Starting with rudely corrupt government officials and the uncaring accumulative instincts of Indian businessmen, all the way down the social pecking order the ordinary citizen experiences the law’s delay, the proud man’s contumely and the insolence of office on a daily basis. Dilip Thakore reports

For a nation of incorrigible me-first shovers and pushers with seldom a care for the aged, women and children, India’s post-independence generation tends to be extraordinarily sensitive about any accusation of bad manners. Thus when a few months ago (July) the US-based mass circulation monthly Readers Digest published the results of a transnational survey which indicated that Mumbai aka Bombay, the commercial capital of the nation is the world’s rudest city, a howl of protest went up across the country.

Although typically the best-selling Digest — a compilation of condensed news stories and features for folksy American mid-westerners which claims over 80 million readers worldwide — gauged civic good manners according to superficial American mores (whether people said ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and/or held doors open for strangers), the accusation of blanket bad manners aroused the wrath of Mumbai’s bourgeoisie which has become thoroughly accustomed to the ubiquitous rudeness of its bus conductors, taxi drivers and government servants, not to speak of the city’s shopkeepers and traders. “In Mumbai people don’t have the time to be chivalrous, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t courteous. Stuff like shopkeepers saying ‘thank you’ and men opening doors for women is not part of our culture. The (Digest) survey should have had different parameters in accordance with the inherent culture of each city. People in London might help you pick up fallen books, but will they accommodate you in an overcrowded train? The city has evolved beyond these superficialities. It is more casual and when it matters most, you always have a helping hand readily waiting for you,” wrote a representatively irate citizen (Dinesh Parab) to Daily News & Analysis, a recently (2005) launched newspaper in Mumbai.

Yet like most Indians, this representative Mumbai citizen seems to have misinterpreted manners which is essentially everyday — not “when it matters most” — behaviour which makes life easier and more pleasant all around. Which is perhaps why great poets and thinkers placed a high premium on routine good manners and courtesy. “For manners,” wrote Britain’s poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92) “are not idle, but the fruit of loyal nature and noble mind”. Likewise, another great man of letters, the Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773) advised that “manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world”.

It’s not known whether ancient India’s great thinkers and savants placed as high a premium on good manners as westerners but the Hindu epics — the Ramayana and Mahabharata — testify to the temperate speech, noble conduct and exemplary virtues of their legendary protagonists. And many centuries later the leaders of India’s freedom movement — Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore, Rajaji and Nehru (although the latter had a short temper) were soft of speech and thoroughly civil even when confronted with racial insults and the often cruel excesses of the British raj.

It would be fairly safe to say that post-independence India’s retreat from parliamentary propriety and good form began with the rise to political prominence of the communist parties in West Bengal. Contemptuous of parliamentary democracy and good manners as bourgeois infirmities, the leaders and cadres of the CPI and CPM introduced the tactic of gherao into trade unionism, and shouting down opposition, walkouts and disrupting the business of Parliament and state legislative assemblies to the extent that their Speakers were often reduced to tears. From Parliament the practice of shouting down dissent and intimidating the opposition spread to the universities and seeped into all segments of Indian society.

The impact of communism upon Indian politics and the academy where the comrades continuously trashed big business and the bourgeoisie, was that under independent India’s first and somewhat ideologically confused prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the entire polity veered left. At its Avadi conclave in 1956 the ruling Congress party officially adopted a resolution to transform India into “a socialistic pattern of society”. This was followed by the introduction of what Chakravati Rajagopalachari, a freedom leader in his own right who founded the opposition Swatantra party in 1957, termed “licence-permit-quota raj”. Thereafter for over three decades all industrial and business activity was severely curtailed by a rigorous licensing and permits regime compounded by nationalisation of major banks, insurance and the promotion of lumbering public sector enterprises managed by inept bureaucrats. Simultaneously with complete disregard for the economics of Adam Smith, in the pursuit of the mantra of national self-reliance, drastic curbs were imposed upon the import of all consumer goods into the country.

