India is full of “HYPER” respecting people. Right from birth we are taught to respect elders, teachers, people of status, etc. Unfortunately we are not taught to respect people by their actions or by the work that they do. Thus, we are blind to the real attributes in human beings that deserve respect. We really don’t respect the individuality of our children; we don’t respect our house-help because according to us they are doing a pride-less job; thus we don’t respect people based on their credibility. We only respect those who are famous or rich, although they may have a bad nature, be unlawful, rude or cunning; whereas a bold middle class person’s good qualities may be overlooked or shunned. This in turn also means we don’t respect the people that don’t fall in these preconceived categories.
Imagine the side effects of this system, we are so culturally trained to respect elders and people with status that we can never criticize them, we can never have a non biased opinion of them as that would mean being disrespectful and is not appreciated in Indian society. Often a question is asked why Indian youth is so passive; it is only because of our respectful nature. Face it we are never taught that elders can also be wrong and can be told they are wrong. However, this system works perfectly well with our politicians. They would never want to change this system as the only reason that they are where they are is because the aam janta (common man) out of fear respects them and never assert their flaws.
In Mumbai it’s common among the rich and niche kids to say “we deserve ___________, we can afford to _________, how dare he_________” By deserve they mean we deserve to not stand in queues; we can afford to break the laws, and how dare he talk to me like that doesn’t he know whose son I am... Somehow the respect is self conquered and the society lets them. This is impossible in any other country except India, here a rich man’s kid is treated better than a middle class man’s kid; this is just because Indians are tuned to blindly respect.
Respect is drowning the “Credit Based System.” Think of Baba Saheb Ambedkar, he had started reservation for SC and ST people for their upliftment but he didn’t think of the other large 90% of the population that suffers and suicides because of this 10%. His reservation system has made it impossible for a 98% student to get a medical seat because a 62% SC/ST student from an affluent family in entitled to that seat blindly under the law. When will our nation realize every law becomes obsolete and every law needs to be changed and reformed, especially when it is not serving its purpose.
Are we proud of what we do? Do we really strive for perfection and excellence? This is another problem that reaps under our system driven by respect for the wrong people. Think about the roads that BMC constructs and how BMC blames our rains for washing them away. We think that the BMC officials are not doing their job right for a few extra bucks but this is not entirely correct and that why can't we ever get excellent work from BMC. The fact is this happens because the same BMC officials don’t take pride in the job that they do. They think they are doing such insignificant work that even shoddy job will make not much of a difference to anyone. These same people respect only the babus and not the common people like themselves. This shows a whole system of wrongly evaluating people and work
India can shine only if she stops respecting the wrong people and starts taking pride in herself.
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