A trip to India after two years; with expectations of not many changes, yes my country did not disappoint me. The only shocking change to me was the skyrocketing inflation, which put the commoners under pressure for their daily bread.
Well it was rejoicing to meet friends and family after a long time. But there were some pinches which I would like to discuss, and that’s the whole point of this post.
In the west you are used to treat everyone with more or less with the same respect and attitude. The difference is huge in India; this is not something new as we know. But what happens when you try to show the same mentality of equal respect and attitude towards people in India, I happened to encounter several occasions where I was feeling that I’m the one left behind with setback. I can quote some example(s) to plot the frame in your mind.
I went in to a restaurant with my friends for dinner, for the first time I felt that my friends were rustic. The way my friends treated the waiters and service men of the restaurant, was hurting my feelings. My friend would say, “Bring this dish immediately”, “won’t you tell beforehand this dish is going to take so long to prepare”, “Make it fast”, and all this with the body language, for which I have no excuses. I didn’t want to comment on this act, as I felt I would be cornered by saying look at this bugger from the USA.
As a next example, I go in to dine with my relatives and the same experience; even worse. I was just holding my words and waiting to tell them not to play bosses.
But the worse stuff is when I tried to be a polite and nice guy. I would go by “Please, Thank you” and with due respect and patience for the service men to answer. I would listen and respond when I get my turn and make them comfortable by my words; so as not to trickle the feeling of servility in them. In return what I got was an improper response; they did not mind listening to me. But they did quick and good service for those who show the bossy attitude towards them. I could not stop getting frustrated couple of times, as I expected a good service in return for the way I treated. I was told to wait for a long time; as I saw the dishes going to the nearby tables, which was occupied only later. I was even convincing myself what if the nearby tables were advance bookings, but I confirmed that they were not. I spoke to couple of auto rickshaw men by being a polite and nice guy, for what I was taken for granted and fooled with more service charges.
My thought, why didn’t people respond properly as I expected, is something wrong in the society and system? If I recall the Indian history correctly, we were ruled for over 200 – 300 years by the Mughals and later by the British. This had changed our mindset to behave the way we are today, with servile attitude.
I wouldn’t again generalize this (knew only some of you could be in consensus with me), as there have been tremendous changes in the attitude of the Indian people, but there is lots more left to change.
As the land of Gandhigiri people should realize that love should be the force and the language of communication for the day today things to work.
Showing posts with label Indian society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indian society. Show all posts
Friday, December 12, 2008
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Indian information system. A model for decay...
India a land well known for its variety; in cultures, food, languages, and plethora of other things, is a developing economy!. As one of the earliest parts of the world to be inhabited and civilized; why is it the country still struggling to be claimed as a developed nation?
A primary reason for any country's development is; it's people and their attitude. Having said all of it, let me come to the crux.
Let me walkthrough my analysis of India's information handling, which I believe is a critical issue then and now...
Indians are attributed for their tremendous contributions to mathematics and science in the ancient age. I wrote couple of blog posts in this context earlier- (Newton and India, math and India go hand in hand)
And where did the continuation of these contributions go? Why have we lost the fame that we were acclaimed once?
With this question in mind, let's look deeper to the roots of the issue.
Now I am going in to a totally different spectrum, the CASTE system. Division of people, the divide is so much that we Indians have lost a major pie in the world's contributions list-how?. The caste system created mutliple groups; dividing people. People of various castes stopped interaction and sharing things. This means blocking the passage of INFORMATION.
A key to the development of any country "Information Information Information", it is all about this. "If not for Google who can process the world's information Google would have been some xyz (Tom Dick and Harry) company". ( I know this is out of the track, just to highlight the importance of information)
The vedas, terrific piece of work was restricted to only a few percentage of the people. So is many other brilliant work. Though few of the findings and work were spread, the teachings of experimentation and creations were never passed from one community to the other, there by stopping the information flow. People who created things stayed on top and the rest were using it. (People started blindly following what their upper caste told them, foolish faith without any rationale nor questioning). The so called rest of the people remained rest of the people and did not raise, rather were not allowed to raise.
Now why would some one want to do this?
The mentality would have been to be dominant and stay on top and that would make them think they are close to god. And hence arose the thought that; if the information of how to experiment passed would be adopted by the rest and then each one would try something there by making the dominant people not dominant any more. In reality as we know the real growth of one's own is to help others grow.
What should they have done?
Instead what the ancient Indians should have done is keep up the good work of creativity ticking, while passing on the information to everyone.
End result:
The very same notion of "not passing information, and stay on top", propagated inside the dominant community, paving for creating more and more sub-communities. And ended up in individuals who kept the marvelous findings and things to themselves. An by the end of their time, the great work and findings were lost. (Only a handful of the findings were passed on).
So the bottom line; to end the post is "we stopped the passage of information, which lead us stale".
The reason for this post is not to blame our ancestors, just trying to analyze a whole lot of different issues together.
A primary reason for any country's development is; it's people and their attitude. Having said all of it, let me come to the crux.
Let me walkthrough my analysis of India's information handling, which I believe is a critical issue then and now...
Indians are attributed for their tremendous contributions to mathematics and science in the ancient age. I wrote couple of blog posts in this context earlier- (Newton and India, math and India go hand in hand)
And where did the continuation of these contributions go? Why have we lost the fame that we were acclaimed once?
With this question in mind, let's look deeper to the roots of the issue.
Now I am going in to a totally different spectrum, the CASTE system. Division of people, the divide is so much that we Indians have lost a major pie in the world's contributions list-how?. The caste system created mutliple groups; dividing people. People of various castes stopped interaction and sharing things. This means blocking the passage of INFORMATION.
A key to the development of any country "Information Information Information", it is all about this. "If not for Google who can process the world's information Google would have been some xyz (Tom Dick and Harry) company". ( I know this is out of the track, just to highlight the importance of information)
The vedas, terrific piece of work was restricted to only a few percentage of the people. So is many other brilliant work. Though few of the findings and work were spread, the teachings of experimentation and creations were never passed from one community to the other, there by stopping the information flow. People who created things stayed on top and the rest were using it. (People started blindly following what their upper caste told them, foolish faith without any rationale nor questioning). The so called rest of the people remained rest of the people and did not raise, rather were not allowed to raise.
Now why would some one want to do this?
The mentality would have been to be dominant and stay on top and that would make them think they are close to god. And hence arose the thought that; if the information of how to experiment passed would be adopted by the rest and then each one would try something there by making the dominant people not dominant any more. In reality as we know the real growth of one's own is to help others grow.
What should they have done?
Instead what the ancient Indians should have done is keep up the good work of creativity ticking, while passing on the information to everyone.
End result:
The very same notion of "not passing information, and stay on top", propagated inside the dominant community, paving for creating more and more sub-communities. And ended up in individuals who kept the marvelous findings and things to themselves. An by the end of their time, the great work and findings were lost. (Only a handful of the findings were passed on).
So the bottom line; to end the post is "we stopped the passage of information, which lead us stale".
The reason for this post is not to blame our ancestors, just trying to analyze a whole lot of different issues together.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)