Speak Out and make a difference

We have heard of the term ‘speaking out’ haven’t we? It’s used often in the context of government work, companies, social issues & so on. Outlook magazine has the term as its byline and follows its philosophy. But what is speaking out really? Is it to highlight the wrongs that exist in a particular place? Is it to highlight the wrongdoers in a particular place? Well not really…

It is beyond just highlighting something right or someone wrong. Speaking out is being able to say what one feels. And what one feels is neither right nor wrong. And neither should it be only the negatives, it could also be about the positives. It is plain & simply what one feels. Why is it important to say what one feels? Because by saying what you feel, one, you are making your presence felt and two, you make it clear that just because a certain something is like this it doesn’t mean it is right. Also when you don’t say anything it comes across as acceptance or like it doesn’t make any difference to you whichever way things are, which is of course incorrect.

Lets take the case of our freedom struggle. If the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and others didn’t speak up & let known their feelings about the British ruling India it is anybody’s guess what India would have been today. Even at that time a lot of people didn’t like the idea of an outsider which is what the British was, ruling them & telling them what to do & not to in a land that they were born & brought up on. End result the British left India to be ruled by Indians. Or lets take the more recent case of Jessica Lal after all the accused in her murder were let off for lack of evidence, the public took over and voiced what they clearly thought was money & power being the reason for the accused being let off & not lack of evidence. End result, Sonia Gandhi asks for some changes in the law, the police decide to try again with renewed vigor and the general public now have hope that the guilty will be punished.

But not everybody has the capacity to speak out & say what he or she feels. Speaking out for some weird reason requires a good helping of confidence. Confidence to be opposed, to hear others say you are wrong, to bear the brunt of rubbing off someone wrongly, to know that it could land you with dire consequences like may be you losing your job or in worse cases even being put into jail. But once this initial barrier of confidence is crossed then what starts is a life of making a difference. Making a difference to the way things are around, to the way people react & feel about various things and thus changing the whole system that exists.

Apart from the confidence issue the other reason why people don’t speak out is because they feel nothing will change. The movie Rang de Basanti captures this aspect beautifully. The fun loving, carefree youngsters only crib about the mess that the whole system is into and feel only one thing about it that it has already gone to the dogs & will never improve. Then an incident where one of their friends dies in an accident and its after effects triggers off the urge to do something & make a difference. Of course what they do thereafter is slightly at the extremes which cinematic creativity & license allows them to do. The same solution can’t be applied for every problem that exists today in our government, in our company, at home, school or locality.

So the need of the hour is to speak out. Everybody can do it. The easy way to start is with something that affects us everyday. Are there things at home that you oppose like curfews, pocket money etc? At work are there issues that needs to be dealt with like too much workload, no over time allowance etc? Speak out. Say it the way it is. Yes nothing will change over night. But it will, it should especially if what you are saying is right then nothing can stop it from becoming the next big revolution.