[ruskinash]

I've been thinking about this for too long, and I'm keen for some sliver of understanding. I have observed that we (Indians) have zero awareness of our surroundings. And here is a list of everything that exemplifies that behaviour.

1. We stand in the doorways blocking the path.
2. We have loud conversations in public, without a care for who or what is around us.
3. We honk on school or hospital premises.
4. We let our loud mobile ringtones play their course until we decide whether to answer.
5. We stare! Lengthy, uncomfortable stares, especially at foreigners.

There could be numerous other examples, but my question is: What makes us behave this way, without consideration for anyone around us?
Is it our culture?

[para_7k]

Indians, in general lack Civic sense. Apart from the points you mentioned above, there are plenty of other examples. Entering an already crowded elevator, talking and laughing loudly in the elevator, forming a horizontal line, spitting in public places and much more.

I have never been able to find the root cause. It's probably that the behaviour is carried across generations. Some people say that it's because we do not pay attention to Moral science at school compared to Mathematics, Physics etc., I am not able to buy that as a reason.

Disobedience, Indiscipline and Lack of civic sense are somethings deeply rooted in our culture. It would take generations of change in mindset to see even little improvements.



Sadly, I may not live long enough to see it. I hope atleast the forthcoming generation is able to.

Peace.

[for_cars1]

Originally Posted by ruskinash

... I have observed that we (Indians) have zero awareness of our surroundings. ...

.... What makes us behave this way, without consideration for anyone around us?
Is it our culture?

Its mainly due to our educational system, where social etiquettes, empathy, courtesy, personal hygiene, awareness of safety norms, adherence to traffic rules, basic civic sense, environmental preservation and keeping surroundings clean are not taught right from the young age in a systemic manner in primary schools, unlike many countries where such aspects are practically taught to kids right from kindergarten.

Our education system is tuned towards learning by rote, in a very thereotical setup with less practical aspects that only aims to prepare students to get an edge over their counterparts in mindless competitive exams so that they can win a mindless rat race and endup in a salaried job and get through life.
The education system is a hangover from the Britishcolonial design where the intention of education was to create as many babus/clerks (who are ingrained to obey orders like a robot without creative thinking) to work for the British.

Our education system needs to be completely overhauled to become holistic and multi-faceted with practical oriented learning.
Nothing that is needed in real life are taught to children in schools in India such as knowledge of finance, civic sense, etiquettes, road safety and respecting rules.

From personal experience, I can proudly say that Indians are the most kind, considerate, flexible, harmless, creative, and empathetic people at heart in the whole word, compared to any other nation

Just an example of how things are in Japan for example (and many other nations)
Japanese elementary school sample lesson/

Just change our education system for the better as mentioned above and in 16 years time, the emerging generation will be much aware and enlightened lot.

[madhukarmohan]

I feel that these issues are not unique to India; they are in most of the South Asian nations and, more broadly, many under developed (and developing) nations/regions.

Sadly, these issues are unlikely to change anytime soon. For example, I have observed parents riding bikes with their children without helmets and breaking other numerous traffic rules.

[am1m]

Instead of looking it from the thread title (which IMHO will lead to a debate that will have no real conclusion), let's see if we can understand what are the conditions that allow people to behave better in public.

Two things I can think of are:

* Some penalty for breaking rules, that always works. It's not enough to have the rules in place, enforcement is essential.
* Enough resources, so one can afford to be gracious and wait for their turn, without breaking rules, secure in the knowledge that one's turn will come.

Right now, we're slowly seeing the latter in some aspects of our lives here and then only in some parts of the country and for a small part of the population. But even then, that is still a new-enough phenomenon for most of us not to trust that it's going to be consistent. The best example I can think of is the rush for the Bangalore Metro. The trains doors remain open for long enough, at peak hours there will be another train in just 4 minutes. Yet, educated and well-off people who use the Metro everyday still feel the need to run for a train, and then push and enter. Why?

So in addition to these two, I think that the two conditions need to be met for a generation or two, and only then this sort of behavior becomes ingrained and part of the culture.

[richie4u]

Sigh, if only I could pen down all the erratic and mind numbing irritating habits of our fellow countrymen, I think I'd probably be crowd surfed right to the nearest international border by them!

The one I get to experience almost every month on my flights in and out of my state, our people love to que! When I mean que, I mean push-shove and jump lines just to either get in or get out the second the plane touches down. I never understood this logic. It is'nt so that the plane will leave without you if you are last in the que or again it isn't so that your bags will arrive on the carousel any faster if you bolt out of the plane as soon as you touch down then why tire yourself people?

When families fly together, talking loudly, passing food, laughing and cracking jokes across rows is another irritant specially when they are not seating together! I get it that you might be a large group going together but I insist that you take the trouble of getting seats in a line so that others are not inconvenienced.