The consequential transformation of the country into a “society of perpetual shortages” also had the fallout of morphing post-Nehruvian India into one of the most corrupt societies worldwide as politicians began the lucrative trade of auctioning licences and permits, while at the street level there was a wild scramble for scarce consumer goods. These developments converted middle class Indians into corrupt businessmen and notorious shovers, pushers and queue jumpers anxious to get what they could, good manners be damned. Comments a well known Mumbai-based hostess who prefers to remain anonymous: “The consumer goods shortages of 1960-80 deeply scarred the Indian psyche. To the extent that even in this age of liberalisation, at extravagant wedding banquets, even respectable pillars of society who lack nothing, push headlong to get at buffet tables. Over-anxiety has become second nature to Indians, driving them to behave boorishly.”

But while old timers and educated middle class people despair about the disappearance of decency and decorum, Dr. G.K. Karanth who heads the Centre for Social Change and Development at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore (est.1972) does not share the popular opinion that 21st century Indians are ruder than other nationalities. He attributes behavioural changes in society to the incrementally fast pace of urban life and to the celebrated pluralism of India, which makes it difficult to define good manners.

“While it’s true that Indians could be more sensitive to other cultures, it’s also true that good manners are culturally defined. Broadly speaking what is often considered rude in western countries may in fact be regarded as good manners in Indian society. For instance solicitation of information about a new acquaintance’s marital status and family, as also asking for details of a person’s health is considered inquisitive and offensive in the West, but caring behaviour in our society. The type of superficial politeness regarded important by the Readers Digest is accorded little weightage in Indian culture. Moreover one should also take into consideration that in heavily plural Indian society, there isn’t a set code of courtesy or good manners. Therefore what’s good behaviour or good form is variable. But even so my observation is that in private spaces as opposed to public places, the manners of Indians are in fact superior to those of impersonal westerners,” says Karanth.

Although there is undoubtedly some substance in Karanth’s contention that manners are culturally defined, there seems to be an element of nationalistic defensiveness about the good professor’s rationalisations. Because at bottom good manners are about care and consideration for weaker members of society — women, children, the aged and the poor. If this working definition of good manners is accepted, and a transnational manners index on the lines of the corruption index of the Berlin-based Transparency Inter-national is tabulated, contemporary India is likely to rank as low in the manners index as it does in corruption ratings.

“The attitude of dominant males in Indian society towards women, children, the elderly and strangers — which is what manners and courtesy are all about — is appalling. I have served as a diplomat in over a dozen countries and have never witnessed the routine neglect of the sensitivities of women and children and the poor that I have seen in India during the past three years of my posting. Women are harassed on a continuous basis in their homes, the streets and their workplaces and Indian society’s daily neglect of children and child welfare is unduplicated worldwide. Although I hate to say this, generally urban Indians are brash, quarrelsome and insensitive to the feelings and comforts of strangers. In my opinion the teaching of manners must be included in curriculums from primary school all the way into higher education. People here don’t seem to be aware that bad manners extract a heavy price from society in terms of avoidable conflict and lost opportunities in international trade and commerce,” says a Delhi-based western woman diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity.

In India’s upscale traditional public (i.e exclusive, private) schools — particularly boarding schools — even in this new age of cynicism and informality, there continues to be a strong emphasis on the teaching of etiquette and ‘values education’. “In our school we consciously teach values education to our students. Simultaneously our teachers advise children to speak softly, be polite and learn to respect their elders. Unfortunately a lot of the good work done in schools is undone by parents with poor educational backgrounds who tend to be loud, aggressive and quarrelsome and pass on these traits to children who naturally imitate their parents consciously or unconsciously. This is perhaps why India is perceived to be an ill-mannered country. My advice to parents and students is to keep speech volume low; good manners follow automatically,”says Princess Franklin, principal of Bishop Cotton Girls School (estb. 1865) which has an aggregate enrollment of 3,500 students including 100 boarders.

