Oh, you are a Shakespeare enthusiast. You have read your 'Macbeth', and quite liked the witches intoning mysteriously, 'fair is foul and foul is fair',right? The title of our blog today hence appears confusing to you, right? Well, the word play is indeed conscious as the blog today refers to Social Justice.
Apparently today is World Social Justice day. Must be a U.N. diktat. I have not been able to locate the origins of this practice though. It set me thinking, however.
What exactly would be social justice? Not discriminating against anyone on the basis of class, caste, race, gender, language or age, right? All of these categories get violated each minute every where, however. As Marxism and Identity Politics have familiarised most all to the rest of the liminalities, especially given the post colonial discourse, let us look at age.
Currently the most discriminated against are the age wise disadvantaged. This category includes two extreme groups, the young and the old. Be it the virtual reality or the practical daily lived life, these two groups are always at the receiving end.Take the ubiquitous computers, for example. If children fall prey to computer bullying, the elderly to the targeting due to inadequate fluency with the computers.
Between the two, I would say much worse is the condition of the elderly. The traditional respect associated with age has vanished in to thin air. In fact, being aged is a certain condition for being devalued, demeaned,decapicitated everywhere, in the private space, in the public sphere, and all this despite the gerontological explosion. In fact, with welfare measures diminishing by the decades, FD rates dwindling by the day, the huge aged population, absolutely outside any socioeconomic net, as most all Indians belong to the unorganized sector, are facing very difficult times. Nobody respects their huge capabilities, even when the young lack most all competencies.
Of the aged, too, real tough is the situation of the elderly women. Post the productive period every which way, and given the half baked feminist representations in the serials, for instance, this group, not useful either to the market or to the political parties, gets it the worst way possible, almost like the 'witches' of yesteryears. Lots can be done for them, what with the health issues, depression due to loneliness, for instance. That, however, would be the theme of a different blog altogether. Hope policymakers provide them some pie of social justice, though sensitizing the society is the real urgent need of the hour. Only then can fair be fair!
Pratima@age is indeed just a number.
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