[varunswnt]

Originally Posted by para_7k

Entering an already crowded elevator, talking and laughing loudly in the elevator

Not holding/waiting lift for someone at distant, not making space to allow people to enter lift, not stepping out to let others get out from lift. These are few more I would like to add to our lacking lift etiquette. Shows how unfriendly we are in general to other people.

[Quatro]

I don't want to particularly disagree with your reply. However, I felt that it did not highlight the role of parents and teaching children such things at home. They are going to follow the lead of the parents and all the elders in the house have to demonstrate correct behavior and attitude for our next generation to imbibe it.

I also felt that there is no mention on the thread so far on our habit to litter things and dump waste wherever we find it expedient. We as a group don't have the courtesy to take an extra effort and dispose it in waste bins or other designated spots. It's a very pathetic sight.

It needs a mindset change of everyone to follow the right behaviour.

Originally Posted by for_cars1

Its mainly due to our educational system, where social etiquettes, empathy, courtesy, personal hygiene, awareness of safety norms, adherence to traffic rules, basic civic sense, environmental preservation and keeping surroundings clean are not taught right from the young age in a systemic manner in primary schools, unlike many countries where such aspects are practically taught to kids right from kindergarten.

lot.

[kochup]

Originally Posted by ruskinash

I've been thinking about this for too long, and I'm keen for some sliver of understanding. I have observed that we (Indians) have zero awareness of our surroundings. And here is a list of everything that exemplifies that behaviour.


There could be numerous other examples, but my question is: What makes us behave this way, without consideration for anyone around us?
Is it our culture?

A probable reason is a combination of our huge population with diverse economic backgrounds vying for limited resources because of which all of us (most) are in a competition from the day we are born. Because of this competition, any sign of goodwill, courtesy etc. are counted as weaknesses and are exploited.

In short, a very quickly offended & politically correct group of people are competing against a group of people who don't care as long as they are not personally affected.

[NomadSK]

Let me add few more to the list;

6. Jumping the line,
7. Crazy driving on public roads,
8. Spitting anywhere,
9. Pushing each other,
10. No idea of personal space,
11. Being abusive and rude to others at the drop of hat,
12. The new entry is for scamming these days,
13. Calling anyone anytime without giving a 2 hoot about it,
14. "Yes Sir" toxic culture at work,
15. Throwing garbage in open,
16. Least empathy towards other human beings,
17. Crazy fan following for lowest IQ level people,
18. Media frenzy - When SRK can be the brand ambassador of study platform,
19. Not setting correct examples and being right role models for the next generation,
20. Total disregard to safety,
21. Highly racist (best is they don't even realize), even a Jobs ad wants someone "fair",
22. Giving unnecessary suggestions,
23. Taking pictures where it is clearly mentioned not to take one,
24. Words like "Please", "Sorry" and "Thank-you" are so alien words,
25. Greasing palms,
26. Wrong side driving, high speed driving and being macho about it.

And the list would go on and on;

Reason (In my opinion) - We have grown up in an environment where all this is "OK", by the time we realize, these have become a natural and integral behavior for us, eventually we become a part of this toxic system. Another reason, being a poor nation in general, I feel that everyone is in the "struggle mode" and fighting for his livelihood, that we forget these basic nuances of life. It's high time we first start making better human beings rather than producing better engineers.

Silver lining - The next generation is too particular about most of these misadventures, so we are heading in the right direction, a generation or two down the line, most of these diseases will be eradicated for good. I get an eye roll from my kid for speaking loudly on the phone.

[SideSwipe]

There was one recent incident which left me furious. I live in heart of Chennai near famous Gemini flyover which is standing tall since 1974. My residence is very close to the flyover which is a landmark in its own and I always take great pride in saying I stay near Gemini. Recently Chennai corporation was investing huge amounts in beautification of the flyover on the occasion of its 50-year anniversary and I was regularly monitoring the progress and was quite elated. Slowly and steadily progress was made - Pillars were redesigned, warm lighting was installed, side walls were redesigned, lawns and greenary were created in the spaces underneath the bridge and the monuments were installed and refurbished. I was a joy looking at the progress made on a daily basis. A few weeks back, the entire exterior was given a cream-coloured painting and that combined with the warm lighting it was looking gorgeous in night. The very next morning when I was driving through, I could see the pan stains in the newly painted bridge and the same repeated for the next few days that the entire portion of the bridge was so shabby. By the pattern or rather the art created by pan stains, I could make out that it was one person who is doing it while driving through that place. I fumed within. I really was procrastinating that we govt should install and CCTV camera, track down that person and give him a nice bashing. But over the next few days I could see that the others followed suite and that place not became a spitting place. WHY PEOPLE WHY????

[ABHI_1512]

Originally Posted by for_cars1

Our education system needs to be completely overhauled to become holistic and multi-faceted with practical oriented learning.