The importance of the teachers’ community — particularly school teachers — in consciously inculcating good manners and best behaviour norms in students is reiterated by Dr. Y.G. Parthasarathy, the highly revered octogenarian dean and director of the four Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan schools in Chennai. “Tamil language and literature is replete with words, phrases and behavioural norms denoting good manners and etiquette. But unfortunately because of misguided notions of modernity, few people observe them in their everyday lives. Moreover teaching of manners in schools has declined because teachers are from widely divergent backgrounds and themselves lack the social skills and niceties of the old school. Earlier the Anglo-Indian teachers of missionary schools were well-trained in matters of manners and discipline. Regrettably we have not been able to retain the best practices of British education in our school system,” says Parthasarathy.

With the ill-qualified teachers of government schools (the majority of whom are recruited for considerations other than merit) which enroll 75-85 percent of children, themselves strangers to politeness and etiquette and the country’s 9,000 CISCE and CBSE affiliated schools increasingly according excessive attention to academic education at the expense of social and extra-curricular skills, it’s hardly surprising that the manners of contemporary school children suffer in comparison with those of the previous generation of Indians. And the small minority who make it to collegiate education are quickly influenced by leftist ideologies and their contempt for bourgeois manners and sensitivities. This augurs ill for Indian society which has already acquired a notorious reputation for bad manners and boorish behaviour worldwide.

Nor are the new genre of capital-intensive five-star international schools mushrooming across the country likely to improve this dismal situation. Unlike the traditional convent schools which kept tuition fees low enough to permit a mix of upper and lower middle class students, the new five-star schools tend to be homogenous institutions accessible only to the children of the super rich. Unwittingly they are churning out a new cohort of designer brand obsessed, spoilt rich kids with little awareness of the rich-poor divide which characterises India, and scant empathy for the great majority of the poor ekeing out meagre lives within a stone’s throw of their plush environments. “These institutions are unconsciously breeding a new generation of selfish, ill-mannered kids with absurd Nazi Germany type master race pretensions,” says a disillusioned humanities teacher in a five-star school on the outskirts of Bangalore.

However on the positive side of this grim backdrop, a growing number of socially aware individuals and particularly business leaders, are becoming conscious of the manners deficit which is becoming a national liability. Therefore suddenly a large number of formal and informal etiquette classes, popularly described as life skills schools are springing up countrywide.

The human resource divisions of information technology (IT) companies which are heavily export-oriented, run protocol and culture sensitisation classes for which they often rope in society hostesses to teach usually rough-edged engineers table and business manners and the basics of appropriate behaviour in diverse countries. This is important because uncouth behaviour in societies in which the legal system works, can prove expensive as the blue-chip Bangalore-based IT major Infosys Technologies Ltd discovered to its cost two years ago, when its US-based marketing director Phaneesh Murthy was hauled up and sued for sexual harassment. The Infosys management which would have been liable under the doctrine of vicarious responsibility, was obliged to settle the suit out of court for a sum believed to be in excess of $500,000 (Rs. 2.25 crore) plus costs.

“The world has truly become a global village. Today people change countries with the same ease that they used to change companies or desks in the past. Therefore the importance of understanding diverse cultural sensitivities and behavioural nuances has become very critical. Without sensationalising it, it’s true that deals worth millions of dollars can be — and are being — lost because of ignorance of business etiquette. Business etiquette is not just about table manners; it includes workplace behaviour, communication and transactional norms and gender sensitivity among other attributes. Delivering life skills training to employees is important as stakeholders often judge a business enterprise by the type of employees they interact with. Employees’ good manners and cultural sensitivities are perceived as professionalism and usually translate into customer delight, thus encouraging them to do business with you,” says Hema Ravichandran an IIM-A alumna and former vice president (human resources) of Infosys Technologies, who is currently director of Strategic HR Advisory, a Bangalore-based management consultancy firm.

