Being hopeful is a great thing, but…

A few years ago, I had to make a visit to a local garbage dump site in Delhi. My wife had lost an earring, which she thought could have been dumped there with the daily kitchen waste. The visit was a revelation for me as it introduced me to a significant phenomenon of our society.

A casual discussion with the rag pickers skimming the household garbage to pick pieces of paper, plastic and metal, etc. was quite intriguing. Out of seven people diligently scanning the nauseating dump, some were children under the age of 14, including girls, and many were youth in the age bracket of 19-27. Incidentally, there was a police PCR vehicle standing just 10mtr from the site. The police personnel on petrol duty were blissfully unaware of the laws relating to right to education, child labor, dumping of garbage in open areas etc.

On being asked why they chose to do this menial, risky (health wise) and hideous job, when they have relatively decent options driving an e-rickshaw, working at a nearby auto garage, cleaning cars in nearby housing societies etc., the youth politely answered, “We are doing this job for past 12-15yrs. How could we change it now.”

On prodding further, one of them admitted that many of their peers live on hope that “someday they will find treasure in the garbage”. “More years you put into the job, the greater the chances of you hitting on a treasure”, one girl smirked. Though, the best they could cite of a treasure find was a gold bangle found by one of their seniors several years ago.

The discussion did two things to me: (a) it prompted me to drop the search of the lost earring of my wife, with the hope that it may complete the treasure hunt of some child; and (b) raised numerous pertinent but extremely disturbing questions in my mind. For example—

·         After seven decades of independence, we are still struggling to eradicate manual scavenging. Though many NGOs work in this area, so far not many policy makers have been seen speaking about eradicating the practice of manual handling of garbage; particularly, employing minor children for the job. It may take many more decades before this issue is addressed.

·         The police force (including traffic police) may not be adequately trained to prevent crimes. They are more focused on detecting and prosecuting criminals rather than taking preventive actions. The system of “no complaint no action” needs to be replaced with proactively protecting peoples’ life, dignity and property.

·         If we want to reap the demographic dividend, beyond selling more and more motorcycles, smart phones, and apparels, we need to overhaul our education and training system. The efforts made so far are inadequate and to a large extent misdirected.

You may ask, “why am I narrating this instance after so many years?” Well, I have three important reasons for doing so.

1.      I happened to pass the same garbage dump over the last weekend. The only changes I noticed were – (i) the number of scavenging kids and youth has increased; and (ii) police patrol van is now parked about 100mtrs away, since the volume and stink of garbage has increased materially.

2.      Recently I had a chance to interact with a group of investors. Their investment behavior sounded uncannily similar to the ragpickers skimming through garbage dumps in the hope of striking gold. Most of them had bought a bunch of poor-quality stocks in the hope of striking a multi-bagger. Their hopes were mostly driven by some reports, primarily circulating on social media, highlighting how some of the stocks had given astronomical returns in the past few years. None of them personally knew an investor who had managed to make 1000% return from a stock or even beaten the index return by more than 10% consistently. Notwithstanding, they keep skimping through the bottom of the stock pyramid.

3.      I met a very popular social media influencer at a social event. During our discussion, I raised a question, “why so many Indian middle-class and lower-middle-class people (women, men, kids, youth, middle aged and old) are spending so much time, energy and resources on making (mostly) frivolous, and many times vulgar and obscene, social media posts (reels)?”

The conclusion of a long, and partly heated, discussion was that a large majority of these reel-makers are also very similar to the ragpicker kids and youth in the earlier narration. They do this seemingly unlikeable job in the hope of one of their posts going viral and making them rich overnight. To gain some gold (viral post) they are not only staking their self-esteem, traditional family values, money, time, and energy; but also risking their mental and physical health. After all, they have only heard about the success stories of a few social media influencers; but they are pitifully unaware of the success rate and distressing fate of 99.99% aspirants, who could not strike the gold.

I would like conclude by quoting two dialogues from my most favorite movie – Shawshank Redemption (1994):

“Hope is a dangerous thing. It drives people insane.”

“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies”.

In my view, being hopeful is a great thing, but only after making best efforts in the right direction. Merely hoping, without putting in the required effort, and in the right direction, is a dangerous thing. It can perpetuate cycles of poverty, financial ruin, or emotional distress.