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... but I am sure many of us here look at it from the point of view of "why are we like this", and "how can this get better".

Why?

• Extreme sense of freedom because of general lack of enforcement. Law and Order infrastructure comes into play only if these brawls and misbehaviors lead to blood or death. Till that point, its mostly between you and me. Community I live in has a good number of foreigners from the western world. Just like most of us behave well when we go live or drive in the developed world, I notice that a good number of resident guests from the west readily take to misusing this extreme sense of freedom while they are here!
• Lack of collective wisdom, which in my opinion comes from family or own-house or car being the largest boundary we draw around our circle of well being-ness. All else is enemy, and must not be cared for. I don't know where this has come from (it will take a book to explain this), but the little that I have analyzed it probably is a result of deep mistrust we have developed amongst each other via the feudal setup of our society, or shall I say the majority religion. The extreme sense of freedom too is possibly something we inherit from our majority religion. I think that in these modern times, we have taken the strong sense of individuality bit a little too far.
• Us being so used to shortages, low supply-high demand setups and mismanagement creates this strong sense of competitiveness.

How to fix?

• Small measures to reduce the sense of competition. Grades and not ranks in schools. No entrance tests, rather interviews + grades system for applying to colleges and jobs. Orderly systems to reserve seats and places in all places where there could be more demand than supply (bus, train seats, queues in banks etc) - but this would border on the subject of enforcement.
• Instituting group awards. Best community in Bangalore as opposed to Bangalorean of the year - that type of thing.
• I have absolutely no more ideas, I am totally lost in this maize of possible explanations for our general lack of civility and behavior.

Ravi, thats the best I can come up with to supplement this useless rant about us, and the way we live.

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An interesting read with a global perspective. Can't think of anything else to add to what's already been said.

http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2006/07/polite.php

--amaku

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I've seen many scenarios in Bangalore, where mis-communication or non-communication is the start of many arguments.

At a supermarket, a customer was trying to check out, when half way through the billing the teller man, walked off without saying a word. When he came back, he brough a few packets of change. A simple "Excuse me, i need to get some change" would have helped the customers patience.

But somehow in our culutre the words. "Sorry", "thank You," seem to be missed out. How often do we say "Thanks" to the doorman and a restuarant? Is this got to do with class - is it inherently the cause for the reason for non communication?

Language is another cause for arguments. A person doesnt speak the others language and though he in no way means to, sounds extremly rude. Phone executives, billing counters, simple daily tasks can be made better if we ust spoke, and smiled.

For example, at a railway booking counter, if you actaully smile and thank the lady/man at the conter he gives a puzzled look at you! But when flying an airline - you are always smiled at! Again, what is it that differentiates such service? Similar case with Banks, go to Canara Bank, and try opening an account and then try doing the same at HSBC. You feel so much better when people smile and talk to you.

Root cause, I think is that we need to talk, smile and say thank you a bit more to each other!

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The only cure to our rash behaviour is education. We have to include civic behaviour classes at primary schools - the best time to mould children. Even colleges need to have a few classes on driving etiquette. Texas sometime had a "Defenceless Driving" campaign and it did work. On my part, i go tired of requesting people in Bengaluru not to use 'High Beam'. My friends make fun of me asking how many people can i lecture everyday? Well, i just cannot give up. Call it an evangelical streak in me, but i try my best to request people not to use 'High Beam'. Using 'High Beam' is illegal and is to be only used for a warning and during heavy fog conditions. A K Ramanujan, the famous scholar and litrateur, termed that Indias have a "context sensitive" way of thinking. This means our morality is only context sensitive. We follow rules only when they mean something to us. It may sound horrifying, but consider this - in our nation of more than 1 billion plus people, we manage to stay united to a great extent and grow economically. We can only take baby steps towards "standardisation" of rules and expected behaviour. And education can be a good catalyst towards this. Perhaps even speed up the process.

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quite useless really, but sorry cant resist this .. ... me and a freind of mine had an interesting discussion the other day. In our culture, if we accidentally step on somebody or bump into somebody, we have a gesture which symbolically touches their feet and then our forehead, kind of saying sorry. Very nice gesture, better than saying sorry in my opinon. But the point that my freind brought up was the very same people would shove and push in the bus. So are they just hypocrites, or is it that it gets impractial in a bus, or is it just the enviorement stresses them out so they have no time for niceties or ... ... you go to a shop where the guy smiles at you and talks very pleasantly and is freindly till you are out of the shop and then talks to the next person very pleasantly and is freindly and then to the next day in and day out OR you go to a shop where the person is sometimes nice, sometimes indifferent, sometimes rude, makes better freinds with some people and doesnt make freinds with some, basically is himself as is .... .... every culture has a concept of personal space. For Americans for eg: it is 3 feet, anybody within that space they start feeling uncomfortable (unless they want the person in that intimate space), for europeans 2 feet and indians -1 feet, in this age of globalisation, should this also get standardised ...

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