Need for taking note of Dissent!

After taking into account the recent political and social violence in India, be it the extreme right groups like the Shri Ram Sene or the MNS, Shiv Sena , or even the PWG, one thing seems to stand out, there seems to be a general perception among these groups that "Clinical" and "Targetted" Violence pays in India.

• This seems to be a case where, people have lost faith in the traditional peaceful means of dissent. The usual march and assembly at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, no longer works, Governments and Society at large have been thick skinned and hence, do not give attention to such peaceful expression of dissent.
• To explain it further, its more like we deal with children at home, for example, if you look at children who break toys or are unruly at home, one could argue that, the reason is mostly to get attention of the parents to listen to their say and may be to an extent force an outcome. The same seems to extend to these groups. The more we ignore the peaceful ways of holding placards and slogans, the more we stop free thinking and accommodation of views, the more we talk about bans , this problem will become more acute.
• Most organizations at the moment seem to believe that people will wake up and listen to their "Cause" only when there is violence, when peace is disturbed. The seem to think that only a blast or vandalism will make the society and governments to listen to them and take cognizance of their existence.
  
• Of course, this is not to say that, anything and everything that these groups demand is right and needs to be given in, but there is an undeniable need to engage these groups seriously in a dialogue, the state needs to tell these groups that any kind of violence will not be tolerated and will be dealt with sternly, but at the same time, if dissent is expressed in a civilized non violent manner, the state would listen, and if possible within the realms of the constitution take measures to pacify.
• I can cite a few examples, like say underage drinking, or underage driving, irrespective of gender, underage drinking has to be avoided, and pubs need to make sure that underage patrons are not served liquor, for this we do need a national ID card for every citizen which has a micro chip with all details and just a flash of the card at the pub should tell the age and bar the patron in case he/she is underage. Similarly for drunken driving and underage driving. Please do not bash me with intricacies of how this is not fool proof :) I just gave an example and a solution, i do understand enforcement and conviction has always been India's bane.
• Colleges and Universities, should allow all groups to come and have healthy civilized debates on various issues. We should allow constructive criticism and stop banning, when we ask for banning a group, we are actually behaving at par with them. Of course, some of them will be too extreme for society to deal with and hence state will have to use power.
• Another aspect which would be helpful, is that, institutes catering to mass communication should reach out to these groups, be they religious extremists, linguistic or regional chauvinists, even regional satraps, and provide them a chance by educating and training them in creating opportunities to show dissent in a civilized way. For example, the people who have an issue with the cultural decay, could make a short ad, or movie, or slide show, and be able to air their point of view "Within Civil Norms" to the public and similarly counter arguments could also be provided air space.Let it be like ads we see for Cars or cosmetics, they are products and competing products do advertise,similarly, competing stream of ideas should also be allowed to propagate and compete albeit without giving and space to violence and vigilantism with coercion.
• This is one of the best ways to make people feel less alienated, make them understand that their voice is also heard and understood, may be we can agree to disagree, and well in due course, as with good and bad products, may be good ideas or thoughts would be accepted and bad ideas would be rejected.
  
• There is no harm in giving expression of thought a chance, its better than a ban and these organizations would also be able to gauge how many people actually support them, may be we would be able to reach a consensus at some point.

We need to make sure we listen to dissent, not to agree, but at least make sure that when we get tough, we can say, we explored all options possible.. :)