The Awful Indian

Rama Bijapurkar's book - "We are Like that Only" captures a colloquial truth about India. However there is a complacent ring about it. "Accept us as who we are, don't try to change us, we are the best" and therein lies the rub. I have mentioned in these pages before that there is much about India, Indians and Indianness that is less than desirable:

1. Manners - Indians generally display the worst public manners out of many countries that I have experienced. Breaking queues, personal hygeine (peeing in public, spitting), rudeness (don't you know who I am), shouting at hapless subordinates and so forth.
2. Attitude towards Women - Enough has been said in the recent past about our patriarchal society and the awful treatment of women.
3. Corruption - this seems to have seeped into our bones. There is nobody and nothing that is not for sale. Ordinary work is impossible without bribing a long list of people.
4. Violence - The attitude of  "Main tumko dekh loonga" and "Jante nahin main kaun hoon" has been extended into a feeling that disputes can be settled by violence. Perhaps it also symptomatic of the lack of faith that ordinary Indians have in the Police and the Judicial System. We are being increasingly pushed to take the law into our own hands.
5. Work Ethics - Are we really a hardworking people? I don't think so. We always find a way to weasel out of hard work or "beat the system". Aspirations have gone up manifold but there is no commensurate work ethic to justify higher salaries and benefits. A related issue is lying and cheating. We are not above making money or misrepresenting facts to suit our ends if we can get away with it.
6. Poor Management - Many of our big ticket public works and even smaller projects in both the public and private sector suffer from poor management. We claim to have good technical and management education but it does not manifest itself in the work we do.

This is a depressing list but it is reality. One of our failings is that we find it difficult to face upto facts and choose to hide behind platitudes. Accepting faults is not a sign of weakness. On the other hand it lays the foundation for improvement. It is time that we stopped considering ourselves as the heirs of a glorious civilization and instead started focusing on our faults and how to improve them.


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