No right to life?

People fighting for the rights of the excluded, seem to have no right to life of their own.

The murder of Niyamat Ansari, an activist for the National Rural Employment Guarantee program, who helped labourers file applications related to right to information, right to work, is another failure of the state of Jharkhand. He was also working on the right to food campaign.

This only adds to the long list of contemporary unsung Indians who are giving up life to restore institutions and people’s right to good governance.

Tehelka had a column in late February on the dangers of doing good in India. It takes off from Binayak Sen. I quote journalist Shoma Chaudhary, the author of this article:

“Doing one’s duty is no longer an imperative in India. Nothing governs us as a society now except the miracle of individual choice. We are secured by the fact that some people choose to be good, no matter what. But there are myriad dangers in that. There is not just the might of the State to confront. There is also the temptation at every turn to just give up, part the skin and slip over into the silken side where one half of India is living a charmed life. If you don’t fight the ugliness of the State, it will behave in benign ways with you. That is one of the hardest lessons being good in India teaches you.”