Friday, April 13, 2007 

North and South are different directions

There is a friend of mine who has been in North India for some time now; he had made a very interesting comment about the general attitude of people in the two halves of the country. He observed that his north Indians colleagues do not take things personally in a professional realtionship.Every body recognizes his position in the strata and does not go through a compelling need to fight supremacy. For example if there is a peon/assistant and he is chided by his superior (could or could not be at fault), he does not take it personally and doesn't put across an ego show. Having been in Chennai since his birth hood, he remarked, an auto driver (example) in Chennai would put across a competing show even when he is at fault or try to hallucinate a notional power element, to establish supremacy.

This was another discreet conversation which I had with my fellow colleague. He was from Ahmadabad and he had observed as to how a server in Chennai thinks that he is doing a favor by serving him and does not see an obsession to serve the customer better for whatever he pays. I would not deny it for I have experienced such disgusting moments when the server piles agony into me when he needs to be doing his duty for whatever is paid. I would not ask them to leave their self-respect in the process of doing their duty, for I would never loose it in any case.Arrogance, negligence and Self-respect are very different things.


I know that Mumbai is totally a different place when it comes to duty when a service is provided; Bangalore is okay, Chennai a notch down and Kolkotaaa (Oh My Godddd!!!).I thing this more to do with the culture /attitude prevalent in the society. I don’t whether I can really extrapolate this to the entrepreneurship which is based on the ability to see business opportunities and serve the customer with utmost diligence. I also feel that education is certainly a prime component when it comes to boosting ones self-respect and invoking a sense to appreciating egalitarian values. North India for sure has more successful entrepreneurs than South India. South India is for sure, has more literacy levels and they tend to offer their professional services.

Labels:

Wednesday, April 04, 2007 

Good, Bad and the Ugly

This post is based on the arguments which I have had with many people in the recent weeks, all fierecly fought to contemplate reality as and when it colludes with our own boundaries.We fought like every other evanlegist who fights for the supremacy of his ideology.

I had a long heated dialogue with my fellow colleague after my last post which kind of kissed the issue of tax paying.My intensiom was not to make a moral judgement as to whether paying or managing taxes was right or wrong.I don't believe in defining good or bad, neither do i think we can do it, it is more defined by the individual and the prevailing social construct.

I was arguing for the validity of the liberty we take, to break our own rules which configure good or bad.We can't shout foul when we ourselves don't follow the "guidelines" which we set to judge other's action.We can't blame our politicians for corruption when we can't pay our taxes properly (Infact, a salaried person effectively pays only around 15-20% of his total gross salary which is quite afforable I guess). Either we shall accept that we are as corrupt as they are and stop the blame game or atleast we don't break the rules of the game which govern our own judgement to even judge others.We always seek accepted "excuses" to substatiate our deviation.

There is this other argument that we can always comment on what is right or wrong inspite of our own actions.A chain smoker can always plead a new smoker to refrain from smoking and it could be out of genuine concern.I feel that the probabilty of the new smoker taking the advice prevails in a case of a chain smoker who has quit it compared to an existing smoker who himself can't quit it.

The other common stereotyping is that people who drink, smoke and use foul language, inherently have bad elements ornated in their character.I can vouch, I know people who drink and are inherently good compared to people who have "excellent " habits and disgusting abilities to hurt.Suprisingly, both the species are equally dispersed in the society.I did observe something, the "goodies" who follow "good" virtues have an unconscious ability to have a superior feeling and nuture an ability to use that "image" to conduct otherwise non-advisable acts (Infact, I observed this condescending feeling arise in me when I am proud of a "good" virtue defined by me).

I would not deny the fact that drinking murkes the brain and in overdozed cases provokes socially ( or personally) not acceptable acts.I have to make a deliberation here, we need to ascertain as to whether drinking perse invokes the otherwise "don't do" acts or that we simply take the "mask of booze" to script our otherwise "don't do acts".Is it a conscious effort to findle with our ulterior intensions by finding the scapegoat in the form of drinking?.

I need to comment on this phenomeon of SMS opinion polls and passing whole hearted moral judgements using the same data.If you want to know what I think about these things." Why don't the f**king news channels confine their their role to analysing news and giving their opinion and let the individuals take the bloody judgement on it.Who the f**k has given the media the libery to pass judgements when most of the people responding to the same are ignorant of the underlying issues or they are simply skew-brained by the thoughts plugged by the discussion panel or just that they simply respond to the emotional outcries waving rationality.

Labels:

World as I Think is powered by Blogspot and Gecko & Fly.
No part of the content or the blog may be reproduced without prior written permission.
First Aid and Health Information at Medical Health