Posts Tagged India
Marriage: A Life-Altering Event
I got engaged last Sunday to my sweetheart of almost 7 years. As I put on a plastic smile for the cameras and greeted every relative I don’t know so well, I got a funny feeling. Almost everybody tried to tell me in their own signature style about how marriages are a ‘life-altering’ event. Somebody mentioned that I would need to start being more social with family & friends, somebody said I cannot live in the same house after marriage and would need a better, bigger (read expensive) place. Some friends said I would need to regulate my lifestyle a bit (you know what I mean!). Some people were happy only for the simple reason that I would get a “tiffin” to work everyday and won’t have to unwillingly nibble at dosas & idlis. Some even went to the extent of saying that I would need to start dressing up more formally and start looking more like a ‘married’ man!! “ऐसे करो, वैसे मत करो!”
As I wondered about why people associate so much change with a marriage, I decided to take some cues from our movies. No better source to understand the Indian mental makeup. I recollected the zillion ‘love-story’ movies that our filmmakers have belted out (sometimes I get amazed at the fact that how many movies can people make with the same damn theme!! Hail Bollywood!). What is interesting is the portrail of our actors / actresses before and after marriage.
Before marriage, people are portrayed as very informal and easy-going (just like you and me). What is more interesting is the portrayal of women. Before marriage, actresses are seen in mainly Western clothes (can be skimpy as well and nobody minds!). They openly express their love, wear-whatever-do-whatever, seduce their men and live a blissful life. But, after marriage, the same characters put on a different skin. Marriage immediately brings an overdose of sobriety and maturity to them. Dressing changes from Western, casual & cool to traditional, formal & suave. The way of speaking becomes more restrained and formal. All of a sudden, society and family has a new meaning.
Exuberance, vibrance, fun, lack of inhibitions, free spirit - all become very minimalistic adjectives to describe married life.
The Indian society is pretty much the same, at least in the ways I have experienced in the traditional realities of a ‘modern’ India. The society expects you to change your mental makeup, attitude & values as you progress in your social life-cycle. Yes, social life-cycle and not the biological life-cyclical. Its contrary to logic, but personal change is not a function of age, but of whether you are in the prime of your जवानी (youth - as defined by one’s marital status) or a बाल बcचे वाला (married person, doesn’t matter if you don’t have kids).
Add comment May 1, 2008
The Economics of Incentives
As per economics, an incentive is any factor that provides a motive for a particular course of action. It is simply a means to encourage people to do more of good things and less of bad things. Incentives can be remunerative, moral, coercive, social etc.
I have recently been reflecting on how different countries digest incentives or disincentives. India, of course, has a law or rule (on paper), for just about everything. There are penalties for smoking in trains/airports, fine for jumping a traffic signal, underage driving etc. More often than not, we feel that these rules are not implemented properly. The other side of this is that citizens do not adhere to these rules. The simple explanation is that of inadequate incentives/disincentives. Fine for caught smoking in a train - Rs.100 (who cares!). Fine for jumping a signal - maybe Rs.50….and so on. Low value of penalties coupled with weak implementation - leads to very low probability of an average citizen feeling encouraged to adhere to the law.
Move on to Singapore & Dubai, and you find very high disincentives attached with the ‘wrong’ things. Smoking inside an MRT station - fine S$20000!! Jumping a signal in Dubai - something like AED 2000! You make the disincentive so penalizing that an average citizen doesn’t break the rules + put in healthy levels of implementation.
Let’s go West for a change and you find that the USA, where most incentives/disincentives of these kinds have become moral incentives. Smoking in a prohibited area, jumping a traffic signal etc. have moral connotations (atleast in the sane hours of the day!). On a recent trip, I didn’t see sign-boards informing people about the penalties associated with such an act; instead the sign-board just said - no smoking. Cross-roads had surveillance cameras, but nothing to inform people about the rules. It appears that punitive incentives have been internalized to a large extent in that country.
So, these countries represent the continuum through which incentives are designed, implemented, redesigned, re-implemented and finally yield the desired outcomes.
3 comments September 20, 2007
Mistaken Nationalism
I stepped out of my house to office and saw expected scenes outside. Autos and buses had the Indian flag adorning them. I could see poor women and children selling flags of all sizes, badges, stickers etc. Every year around India’s Independence Day, suddenly a nation wakes up from a deep slumber and expresses nationalist sentiments. TV channels come alive with shows that showcase India’s past, its rise in the global economy, sung & unsung heroes and how we could shape our future. Clippings of Jawaharlal Nehru’s first speech (in English - at that time very few Indians were comfortable with English language) on the eve of Indian independence are shown with considerable regularity. Talk shows focus on the big occasion and suddenly, all “small” issues slip into oblivion.
What I fail to understand is where does this nationalist feeling go for the rest of the year? All year long, we live with corruption, do everything to make our cities dirty, drive rash, pee on the walls, spit everywhere (dharti ke laal), dig holes on the road and so on. If someone were to ask me – Do Indians care for their country, I do not know how to respond. There are times we go overboard on nationalism like cricket, Indo-US nuke deal, a movie that gets recognized by Hollywood etc. We celebrate like no other nation. But on the other hand, we do not seem to be involved in community-building and hence, nation-building activities on a regular basis in our daily lives. All the zeal suddenly drops dead. On one hand, we do everything possible to pollute the environment around the Taj Mahal and contribute to its deterioration. On the other, we do a big song & dance for it being selected as one of the 7 wonders of the world. This is quite ironical – as ironical as it gets and it confuses me about how Indians think of their nation and nationalism.
5 comments August 14, 2007
