Have u noticed that whenever a meeting is convened it is taken for granted in our country that it will start 30 min to an hour later and the people start trickling in only after 15 min of the scheduled start of the meeting. Some how I feel this is a uniquely Indian thing and hence the apt name.
Even the people who convene the meeting keep this in mind and hence call the meeting an hour before they actually need to start, making leeway for this Indian Stretchable Time. The most common dialogue is “array yaar u call them at 6 then only will we start by 7”. There seems to be some excellent dark humor in there to me. Or as something marketing people would say “backward integration”..... Instead of looking to find a solution for the punctuality you are actually working backwards to make leeway for that unpunctual nature.
I think this topic is worthy of a research study. Why Indians en masse take unpunctuality as granted? Has it been in our genes for all these generations or is it a more recent trend we find. If it has been in our genes for generations then we seriously need to look into ways of getting rid of this nature in us especially in a time when we are integrating with the global economy in such a big way. All other people rate punctuality very high in their scheme of things for doing business. Some of them might even tolerate incompetence for punctuality.Time is so important for them.
Even when some of our exporters get business from abroad they quote the fastest delivery date to bag the orders whereas they expect to be late by some time with a million excuses later on. This brings a bad name to the entire nation. Our goods have been blacklisted due to lack of adherence to the L/C documents and other contractual agreements.
But this ain’t the funniest thing….These very Indian the moment they leave their shores for another country are the most punctual people of all….they reach their workplaces or meeting 10 minutes earlier. And this goes true not only in following the time but also following the rules and regulations laid down by the respective countries. Indians who spit all over the place in their own country will swallow the same thing in Singapore…the very govt employees of Kerala who go for strike for a couple of months bringing the state machinery to its knees take long leaves from their jobs and go to the Gulf and work 14 hours a day without overtime….these are just a few eg.Im sure ur getting the point by now.
We some how have to get this nature of not following acceptable social norms and etiquettes out of our collective system. Just take a drive any day of the week in any city of the country and you see with what gross impertinence the drivers break all traffic rules in the book. We always seem to blame the system. We say that we wouldn’t be breaking the rules if the traffic cops weren’t so corrupt to let us go with a small fine for their pockets. But that’s like a top down approach to do things. We all go and watch movies like RDB(that Rang De Basanti) and other patriotic movies and come our feeling all cleansed and thinking that we can make a huge difference to our country but the next thing we do is take our bikes and park it in a No Parking zone to have vada pav and a smoke. If we want to make big changes in our country we have to start with the small changes in our habits. Incorporate in us the need to follow the simple rules and regulations and then we can go and do bigger things like fighting the corrupt system. That more like a bottom up approach for me.
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