There has been so much talk about this for many decades. My grouse is that we will continue talking about this for many more years - and yet, perhaps, do nothing about it. What prompted me to write this piece was the well-written article in The Times of India recently by Harsh Goenka, a well-known Indian industrialist.
Goenka was in Europe recently and was shocked to see how some Indian visitors behaved in public in Switzerland. He was ashamed. And he was concerned as to what kind of ‘image of India’ would be projected by these groups of Indians. Of course, these are only ‘some’ of the Indian tourists – not all. But even so. This is enough to create a ‘brand’ described simply as – ‘from India’.
It is also reported that there is a sizable increase in the number of Indians travelling abroad on holiday over the past few years, both to the west and to the east. Which makes the problem an even bigger one than it may have been with smaller groups of tourists.
Goenka talked about an Indian group visiting Vietnam, which performed a large group dance in a public square at the Vietnam airport - all with costumes and make-up as well as with a band. This caused great disruption and unhappiness with the people around, who were inconvenienced. The dancers themselves and the musicians did not care - especially the drummers. They do this all the time in India and no one complains. It is tolerated!
I remember 20 years ago, I requested the band going down our lane (too slowly) in Mumbai to reduce the sound of the drums. Their response was: Does this road belong to you? (said defiantly in Hindi) This is the attitude that prevails - but it is about time that it is confronted.
Goenka also talks about the high decibels at which Indians talk in public places in Europe, creating wild chaos in restaurants and bars where the happy holiday group might have landed! Any attempt to request them to lower the sound levels will receive the same response that I received to my complaint down my road in Mumbai.
I think about the time I was in the queue, waiting to check in at a hotel in Chicago. Suddenly, an Indian couple with two children turned up and went straight to the reception counter – consciously ignoring the queue – and insisted that they be checked in immediately because they couldn’t wait at the end of the long line! All the people in the queue (most of whom were Americans) were shocked at this behaviour. You could see it from their faces, but they seemed to keep their cool and did not complain. I thought they then looked at me as if to say, ‘You are one of them’!
I am reminded of people stopping on the roadside in India to relieve themselves without any concern for passersby, or by people spitting on the streets, just as you come along them on the footpath. I once had somebody spit from the top of a bus at the bus stop in my suburb, just as I was passing by. We see the red-stained stairway corners at many of our commercial buildings; people driving expensive cars like Volvo and Mercedes have stopped at a red light at a traffic junction, opened the door for just a minute to spit out paan on the road itself. (On 26th June, a cab driver assaulted an 80-year-old passenger because the latter had requested him not to spit out on the road from the car. The passenger had to be hospitalised!)
And in cities, large and small, people carelessly throw water and juice empties—plastic bottles or even tins—out of running cars onto the side of the road. And it is so difficult to clean these roadsides in our cities which stretch for many, many miles!
All this is due to a lack of training in the home in etiquette or real consideration for others. This is combined with a high level of illiteracy in the country (still high after so many decades). And this is a toxic combination.
India has a very high use of mobile phones. The users are from the very rich to even sections of the poor. How can we use the mobile phone as an instrument to change the behaviour of people? Waiting to get this done through schools and school education will take a long time. Doing it through social media may be the quickest way and will help to change the image of the country to those who visit as tourists to see one of the great nations of the new world - one of the key creators of the new world economy.
As a management consultant for 40 years working across many countries, besides India, in Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia, I have found many instances where my clients have lost opportunities to collaborate with foreign collaborators. It has nothing to do with finance or technology. It has only something to do with a breakdown in ‘empathetic connection’, because of ignorance of protocol. But I will deal with this in the next article.
(Walter Vieira is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants of India - FIMC. He was a successful corporate executive for 14 years, capping his career as Head of marketing for a Pharma multinational, for India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka- and then pioneered marketing consulting in India in 1975. As a consultant, he has worked across four continents. He was the first Asian elected Chairman of ICMCI, the world apex body of consultants in 45 countries, in 1997. He is the author of 16 books, a business columnist, an international conference speaker and has been a visiting professor in Marketing in the US, Europe, and Asia for over 40 years. He was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award for Consulting in 2005, and for Marketing in 2009. He now spends much of his time in NGO work - Consumer Education and Research Centre, IDOBRO, and some others.)
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