Column

So Chidambaram thinks Delhi is a dirty, uncouth city. What about Mumbai? I bet our own dear metropolis, the financial capital of the country, the home of Bollywood and teleserials isn’t very couth or clean either (in spite of all the soaps). Is Bengaluru better? Chennai? Kolkata? I doubt it.

As a long-serving finance minister, Chidambaram should know that mere exhortations to be better citizens are never enough. Did tax-payers suddenly get more honest because the FM asked them to? Did the black economy disappear because the minister wished it so? This is not an original thought, but the key to better compliance to rules and regulations is always a carrot and stick approach.

Why does the Delhi commuter push and shove his way into a bus? It’s because he knows that if he doesn’t get into this one, there’s a very long wait ahead for the next bus and he will be late for work. The English are admirable queue formers, but reduce the bus/train frequency to a quarter of what it is now and see if everyone will still remain polite.

As for things like peeing on the road, how easy is it to find a public toilet in our cities? And if you do locate one, will it be clean or downright filthy? No prizes for guessing the correct option. Faced with this choice, or lack of it, and nature’s irresistible demands, what is a person to do but fertilise the neighbourhood?

What Chidambaram is saying to the guest in the house is, please observe good hygiene, please be clean and tidy, but sorry, there is no soap or water available. If you don’t provide the infrastructure you can’t crack the whip on citizens for not using it.

Watch an Indian when he is a tourist in the West. Does he pee on that archaeological wall when no one’s looking? Does he spit on Oxford Street? Does he even throw a used bus ticket out of the window? Is this only because he is intimidated by people around him? That’s one reason for sure, but it’s only one of several. If the city is clean to start with, you are less likely to dirty it. If you are walking in Mumbai and there is debris lying around, stinking uncleared rubbish wherever you turn, you feel stupid holding on to that piece of unwanted paper, rather than just add to the general muck.

That said, many of us, especially the well-off, do need to be reminded that civility is not a bad thing. Like in the interval at the NCPA as you rush to the sole counter serving its delicious cold coffee and chutney sandwiches, it may not be a bad idea to form a queue rather than poke the little lady in the eye in your rush to be the first to be served.

It may also be in your enlightened self-interest not to start a cacophony of horns the moment the traffic light turns green (as it happens the guy ahead of you is also in a hurry to get going). Enlightened self-interest will also tell you not to cut in brazenly into a traffic lane from left or from the right, because someone else will do the same to you too.

There are two forces at work here. One is that we have no one in our society to set a good example, whether it is about public behaviour or moral excellence. Most of our politicians, supposedly our leaders, in fact do the opposite.Take the case of the President’s son undeservedly getting a Congress ticket for the forthcoming elections. The decline in standards in one field affects standards in every other field. It’s not such a jump as you might think from election seats to bad road manners.

There’s one more thing, and perhaps one of DNA’s clever readers might want to enlighten me: why are Indians Jekyll and Hyde personalities? Why are we so courteous and hospitable in the house and so rude and selfish outside? Why do we keep our home/even the poorest one, spick and span by washing it again and again, and yet have no compunction in throwing the dirty water out of the window?