Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Rules, Once Again


This week’s news has been dominated by the rape assault by Tarun Tejpal, founder-editor of Tehelka, a publication perceived by many as the voice of the wronged. Tejpal did what ‘the bad guy’, the ‘others’ do. Not ‘people like us’.

Right on its heels came the news of a senior official in the Goa Film Festival, making lewd suggestions and harassing a young journalist.

Rape of course shakes everyone up a lot. But news of gross actions- stealing public money; not letting PDS ration reach the poorest of the poor; taking large kickbacks for political and business favours- don’t even surprise us anymore. Scam is no longer a four-letter word for saturated readers.

This brings me back to my previous post on rules and thinking on it some more. How do people break rules- be they legal or social or moral?

When a person feels powerful by his position, he often begins to believe that he is invincible. Professional achievement, a high level of influence in the big circles often makes him feels that there is no need for him or her to follow rules- that rules are for the rest to follow.

Breaking rules is a high. It is used as a symbol of power. So politicians keep flights waiting, bureaucrats don’t move files without monetary fulfillment and media persons expect differential treatment in the most ordinary of situations. A journalist colleague relates how a very senior bureaucrat once told her- “I can change A.M. to P.M”. ‘A.M’ referred to A&M, the magazine she worked for. She was a novice scribe then and this was her first job. He was letting her know what sort of reach he had. Another entrepreneur involved in an ambitious rehabilitation project in Mumbai told her – I’ve paid off everyone from XYZ to ABC.” He was assuring her that the project would take off without a doubt while impressing upon her, his reach. XYZ and ABC were the head honchos of the most influential political parties of those years.

And for a man enjoying the headiness of power, his crime is never too big in his eyes. 78-year old Om Prakash Chautala, five times CM of Haryana, was sentenced to a ten-year jail term on corruption charges along with his son, Ajay, this January. When the police came to his house to take him he asked the police, “But what did I do?”

That the young girl was an old friend’s daughter and a friend of his own daughter did not stop Tejpal. All he said was that it was ‘an error of judgment’ and he would atone for his act by stepping down from editorship for six months. For anyone else, that would be called a long, paid sabbatical. And other, more ordinary rapists are generally jailed for this.

And when they get caught- often exposed interestingly by a much less powerful person- the first reaction is of extreme anger. Then they flail their hands like caged animals before accepting that sometimes rules can be for the rulers too. Tejpal shouted at the girl the next morning for going and telling his daughter about what had happened. “How could you go and tell my daughter what happened?” he said. This, to him, was the graver misconduct.

People argue that quicker dispensation of justice can help bring down crime rates- and yes, this may be true. Regular people may commit fewer crimes but the powerful will always continue to challenge the rules. The association of power with breaking rules is too heady to ever lose its sway.


Your thoughts?

Monday, November 11, 2013

To Obey or not to Obey?

Rules, that is. This question popped up in my mind, once again, as I was on my flight back to Mumbai and doing what I enjoy most- watching people. The air hostess announced landing and requested everyone to shut their machines and devices. The lady next to me, totally engrossed in her iPad since the moment we started the journey, did not pay attention as her ears were blocked with her headphones. The hostess then came up to her and requested her to comply. She looked up and made a few gestures towards doing so. But as the hostess went away, she continued to play the game she was playing. I itched to tell her that she was doing something with potential to jeopardise the lives of everyone in the plane. Her nonchalance annoyed me.

Well nothing so drastic happened. We landed safely. But I continued to ponder over the issue on the long trek out of the airport. To begin with: Why did that annoy me? I thought it was because someone was disobeying rules. Rules are made for the benefit of people, at large. Few disobedient people can cause trouble for the rest of us. If today, you are not allowed to even carry a nail file in cabin luggage as it a ‘potential weapon’, it’s because someone carried weapons at some time and held up a flight.

A rule breaker can cause direct, fatal damage to others. Highways report serious, fatal accidents every day because of motorists breaking speed limits, driving inebriated or overtaking wrongly. The people killed in these terrible mishaps are often those who got hit by such a rule-breaking driver.

Then there are ‘rules’ which are not in any rule book and not punishable offences. Example: Making a queue at a counter – a rule not really written anywhere I think, but socially desired- is defied and disobeyed by almost every Indian. A queue expands horizontally and becomes many queues and everyone is then for himself. If you’re polite or just not able to push, chances are you’ll be waiting for your coffee till dinner time. Just yesterday, I stood with my token in hand at a doctor’s while a lady without a token just barged in and got her work done before everyone else.

And there are rules which defy logic. Until recently when a prominent industrialist fought in court for his right to fly the national flag atop his home, doing so was a punishable offence. But there’s no penalty on selling and buying uniforms, complete with military insignia, for children to wear for fancy dress competitions. If the first somehow insults the nation, how doesn’t the second, I have often tried to understand. Or, how positions of learning and valour- school and college principals, military chiefs, judges and police commissioners-are caricatured, uncensored.

So should one follow rules completely or reason out which ones to follow or simply follow those that can have a punishment attached for non-compliance? I think most people follow the last type. We follow only the rules that have some sort of penalty attached to them. This doesn’t mean only legal rules. People also follow social rules which are unwritten for fear of rejection or disapproval of their social class.

So people comfortably break traffic rules because they know it costs just a bit of money to get away. Littering or breaking queues doesn’t make you encounter an upturned nose or glares from people around as you would face in say, Britain. So those who walk up to bins in New York, just chuck that chips packet on the road when back in India. We are, however, largely conscious of attending religious functions and ceremonies or office celebrations even if they don’t interest us because that can lead to social rejection.

And then again, History is all about those who broke rules, not about those who followed them. The venerated national leaders are those who refused to follow the rules of the Raj; the greatest scientists are those who refused to accept the norms.?

So should we follow rules or not? What do you think?