Amit Sharma
India or Bharat is a land of ‘unlimited’ opportunities, cultures, thoughts, creativity, sharp mindsets and what not. But it exactly becomes an opposite of same i.e., ‘limited’ when it comes to application of “Patience Quotient” or so called ‘Sanyam’ or ‘Dhairya’ in local parlance for us, the Indians or Bhartiyas, is concerned. It is now a open fact that we Indians can be rated amongst the worst people, when it comes to exercising of Patience Quotient, amongst all nations in the world who have relatively a good lot of young population like India. It has actually become a norm of the day here to see public losing patience, every now and then, which ultimately gets into an ugly turn of taking a violent shape, as an aftermath of mostly minuscule arguments.
Let me elucidate my thoughts here with more of fact-sharing. The recent incidence of restlessness happening in Delhi Courts wherein large scale violence happened, that too, on a minor issue of wrong parking which was followed by a scuffle between the related staff and advocates and ending-up in a worst damaging and uncivilised ugly episode, is a glaring example of what I am talking about. Ok, let’s move further now and here, we can talk about the ongoing protests inside and outside the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in the heart of capital of the nation about few demands of the student community of the University which is again resulting into unprecedented scenes of violence, not only inside JNU but even on Delhi roads and this bout of unexpected behaviour from students raises lot of questions on Patience Quotient of youngsters of the nation, that too, studying in a premier institute of the NCR. Let me also clarify alongside here that I am not at all talking here as a mouth-piece of the Government, being a part of this machinery but expressing my views on fast-vanishing Patience Quotient in people, merely as a common citizen of the nation who gets disturbed every time when such thing happens, that too, so frequently and forced to question the prevalent culture in the society regarding huge degradation in social values and quick-fading of true Indian culture and public decency as on date.
Moving ahead, I want to share couple of more examples to justify my case. It was just few days back, I was travelling by train in the Chair Car coach of Vande Bharat Express Bullet train where I witnessed a very strange situation with a score of ladies started singing songs aloud in the coach on a continual basis. When it kept happening for a long time, few people raised their objection to it, as they felt disturbed due to it and complained same with Ticket Checker and Railway Police about it who in turn, requested this bunch of ladies for not doing it purely in the larger interest of co-travellers in the same Coach, but instead, they reacted so aggressively with impatience and rather started banging the railway staff itself with the backing of few other co-passengers by putting vague arguments like it’s a paid public transport and we have every right to do anything while travelling and even started threatening of raising complaints of women harassment against Railway staff, etc. But horribly, a strong heated exchange started within no time on this issue wherein we saw that two groups of people, in favour and against, got raised within no time and nearly, a fight-kind of atmosphere was a created in the Coach over this trivial issue and loss of all kinds of patience, making it look like a mini battle-ground of ‘Mahabharata’. The second example comes from another travel of mine, this time being an air travel. Here I found few aggressive passengers loosing patience quotient when the Aeroplane could not initially take-off on-time due to lack of ATC Clearance, as there was heavy amount of air traffic congestion going-on at that moment which is imminently nobody’s fault but just like a Traffic Jam on the roads. But shockingly, I found that few restless passengers lost their patience and almost started banging the cabin crew and staff holding them directly responsible for this delay and non-provisioning of sufficient facilities for passengers inside the Plane. They even went up to the extent of threatening to De-board the aeroplane without prior and proper permission of Captain of the Plane and further warning the entire plane staff of dire consequences if they were not allowed to do so but thankfully, ATC clearance came soon and Plane took-off to put a natural end to this ‘Drama of Impatience’. And this second consecutive event within a sort span of two travels of mine forced me to make a mention of both, which are glaring examples of abrupt loss of Patience Quotient amongst our people and complete degradation in human values, truly depicting the prevalent temperament in public these days, especially amongst our younger generations.
See, I have so many similar-situated examples, to talk about and share, be those ones related to the way we behave at home with our own parents or peers or the way we behave on the roads while driving and also, seeing others’ behaviour and reactions while driving with them on the roads and this sudden rise in the road rage cases is a clear-cut example of same. Because of it, many in the western world look towards Indians with a negative eye and they have developed a wrong notion that Indians are a bunch of lot of shrewd, clever, nuisance-creating people. Unfortunately, just some bad behaviour including acts of impatience by few of the Indians either during abroad visits or when western tourists visit India, has forced them to generalise it for all the Indians and residents of entire nation.
Now, before I leave some food for thought for you over my just expressed views, I want to mention few very strong reasons for this dangerously growing culture of loss of Patience Quotient in our people.
To begin with, we must understand that there is something grossly wrong in the way we are being brought-up these days or something grossly lacking in our family cultures, or the way, what we learn things in our surroundings, be it from amongst the peers or the friends’ circle to through audio-visual media like FM channels, television, internet or the violence-based games on the Internet or it can be based out of our complete lack of interest in learning cultural values or religious ethos and no study of moral sciences at the primary level till we reach the secondary level of education (as we used to do in the past) or in our keen-interest towards getting westoxicated rather then grasping the true spirit of westernization i.e., we prefer learning only outer layers of negativity from the western world but real no attempt seems being made to learn its core values and true moral lessons.
So, the big question comes here that if we continue to behave the way we are behaving and aggressively reacting to situations with Impatience as on date, I am convinced to say that the future is not bright at all, especially for the youngsters as we are well aware that India is a nation with majority young population compared to other nations of the world and if it carries this way, we may earn unfortunate distinction of ‘least-preferred nation’ of the world because of it. So, if you all feel little convinced with whatever I have shared here today, then I believe, you shall also take the lead in the near future towards spreading this most-important message of 3 Ps of Peace, Patience and Perseverance to be revived amongst our youngsters who are the real future of the nation and represent the true face of India before the world and this is most important need of the hour !
(The writer is a Senior JKAS Officer and presently working as Special Secretary to Government. He can be reached at amit1kas@gmail.com)
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