Individual Liberty

Individual liberty is one of the major pillars of present-day democracy.  It allows an individual to choose profession of his/her liking, have ones own belief system, voice opinion, etc. Individual freedom allowed many creative individuals to chart out their own paths, which led to tremendous creativity and innovation in modern times.  
The alternative, or the old system, is indeed suffocating, at least for the creative individuals; here the system decides the role of an individual.  It is worth noting that the personal liberty over the rights the state and the church over an individual came after a lot of sacrifice; the charter of “Rights of Man”, which outlined these rights for the first time, is a beautiful document to read.
Ref: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen)
An important question is whether we have Individual liberty or not in India?  I believe that the answer is mixed.  In India, the poor do not have appropriate educational opportunities that could enable them to exercise their choices.  They are essentially engaged in manual labour, which is quite exploitative.  For example, house maids in small town earn 600 Rupees per month from a household.  These laborers are not bonded at present, but their conditions are such that they are not in a position to choose a profession of their liking.  
I will add that the present-day government schemes provide wages and food for labour, but they are not skill and intellect enablers.  These schemes remind us of one of the benevolent kings who took care of the subject’s hunger.   Fulfillment of individual freedom requires skill and mind development along with guaranteed food and shelter.
The rich and the middle class have choices for a profession, much more than what was available 30 years ago.  But are the youth choosing what they like? Even more serious, are they or their parents searching within themselves what they like.  We are told in IIT that the parents put tremendous pressure on children to be successful in a conventional sense (become engineer, doctor, manager), but they hardly bother to find out the natural liking of the children. The students too are enthralled by pay packages and western institutions.  This environment is hardly conducive for exercising individual liberty.  The market that claims to provide freedom enchains individuals with greed.  In the market, we have more brands of toothpaste to choose from.  This choice is good, and it does provide freedom of choice, but it is not the freedom of mind.  I do hope more and more students would realize this, and explore their creative aspects, rather than just chasing packages. 
So far, we discussed about individual liberty.  But how does it contribute to the collective? Since a good collective environment is required for exercising individual liberty, we all need to ensure a healthy collective surrounding.  
The market appears to assume that excellence in individual pursuits would somehow add up to yield a healthy collective.  These thoughts, though very attractive, have many counterexamples.  We cannot afford to keep the house clean and dump the garbage on the streets and environment, but which is happening in both rich and poor countries.  Individually brilliant scholars who quarrel among themselves cannot build a school that is required to solve long problems.  Noninteracting neighbours hardly make a good neighborhood.  Two nice but uncompromising individuals would find hard to knit together a happy family. 

  In times of confusion between individual liberty and social responsibility, an interesting quote in Mahabharata comes to my mind: “For the sake of a village, a family should be sacrificed. For the sake of a “country, a village should be sacrificed. For the sake of the soul (I read individual liberty), the earth should be sacrificed.” (Sec. 27, Dyut Parva).  I believe that this stanza it contains valuable advice.   

In summary, we are in need of an excellent collective environment in which all individuals blossom with freedom, but also share collective responsibilities. A simple dream, yet very hard to achieve!

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