Friday, October 1, 2010

Ideas to Ponder: Solving Social Issues

We have been witnessing plethora of social issues (big or small) daily on local, national or international basis. A very old issue in India is the unresolved issue of Ayodhya (although the court has announced a verdict on it yesterday, but in essence its a never ending issues if things continue the way they are now!).


How do we solve issues like these? Specially When there are multiple parties are involved (in the present case every emotionally +religiously charged Indian!), and when no one is ready for a compromised solution. The court tried to bring a compromised solution but everyone knows that; there is no dearth of instigators for igniting these issues in any part of the world. 


My take on this is three way:


First way: The different stakeholders use their muscle power (as they have been using for the past 18 years), and somewhere in the coming 10 to fifteen years a winner (so called!) emerges (who so ever survived the fight!).


Second way: A third neutral party takes control of the matter and make a compromised decision, as was shown in the present decision (although people would appeal in the higher court!). But in the end there remains a forever tension between the parties involved.


Third way (best way):  This is the most impossible way to solve these issues but a comprehensive one! All parties forgo their egos and understand that there are some more important issues to be solved in our society (and I don't think that I need to name them here), and everyone comes to acceptable ground where nobody tries to win over other. This is the win-win solution. Why? Simply because everyone understands they fighting over this issues would hurt everyone, and the final gain in the form of victory over the other party would be negligible in comparison to the cost involved, i.e. they all come to the understanding that it would be a Pyrrhic victory. 


We have been brainwashed by the same society on these matters. And we believe in what we think is right. But rightness again a matter of debate. And debate always happens on things we believe in...If we had clear facts and only facts, we would always come to solutions without debating. But facts change when beliefs change...






It is second of the many posts that I have written in "Idea to Ponder series" (you can visit all of them here). 





Post written by Anshul Gupta. Follow him on twitter
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