Rights from the Society and Duty to the Society
Sujit Pal
IT Professional
USA
In any society, all humans have the rights to live happily, peacefully and have friendly relationship with others. They should have the rights to basic facilities like shelter, food and good health. But the history shows us otherwise over and over again that some people forget to provide rights to others and on the same token some people fail to get the basic facilities from their society. The inequality is created by some handful members of the society and gets abused pervasively by few others and at the end quite a few people face the problem to receive these basic rights from the society. In a society there is a large group of people who do not say anything when they see some kind of violation of the basic human rights, they observe the denial quietly. The person, who observes the problem silently, is equally blameworthy as the person who abuses it.
Society is meant to be created to hold different people, with their different skills and culture, together. Society is formed to keep different aspects of mankind in equilibrium. It is practically impossible to survive alone in this world. People are dependent on others in every walk of life. So, it is a “give and take” policy. We pay for the things that need to be done by others and we earn money on the things that we can do for others. Of course there is volunteerism which we do for the betterment of the world as a whole, there is no string attached there – we do because we volunteer to do so. That is the ideal world. But in practicality, we become self centered and abuse the system to exploit the less fortunate and have temporary gains for earthly pleasure. In the process, we start denying the basic rights to others and few fail to claim them and few start abusing natural resources and not careful to maintain abundance for our next generation. As being the most intelligent habitant of the world, we have the responsibility to keep our society intact and on a broader sense, we need to maintain the world as a beautiful place to live.
Rights are not laws. Rights are the basic policies for the society to hold together its creatures so that we can coexist. Rights cannot be described in a definitive format – it is subjective and situational and most of the cases the situations keep changing. If situation is static, it would have been easy to brainstorm a definition for rights. That’s why rights are left for interpretation by the human being at that situation. Human rights are very sensitive and critical. One may not notice the violation, unless it gets abused pervasively on a larger scale. In a nutshell, the problem gets to the surface, when it is really a big problem.
With the advent of science and technology our lives have become complex. Same thing has happened with our societal bondage and complexity of human relationships. The need has become necessity and duty has become passable. At the same rate, the number of the human rights that need attention has increased. In the earlier days, most likely the common violations were limited to a small geographic area and they were taken care by the benevolent leadership of the area itself. But the world has become smaller and these violations reached to a larger geographic region and the problem needs to be looked at on a global basis. That’s why we do have independent benevolent organization that listens to the problem; analyze the data for genuineness of the problem and thence a mutually acceptable solution. Along with science, another dimension has been invented to share the information – Information Technology. Information Technology has become part of the world communication in everyday life. It stores the digitized data for analysis and simulations; it supports the digital pictures for a visual aid to any problem. Internet is our way of communication – be it textual or speech or be it video. So, to report a violation of rights or to bring a problem to the surface, internet is being used to get the point across with all the visual support and independent study can be had from the massive data stored in different data storages. For clarifications, we are being able to listen to different perspective of a problem, as opposed to skewed or biased perspective in the earlier days. Internet is being used by common people to analyze and interpret the data and realize the genuineness and depth of the problem. As a result, the interpretation and understanding of a problem are very transparent nowadays. This way human rights are being looked into as a global perspective and by global organizations to bring the world under a fair and common justified terms. Common peoples’ requirements are being looked into under a fair and just scrutiny.
Science and technology are helping to monitor a situation and analyze it and come out with a mutually agreeable solution. But it also monitors how human beings are treating the world in return. How are we treating the other creatures in our eco-society? How are we affecting the world in terms of global warming? Whether there is a solution to these problems? When agreeable solutions come out, they become the law or the duty of the human being to our beautiful world. When we talk about human rights, we should talk about our duties also to the world. Of course, the first thing is to receive the rights and then to do our duty to hold our society (human or eco society on a broader sense) together. There are few things we can choose to do – like little wastage of water and electricity, limiting carbon emissions etc. If every individual takes part in the paying back process, as a whole, it will be a great effort by the mankind. Information technology can fit into that big effort by quantifying our effort and gauge our progress.
Is Information technology the solution to human rights and world betterment? Of course not. It is just a tool that will provide the information and support the visual aid. The information needs to be identified and analyzed by human being. Information technology can bring the transparency and unbiasedness in the data gathering and distribution. The data need to be used in a fair and justified way, not for a skewed interpretation or to gain a personal profit out of it. Information can provide indication of violations of human rights and duties of human beings, but it will be our responsibility to come out with a solution and come in conformance and make some corrective measures to get to the point where “we can live happily and peacefully” and pass the happiness and peacefulness to our next generation as their birth rights.