We, the people of India - contd.

In my last post I highlighted the failure of law enforcement. What seems unimportant to me after days of observing this failure is that its ultimately us who have led India to such a pathetic state. The scope I am giving to "us" is all the people who, when they saw the failure, thought that it is happening, and did nothing but just stood there watching it. This also was my last post's conclusion.

After over a month's pondering over the answer to our inclination towards inaction, I observed a great vice of human psyche - the one that's impatient. These days Times of India Hyderabad runs a kind of column, where irate citizens pen down their ire in the most lucid manner. I found it an interesting read. I have found myself doing a similar thing at various instances, driving being the most common-est of them all. People complained about (a) Policemen not regulating traffic (b) Municipality not paying their due diligence to the roads (c) The way autowallas take children to schools; and so on. Ultimately, someone also quoted that its because of sheer lack of accountability that is causing the issue. Of course, since no one feels accountable for their inability to take any constructive action, nothing happens to prevent these things.

So what causes this accountability to vanish? Or was it there at the first place? Picture this, one window where bills have to be paid, and 10 people. And people don't bother about others, but to push their bills inside the window. I have seen this happening everywhere. Aren't we accountable for our actions? Aren't we doing something that we are not supposed to? If we are patient for just 5 more minutes, the guy on the other side of the window will also be less frustrated and we can get our work done in a more professional way. But we never learnt that. I heard this a lot when I was child "C'mon man go ahead, if you just stand there, you will be standing there for your life!!".

Why this lack of patience in everything? Aren't we at that place in the queue because we came late? Aren't we behind the truck, because the truck got there earlier? I know there will be a lot of arguments to counter this, lot of things will be said about infrastructure and other stuff. But its true that we cannot wait on red lights, we cannot maintain lanes, we cannot stand in queues, till we become slightly more patient.

In conclusion, self-restraint was the mantra our ancestors lived by. And I consider this greatest paradox of Indian society!!!