Authored By Arnab Sinha:
One of the several disturbing trends in street accidents and homicides on Indian roads is the apparent lack of empathy from fellow onlookers. And more often than not, a steady stream of curious spectators, all turning a blind eye to the victims. This has become so much of a commonplace, that it did not surprise me when a fortnight back, two young men where killed on a busy Mumbai suburb, with no one stepping forward to help.
To put things into perspective, on the night of October 20, 2011, Keenan and Reuben two brave hearts were fatally stabbed, trying to resist eve-teasers in Mumbai’s suburb of Andheri- West. The streets were crowded, and as one of the companions of the deceased puts it “People watched quietly as our friends were dying”.
Predictably there was outrage en masse, with some blaming the city’s hallucinating reality, others on the egocentric gene too addicted with Twitter and Facebook. In the bargain, as it turns out, Mumbai pulled off a new name. The
Looking closely, Mumbai is no aberration. The situation is strikingly similar to what happened to this young
Kitty Genovese, a 28-year old woman was chased by her assailant on her way back home. Over the course of half an hour, she was stabbed and killed, as thirty-eight of her neighbors watched from their windows. During that time, however, none of the witnesses offered help or called the police. The incident sparked dramatic reaction to public apathy and soon became symbolic of the degrading morality in urban life. Abe Rosenthal, editor of the New York Times, wrote in a book about the case:
“Nobody can say why the thirty-eight did not lift the phone while Miss Genovese was being attacked, since they cannot say themselves. It can be assumed, however, that their apathy was indeed one of the big-city variety. Indifference to one's neighbor and his troubles is a conditioned reflex in life in
In the years that followed, two
To test their hypothesis, Latane and Darley reconstructed emergency situations and tracked the reaction frequency of subjects staring at smoke seeping out from under a doorway. When the participants were alone, 75 percent of them reported the smoke. When they were joined by two other participants, only 38 percent of the groups reported it. When a participant was joined by two “confederates,” who were in the experiment and ignored the smoke, the number of participants who reported the “emergency” fell to a shocking 10 percent.
The reluctance to intervene, Latane-Darley observed, was based on the assumption that ‘someone else is going to intervene and so lets refrain from doing anything’- a phenomenon known as ‘diffusion of responsibility’. The finding provided path breaking evidences which challenged the conventional wisdom. To simply quote The Tipping Point, “In case of Kitty Genovese, the lesson is that no one called the police because thirty-eight people heard her scream. Ironically, had she been attacked on a lonely street with just one witness, she might have lived.”
Over the years, ‘bystander effect’ did not simply remain an academic lingo. In
What started off as a gruesome tragedy in the alleys of
Were Keenan & Reuben victims of ‘bystander effect’ or people really didn’t care enough? Indeed in Indian circumstances, inefficient law enforcement and lack of Witness Protection Program remain compelling reasons for reluctance to help victims in distress. However, the overwhelming majority and the sweeping trend in similar situations do not fully rationalize the onlooker apathy. Without trivializing the horrors of the terrifying attack in Mumbai, ‘bystander effect’ does provide some explanation why the Andheri residents preferred to remain numb on that fateful night.
Keenan-Reuben might just be our Kitty Genovese.
Postscript: Countries like
Subscribe to this comment's feed
sanchita
said:
 |
... nice one arnab.....and unfortunetly thats the situation every where in India...!! |
Arnab Sinha
said:
|
... As I write this, NDTV is running a talk show 'We the Indifferent' .Other than bashing the Mumbaikars for their apathy (Barkha Dutt pulling some data that 40 witnesses stood there), surprisingly, one of the panelists blamed it solely on the moral upbringing of Indians. We are taught to be selfish and such it goes! |
Sayan
said:
|
... Hi, A great write up!!!! I must say....This is the least we could do for such people who through their actions have reiterated the essence of humanity. The only thing we do is sit back and curse and somewhere deep within us feel assured that it was not our loved ones who faced the brunt of this...lets take a step each and we would be sure to walk a mile together...this is towards making the cause for which these people have lost their lives the cause of every house in this country. Do keep these coming..... |
Richa Sharma
said:
|
... Excellent piece! nothing better than comparing the kitty genovese case, that was the stage when USA was coming up! almost same as us, what we do lack is of course is the respect for rules and the spirit to live with our rights! Most of us live with a chalta hai attitude like if you cant clean the mess up then just sweep it under the rug and forget about it!!! Keep going arnab!! |
