Saturday 29 March 2014

State of In-Security

After a longish break away, I have returned to realise many things, anew. We are a country dominated by suspicion, fear and paranoia.  Nowhere else, in even the developed world - with supposedly far more to lose - have I come across these many metal detectors, sniffer-dogs, high level security - just to enter a mall, a movie theatre or some ordinary public space. It seems that we have succumbed to living in perpetual security alert, and co-exist with fears of being terrorist targets in very little, simple things of ordinary life.

But, is this fear wholly of our making? What if this is imposed on us? by the State, by the corporates, or actually their nexus that require that we do not question? A nexus that seeks to manufacture fears to exercise control over our combined lot - for corrupt profit and personal gain? What if this elaborate, unsolicited security charade, is not about preventing us from being blown up, en-masse, by Mujahuddin, Naxals, Separatists, Terrorists, Mafia, but is a deeply manipulative propaganda by an increasingly authoritarian state seeking a blanket public acquiescence on an ever increasing repressive regime that seeks to constantly curb/erode/undermine our expressions of either individual dissent  and collective civil liberties, by keeping us all afraid? What if we are afraid of spooks-in-the-dark that don't exist, but are manipulated to keep away from questioning the dark days of our times?

And, what would happen if we decided to be unafraid?  What if chose freedom over fear? What if? What if?