DEVIL'S ADVOCATE / Trial by Facebook By Frederick Noronha
All of a sudden, Goans older than 21 are discovering that there are newer aspects to cyberspace. And, there a moral panic over this. In a Margao higher secondary, a fight takes place between two girl students. Someone else captures what happened on a mobile phone camera, and uploads it to YouTube, the video-sharing website. This episode gets labelled a "Youtube fight" and makes it to the news. "School starts probe into Youtube fight," was the headline in The Times of India. Granted that headline-writers are constrained for space, and work under tight deadlines. But the shorthand they resort to for headlinese both reflects, and influences, societal attitudes. Being visible on Youtube suddenly draws oodles of notoriety. I couldn't resist myself doing a search, and trying to locate a copy from Google's cache, after hearing the local TV-distributed news. But what's so special about this particular fight? Would it be any less serious if it had not been 'filmed' on a mobile? Is YouTube to blame? Or was it just the students' behaviour, if at all we need to search for scapegoats? The other headline-grabbing issue is the ongoing case of the young German girl, barely in her teens. From lewd SMSs, the case morphed into a charge of rape. It also got linked to photographs found online, allegedly showing others in a 'compromising' position. All this became big news thanks to the alleged involvement of the sons and nephews of three -- or is it four now? -- prominent politicians. Anyone with a Facebook link listed among the girl's 228 'friends' could come under the scanner. Given the way issues are taken up in today's Goa, it probably makes a difference if you have a surname like Alemao or Monserrate. On the other hand, Babush Monserrate is obviously trying to score by suggesting that a BJP MLA's son, carrying the name of De Souza, also deserves to be dragged into the case. Should we call this a Facebook crime? All the kids involved -- and even the non-kids -- are linked to this social networking website. But, given the facts, one could say it has more to do with the big-business that has spawned off Goa's coastal party scene. Obviously, there's a whole active virtual and real 'scene' out there. Cyberspace makes it easier for people to get to know each other, to make 'friends'. It can also help plan out things. Activities which may be positive, or far from it. But to blame cyberspace alone, doesn't do justice to the many issues involved. Nor does it equip us to cope with such situations in future. Without doubts, the media is having a field day with its detailed, allegation-by-allegation coverage of this case. After all, Goa has learnt from the British tabloid after February 2008 and Scarlett Keeling. Nothing sells papers better than a potent mix of crime, sex, youth. There's power and money thrown in too. Never mind if the coverage is of a trivial, theatrical, here-today-forgotten-tomorrow kind. To add more than a dash of spice, there's the promise of political skittles that could tumble due to this case. But all this perhaps means we miss deeper questions about the direction in which Goan society is headed. Let's revisit some issues involved. In theory, Goa has the Compulsory Education Act, enforced here since September 1996. This means no child aged 6-14 years should remain out of school. Yet, our schools, including -- or, should we say, especially? -- the elite ones, are turning children into drop-outs. The girl in this case studied at Miramar till failing the sixth standard. The pressure of ultra-competition also show in the values we impart to youth, some of whom may not drop out but are obsessed by making the quick buck. My own former school, a Jesuit-run one in Goa, was alma mater for two of five accused in an equally-sensational now-forgotten recent kidnap-and-murder of a young man. For ransom. Why not blame us parents who stress obsessively on 'results' and getting ahead in the competition? What's the fate of children who can't cope with one, or a few, subjects? Should they be just added to the already-large number of Goan dropouts? It's ironic that the accusations now point at the sons and nephews of some prominent politicians. One wonders if the Alemaos and the Monserates, and the others who might face accusations, feel even a tinge of regret. After all, they've all played a part in reducing Goa to a hedonist, entertainment and 'fun' driven 'paradise'. Now, their next generation are showing signs of getting trapped in this very same culture, even if we don't restrict to this particular case. To sustain this fantasy world, we have to indulge in corruption, fast-money, the destruction of our hillocks and our society. It just doesn't make sense. But let's disabuse ourselves of the belief that only the super-brats of the political class get caught in this self-created trap. This could happen to our kids, mine and yours. We've seen problems earlier. When our generation was growing up, in the 1960s and 1970s, a number of our own classmates got caught up in that lethal cocktail of drugs and parties. Particularly if you came from Bardez. Some of our friends and schoolmates destroyed their lives and families. Others died. We thought the worst was over; you don't hear so many dramatic cases of middle-class (mainly Catholic) youth being ruined by drugs now. But dig a little deeper, and you'll know we were quite wrong. Today's victims are the children of taxi-drivers and other daily-wage earners. The problem is only creeping further downwards in society. If we need to blame someone, let's not overlook our own generation of parents. In our own adolescence, our dreams were of changing the world. For that, the credit goes to the idealists who went before us and left some inspiration behind. And to the optimism of those times. What dreams have we created for our younger ones? Today, the focus is on being competitive, making money, wallowing in consumerism, or immersing oneself in the game of sexuality. Catholic conservativism, caught up more with morality than social justice, is unable to make a cogent case on why this is a losing game. It's more than ironic to see former tourism minister Churchill Alemao shedding tears about the discos by the beach allowing under-aged young teens entry. The vacuum in youngsters' lives are being filled by the money-spinning entertainment sector. It is a rare Don Bosco's school that holds meaningful holiday camps to encourage healthy sports among our youth. Or the tiny Bookworm that promotes the reading habit among our children. We also need to shun paranoia, or an approach that blames the foreigner. Goa has, for centuries and even before the Portuguese arrived, been a melting-pot of cultures. Yet, with diverse cultures come special challenges and responsibilities. In parts of Europe, the age of consent to indulge in sex is as low as 14 years. An African country like Angola keeps it at 12. Young people of today are also being bombarded by overtly sexual messages -- via the music they listen to, the newspapers we all read, the advertising industry or our values system itself. While all these diverse facts are indeed true, the accused in the case should neither be specifically targeted, nor shielded, for their political connections. Let's keep politics aside. In fact, we might recall how the Miramar sex scandal ("worse than Jalgaon") was handled after all those statements made by a Parrikar, both as Opposition leader and Monserrate-backed CM. We may get voyeuristic thrills by reading about the tragedies of someone else's teenager facing adolescent angst. It might not seem as funny when it happens to our own children. There are no quick-fix solutions here. Goa, like other societies of our type, is obviously caught with one leg solidly in the past, and the other racing hopelessly into the uncertain if seductive future. Blame cyberspace (and other global influences) for spreading such trends faster if you wish. But we need to grapple with deeper issues, and locate our own coping mechanisms. One hopes justice prevails, and the girl's interests and her mother's concerns are not sacrificed at the alter of politics and space-filling, newspaper-selling headlines. [First published in Herald, Goa]