Rudeness is relative

Mumbai was the flavour of last week, not necessarily for the right reasons. An international survey found the city to be the rudest in the world; the Prime Minister laid the foundation stone for the Mumbai Metro and the city's annual monsoon diseases arrived, even though the monsoon itself didn't.

We can, if we wish, dismiss the Reader’s Digest survey as a particularly silly exercise. That's because the criteria for judging politeness were frivolous: helping passers-by pick up dropped objects, thanking shoppers and holding the door open for people behind.

I observed the politeness ritual of the west years ago when I stood in queue for my first underground rail journey in London. You gave your money to the person behind the counter. “Single to Euston please,” you said. “Thank you,” the man said, collecting the cash.  “Thank you,” he said again for some inexplicable reason when he gave you your ticket and change. “Thank you,” you said as you collected both. When you thought about it later, you realised that his second thank you was not to thank you, but to ask you to move on.

Compare this overly polite transaction with its business-like equivalent in Mumbai. “Churchgate,” you will say, laying your money down. Out will come the ticket and change with no further words exchanged.

That's ten words in London versus one in Mumbai to achieve the same objective. Is the London exchange more polite or is it meaningless habit, meaningless because it is automatic and no inter-personal connection has been made; there isn't even the tiniest eye to eye contact. In any case, it's a habit easily learnt.

Incidentally, a habit which you quickly unlearn in Mumbai is to hold a door open for the person behind you. Because you will end up holding it open for the person behind the person behind you and then the person behind the person behind the person behind you till you get mistaken for the doorman.

In any case are these ritual forms of politeness more important than the real thing? In which city would people go out of their way to help an outsider? Would it be Mumbai or would it be Paris? Some years ago, a friend of mine who was an Italian foreign affairs editor of his country's leading newspaper and I stood near a bus stop in Philadelphia asking passers-by about which bus to catch. Not one person even stopped to hear our question. That I would regard as truly rude.

The Reader’s Digest people, in fact, should have been in Mumbai on 26th July, last year. Did people loot and shoot as they did in New Orleans when Katrina hit that city? Or did they rescue people in danger, form human chains to save lives, give shelter and meals to stranded strangers even when it pinched their meager resources to do so?
What is surprising is that this generosity of spirit survives the daily stress and hardship Mumbaikars are subjected through no fault of their own. Is there a worse commuting experience anywhere in the world? Do people in metros have to constantly cope with water shortages? And when they do get water, its quality is often so bad that it leads to disease of all kinds.

It's a wonder the Mumbaikar smiles at all. Perhaps he will smile a little more when the Metro rail takes off some of the strains of commuting. It's been a long time a-coming. You can place a part of the blame at the door of the World Bank which studied and re-studied the project, sanctioned funds, but put the impossible condition that there should be no subsidies on fares. Which political party would commit harakiri by agreeing to such terms? Most of the blame though must go to successive governments in Maharashtra and at the centre: the former for lack of innovation and enterprise, the latter for treating Mumbai as a milch cow, taking its taxes and giving nothing in return.
Hopeful though the Metro is for Mumbai's future, there is a real danger that will be regarded as a panacea for all the cities' problems. It clearly is not. It doesn't take care of over-crowding and congestion. It doesn't take care of the state of the roads, it doesn't take care of the shortages of water or of power. It also doesn't take care of the present public transport system of buses and suburban trains without which the city won't function, Metro or no Metro.

The Metro is now getting all the attention; will it also get all the money? If so, you can say please and thank you, and hold open a million doors, but the city will go down the tube. And that's not a pun.