perceiving me to be an "other" to the Indian tribe.
This is well established human psychology. My point was that the caste system is divisive, by it's very nature and purpose. According to our understanding of the human capacity for experiencing the suffering of others, anything that divides us in any capacity can only increase the kind of unfeeling behavior described in the article.
And you need look no farther than India to see the exact opposite type of force. How many devout Buddhists would stand by idly as someone in a car crash lay dying? The Buddha realized (warning: ridiculous oversimplification approaching) that our sense of self is an illusion and we're all one...there is no "other." When viewed through that lens, what is the hassle of being dragged into and administrative mess or needing to pay for hospital care when compared to the suffering of a dying person? A Buddhist would jump in to help without even the slightest regard for the consequences that would result.