Why we break Queues! : Blog # 166

Why we break Queues!

        I was wondering the other day as to why as we as a nation are mostly a bunch of restless people. What makes us so fiercely competitive in a negative way? For instance, we are not really awkward or bothered while breaking a queue. It doesn't make us cringe to throw a towel and make a seat our own in a bus or train. We don’t shy away from rushing past others and getting an airport trolley even if that meant one has to bypass an elderly person. And these are things which are taught to us very early in Life. May be not exactly in such clear terms but the understanding that waiting for your turn might not be the best of ideas in ingrained in us right from childhood.

            Coming to think of it, it appears that these behaviors have got a lot to do with our lack of infrastructure. Over a period we come to understand that if one doesn’t sprang up on an opportunity at the word go, someone else might grab it. Look at our public transport system. The supply here rarely meets the demand especially at the peak hours. Worse are our schools and colleges. However high a student scores, the educational institutions in our major cities fail to accommodate them. The unrealistic cutoffs are not something to be proud of. More so,when the evaluation has more to do with the student’s ability to memorize than his/her ability to apply the knowledge. We should be able to address this issue at least till a graduation level.

            We have come to a situation where when you see adequate infrastructure, we tend to look at it as extravagance! The day we stop looking at infrastructure as an expense, we will see growth in the real sense of the word. It’s like an investment which matures and delivers returns over a period of time. But once it breaks even, it is akin to an Oil field.

       When we pride ourselves as one of the youngest nations in the world, what we conveniently forget is the magnitude of our population. To put things in perspective, Delhi airport handles as much crowd annually as the population of the continent of Australia itself! That shows the size and scale of things at our country and the necessity of having good or at least adequate infrastructure. Roads clogged incessantly by traffic and trains running packed to the rafters are daily indicators of this.

            Rome cannot be built in a day. But I think it is easier to build Rome than expecting people not to break queues and teaching them to be civil!

                                                                                                                        Arun Babu. 

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