Little did Janhavi Gadkar think when she went out for her evening drink with her friends two days ago, that she will be cooling her heels in police custody, with nothing to think about but what her evening of fun has done to her life – and the life of two families.
But this post is NOT about her, or drunken driving, or the right punishment or any of that. Enough people have and will continue to think about all that.
In fact, this is not about Janhavi at all. This is about all the others who were around her, as friends and people serving her, from the time she had her first drink till the time she took out her car, to drive it home, when she was clearly and obviously in no state to do it, that night.
She was not alone when she went out for her evening drink – she was supposedly celebrating, partying with friends. She was then, supposedly, with one other friend, again, drinking together.
She was not drinking alone, having bought a bottle of whisky in a corner shop and sitting in her car. She was drinking in a club and a restaurant, where she was being served by the staff, observed by the supervisors and maybe even the manager.
What is the role of each of these people, in the chain of events that evening? Even if one of them – a colleague that was in the celebratory dinner, the friend who was with her in her second stint of drinking, the bar man who served her, the supervisor in the pub – any one individual, had prevented her, softly or forcibly, from taking the car out, from driving herself back, the entire chain of events that have permanently damaged so many lives – including hers, could have been prevented.
One of the legal tenets that fascinated me way back in My Hotel Management School was the concept of ‘Vicarious Liability’. Fortunately, for all the people I listed here, it does not apply to them legally. But is there a moral ‘Vicarious Responsibility’?
If I extend the thought of moral ‘vicarious responsibility’ to this situation, so many people other than Janhavi should be in that holding cell. Maybe some of them tried to stop her or warn her, maybe one of them offered to drop her, maybe she was adamant, we will never know.
Very often, we feel constrained by what we believe is the social boundary beyond which it becomes embarrassing and feels like we are crossing limits with the individual in question, and we stop ourselves from being too insistent. We stop at suggesting and advising, at requesting and maybe cajoling. We don’t take away the car keys – after all, we need to meet her at work the next morning and she may find our behaviour offensive!
But I know that the next time I go out for a drink with friends, or am in an office party, I will hold myself ‘vicariously responsible’ to prevent any drunken driving; I have been drilling this into Ashwin for him to prevent his friends and colleagues from doing this. I urge each one reading this to also take on the responsibility. Let us consciously and willingly cross the boundary, break the mental barrier of what is considered polite and adequate.
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