Issue Topics

Topic[3]

"The absence of choice is a circumstance that is very, very rare"

Sample

By this reckoning, even Hobson's choice is a choice! And the worldover the common man, more often than not, faces Hobson'schoice. He can either take what he is offered, on those very rareoccasions when he is offered something, or leave it. For instance,a highly educated young man is offered a job and a pay both ofwhich would seem to mime his academic achievements. What is thechoice before him? He can either accept the offer or reject it. Byno species of courtesy can that be described as a choice.

Not long ago there was a report in newspapers that some highlyqualified Indian medical practitioners, who had gone to a Westerncountry after signing a job contract, were eking out their lives bydusting tables in restaurants! Could they have settled for suchmenial work out of choice? On the contrary, if they had had one,they would perhaps have returned to their country to set uppractice. By the same token, a sizable section of people in theadvanced countries live on doles because they have no jobs. Arethey exercising their choice?

However, in the domains of politics and administration, not tospeak of big business, there is always a multiplicity of choices.Politicians can switch from one party to another with a straightface. The party that has grazing, so to speak, and can offer apublic office readily embraces such defectors. Ideological

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allegiances and political convictions are all fictions created to foolthe electorate. There are multiple parties in most democracies, andeach one of them is eager to swell its ranks. Politicians, therefore,see no merit in sticking to a party on whose tickets they may havegot elected but which is in no position to yield any materialbenefits. Coalition governments would otherwise not be possible.Besides, no field offers as many opportunities for making as muchmoney as politics does. And those who are in politics are notmotivated by considerations of public service. They want to makeas much money as they can while they can, and then vanish fromthe scene. This may not be true of all democracies, but it iscertainly true of most democracies.

Similarly, bureaucrats seldom, if ever, are without a choice. Theymay quit government service any time they like because theyinvariably have waiting for them cushy jobs in the private sector inreturn for the services rendered to individual companies while inthe employ of the government. Even those who retire fromgovernment service take up much better jobs in the private sectorthe next day, again as a quid pro quo for the services rendered.And many of those government officials who are sacked fordisobeying their political masters could not care less because theywill by then have built a neat nest egg.

Therefore, it is the common people who are almost always withouta choice, except perhaps that between life and death. Some ofthem exercise that choice, but that is no choice at all. It is puresophistry to say that choices have diminished with steep increasein the population of the world. That does not answer the questionwhy the available choices cannot be equitably distributed among allpeople.

To put it bluntly, some sections of modern society havemonopolized all choices to the detriment of the individual. Societynow decides who shall have what. What it does not realize until itis faced with an explosive situation is that it had an obligation toensure that every individual member had a choice in all matters,and that it had failed to fulfill that obligation. When such of itsmembers as have no choice, except political choice which does notmean much in the absence of economic choice, feel forced toresort to violence, the self-same society accuses them of trying todestabilize it.

In sum, absence of choice is what the masses the world over havelearnt to live with, and exercise of choice has become theprerogative of the rich and the influential, politicians, bureaucratsand Big Business.

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