Just change our education system for the better as mentioned above and in 16 years time, the emerging generation will be much aware and enlightened lot.

Absolutely agree with you on the overhauling of the education part. School education must impart empathy and respect for fellow human beings and should also include imparting the knowledge about the dignity of labour. But in my view, only education is not enough and this behavioural trait is more deep rooted in the psyche of people which makes people behave the way they do. Members have already mentioned many instances of boorish behaviour, so I am not going into those.

The behaviour pattern is also indicative of the certain system in India which I will not mention explicitly here. I have often seen people who are not literate behave nicely and adhering to the norms while people who are literate often are the most boorish. I will just narrate an incident which happened few days back and involved educated young Indians in my city of Calcutta.

People might have heard of the famous street food Kathi Rolls of Calcutta which is a sort of parantha stuffed with something and wrapped with papers. So there is this famous roll shop which has put large dustbins in front the shop so that people throw the discarded papers inside the dustbin. And there it was, two young educated English speaking boys were throwing the papers just outside the bin despite being just beside. I accosted them and just ticked them off saying they should be throwing the paper inside the dustbin in a very polite manner. Their reply was- someone will clean up , not my lookout and that I shouldn’t be lecturing them.

And then I realised- they were coming from the position of privilege which makes them believe that somebody is there to clean up. Same mindset is with the people who spit gutka and pan stains over freshly painted surfaces. They know that someone will clean up . The same people will go abroad and avoid doing the same thing. So it’s not education alone.

I can give innumerable examples of situations when I have felt disgusted by the behaviour of people around me. For example, there was this person travelling in an AC two tier who was throwing garbage continuously under his seat and making the clean compartment dirty. When ticked off, he also came up with the same reply- if I don’t create garbage, what will the rag pickers eat ? I couldn’t be more amused !

It will take a monumental effort to change this mentality and that’s the sad part. Going by what’s happening around us, I don’t see anything will change at all !!

[fhdowntheline]

Its been 77 years since we became a political entity called India, although true unified identity of a democratic republic occurred a few years later. At that point of time, we inherited from the British the following:
1) a largely urban but well functioning road infrastructure.
2) A fairly widespread education system up to college levels.
3) Fairly advanced technologies for transport, communication.
4) A complex but well structured administrative set up.
5) Most important- a common language for business , social communication and administration-English!
6) A constitutional governance structure, although it had many other elements from other countries as well.
They could have easily ravaged and bombed out the country before leaving, making us worse than some African and Asian nations. China was in much worse state than we were back in the day. Japan was of course, devastated. Look at where those two are right now.
In my humble opinion, it is very difficult for a complex, heterogenous cultural region like the Indian subcontinent to imbibe the kind of social discipline that other countries have been able to adopt. Socially and culturally, we have been at conflict within, constantly, even since 1947. Hindi vs South languages, lower vs upper caste, religion vs religion etc.
This whole "unity in diversity" slogan is a myth that needs to be debunked forthwith. It only works in the armed forces because there is a basic element of discipline that has incidentally been also inherited from the British.
In fact, I think the only strata amongst which there is "less" of a conflict is between economic strata. People are fairly aligned to their respective economic status-otherwise we would have looted each other to oblivion.
Until we aspire for a unified society with a common language of communication, education and administration, where faith and culture are by law, strictly a personal aspect of our lives, and economic wellbeing is the sole objective within that social framework, we cannot hope to come any close to the social discipline that other countries have achieved.

[AMG Power]

Put a Speed Limit sign in India - no one will follow it.

Put a Speed limit fine - some will follow it.

Put a big speed breaker - everyone will slow down for it.

The only way to get Indians to follow anything is to have a punitive measure that affects the individual immediately.

This is because the vast majority of Indians do not have self discipline and will never follow any rule that does not have a harsh punitive measure.

The root cause of the indiscipline is the failure of our systems of government as democracy is a form of self rule - how can indisciplined individuals rule themselves?

77 years of Democracy has proven it to be a complete D I S A S T E R and now is degenerating itself into a form of self aggrandizement (by some with the help of goons too) - no different from the kings of yore. Add to this the means of additional self aggrandizement bestowed on a few wealthy individuals.

Let us accept we are not capable nor competent to rule ourselves as required by democracy. We probably need a hard iron fisted RULER to bring in discipline. Sure, some freedom will be lost, but the discipline will be worth it.

On another note maybe AI should take over governance. And maybe it will someday. The parliaments can then be turned into museums to show future generations what a mess we used to make of ourselves.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by AMG Power

We probably need a hard iron fisted RULER to bring in discipline. Sure, some freedom will be lost, but the discipline will be worth it.
.

I would take the democracy with unruly behaviour any time over a dictator.

Never ever knock freedom and democracy. In practice it’s far from perfect, but still a lot better than other alternatives in my opinion.

Jeroen