Greatest Fools

We all have heard about the Wisest Fool - Mohammad Bin Tuglaq, who, according to his merit, took some very wise decisions as a ruler, but most of the back fired due to lack of foresight.

First he wanted to rule his empire centrally, and therefore he shifted his Capital to Daulatabad(Tuglaqabad), near Aurangabad. He order the whole city to shift. There was no planned shifting so everything went haywire, and meanwhile his kingdom was attacked from the North.

He also tried to change the currency to more cheaper and tradable from gold to copper, but the enterprising that we are, we were no different even then. People started making their own coins. Poor chap to had to revert back to copper.

So we could see, his ideas were noble, but implementation was shoddy.

Lets talk about the Greatest Fools - the UPA Government. The Child Welfare minister in this Government - Mrs. Renuka Chowdhari (one of the most notorious turncoats of our time along with Ram Vilas Paswan, Ajit Singh Chowdhari, Vidyacharan Shukla) who has simply slept over her current and previous ministry for these many years, and has also been reprimanded for the same, has suddenly developed a bosom deep concern for the children of this country.

And in the undesirable fit of this newly developed emotion, her ministry is about to bring an act which will punish those parents(and anybody else) who gives corporal punishment to their children. Punishment would include fine, and possible imprisonment up to 7 years!

A visibly beaming Renuka Chowdhari, after regaining the long lost media lime light, waxed her eloquent on the topic yesterday on TV. With the regular hitting, the child gets traumatized. It affects on his/her emotional and social development. Blah Blah Blah Blah.

At first, this law has the potential to get extravagantly misused the way Schedule Cast act and Dowry act are regularly being done to settle scores, just because our Police is corrupt and Judiciary is inefficient.

Now just answer for us a few questions -

a) Suppose a parent hits their child, and the get caught, is tried and sentenced to 7 years(or whatever) of imprisonment, then what happens to that child ?

-Who will take care of him?
-Won't child's present and future be affected?
-Earning Parents will lose their job, then who would feed the child?
-Who will fund the schooling?
-Who will maintain the child's current lifestyle?
-What if he fells into bad company?

b) If everything remains equal, and we theoretically assume that police manages to nab all the culprits hitting their children, then almost 90% of Indian parents would land in prison. That will mean about 50-60 crore people.
-Where will you put them?
-Where are so many courts to try them?
-What if they all appeal to higher courts?
-What if your Police and Judicial machinery harasses them due to rampant corruption present? -And of course, the question #1, what happens to the kids?

Stumped? Well take a cue from countries like Switzerland, where already a system is in place, especially, when the complete ministry is showing the tell-tale signs collective failure of mental faculty.

For such habitual and non-habitual parents, the first step should be counseling(like drug users). They shouldn't be put with and treated as heinous criminals upfront, like you have advocated. Then the repeat offenders should be handed over moderate punishments like community service like teaching and monetary fine which would be used only for child development.

The imprisonment, if at all, oughtta be last option, but not before state provides full social security to children. This system is still not in place.

Greatest Fools.