Certainly Indian industry needs to improve its life skills and manners. Taking the cue from the country’s notoriously rude and unresponsive twice-born Indian Administrative Service bureaucrats, and spoilt by the sellers’ markets created by several decades of licence-permit-quota raj, the civilities of India’s private sector corporate managers are at best only a few degrees superior to those of government bureaucrats and public sector managers. Permitted unlimited perquisites of office by a too liberal tax system and waited upon by platoons of cheap labour employed as peons, drivers, clerks and personal assistants, they tend to nurture egos out of all proportion to their managerial capabilities. They seldom answer calls or reply mail and insist their calls are rigorously screened by supercilious secretaries. Moreover like government bureaucrats they are always in meetings with their fellow employees without care or concern for customers and suppliers. If left and communist ideologies exposed as bankrupt in most of the world continue to flourish in India, the boorish manners, total lack of empathy and insensitive epicureanism of private sector businessmen and coarse entrepreneurs are a major factor behind the enduring popularity of the Left.

Fortunately as life in contemporary Indian society becomes more nasty and brutish and perhaps too long, a growing number of people across the country are beginning to enroll in the numerous life skills and manners improvement schools, springing up across the country where business is brisk.

Sonali Malhotra an English literature graduate of Delhi University and former school teacher is the promoter-director of Personality Development (estb: 2003), which she describes as a wardrobe management and self-esteem develop-ment firm which provides “one-on-one beauty and social etiquette programmes” to individuals aged between six and 60 at prices ranging from Rs.5,000-10,000. Among other subjects she teaches are social conversation, greetings and graces, art of gifting and (Anglo-Saxon) dining etiquette.

“I believe it’s an exaggeration to say that Mumbai is the world’s rudest city or that Indians are especially rude. Good manners are culturally defined and although Indians may not say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, their good manners is implicit in the tone and form of address. The Readers Digest survey has assessed Mumbai and India from an unambiguously western cultural standpoint. Nor do I agree that Indians tend to be culturally insensitive to others. On the contrary, with India being such a plural society, Indians know best how to deal with people from diverse cultures,” says Malhotra.

Sabira Merchant, the high profile society hostess and pioneer television anchor who conducts popular workshops on public speaking, diction and etiquette also disagrees with the Digest survey that Mumbai is an especially graceless city. “On the contrary for a city of its size and diversity Bombay — and I still call it by that name — is a caring and concerned city. The helpfulness and good manners of ordinary citizens were spontaneously exhibited during the recent floods and bomb outrages. In most metros the pace of life is fast and people don’t have time for niceties. Bombay is not an exception,” says Merchant.

Nevertheless she acknowledges that good manners are not entirely culturally determined. “Good manners rooted in kindness and consideration for others including strangers, are not only accepted but also universally expected,” she added somewhat cryptically, in an e-mail interview.

Typically, this, as several other responses to the central question as to whether it’s high time Indian society minds its manners, fudges the issue. As discussed above, gentility and good manners are not about response to exceptional or emergency situations, but about everyday behaviour which makes life easier, cheerful and more pleasant for ordinary citizens. By this yardstick there’s no denying that contemporary Indian society suffers a massive manners deficit.

Starting with rudely corrupt government officials and the uncaring primitive accumulation instincts of Indian business, all the way down the social pecking order the ordinary citizen experiences the law’s delay, the proud man’s contumely and the insolence of office on a daily basis. And shockingly, preoccupied with high grades, examination results and anxiety about accessing the few surviving institutions of higher education, Indian academia has all but forgotten to inculcate good manners and teach life skills to smooth the passage of children into adulthood.

Quite clearly this is a blind spot of the academy which needs to be urgently addressed in the national interest. If not, there’s a clear and present danger that 21st century India’s foot-in-mouth politicians, grasping bureaucrats, me-first businessmen, SUV road hogs and sundry other ugly citizens will vitiate the gains of economic liberalisation and deregulation, which has miraculously catapulted the hitherto moribund Indian economy into a high growth orbit. 

With Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai) & Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)

Also read: Is India a country of cowards?