Do Indians deliver their best only under Crisis? : A debate

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rkumar

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Dear friends,

More I read about Indian progress, more I get convinced that the Indian mind is wired to act decisively only in crisis. Take for example the food crisis of 1960s. That gave birth to green revolution and today we are self sufficient in food production. Then we had another national crisis of 1962 when Chinese humiliated us. This made India realise the importance of national defence and formidable National defence was developed. Now come to the payment crisis of 1990 and that lead to opening up of India economy. Today we can say with pride that we are on the path of becoming a strong nation. Our latest crisis is from infrastructure and I can see the whole India waking up to the crisis. I am very sure that we will have world-class infrastructure in not too distant future. Do we conclude that Indians deliver their best only under crisis like situations?

Rajendra
 
Well I think human beings in general work best under the crisis situation because crisis situations utilize the brain to its maximum potential. To support my argument you can see all the major inventions happened during the World War 1 and World War 2. Now if we compare Indians with other our neighboring contraries then I don’t think there is much to choose. After the defeat of 1972, even Pakistan realized that they can’t defeat India in a conventional war so they built (or procuredJ ) nuclear weapons, used terrorism to try to defeat India. Now in that way even Pakistani works better in crisis situation and why not after all they are also not altogether a different race. Anyways.. if you take example of some other country say Japan then I think Indians are nowhere comparable. After the World War 2 they had built their country from scratch.
I think as a country we lack vision. We wait for crisis to come and then try to deal with them instead of envisage a crisis and try to avert it. If I have to sum it up in a line then I would say India as a country does not work unless there is a crisis.

Vikram
 
vpsingh17 said:
Well I think human beings in general work best under the crisis situation because crisis situations utilize the brain to its maximum potential. ..................
............................. If I have to sum it up in a line then I would say India as a country does not work unless there is a crisis.

Vikram
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From your opening lines it appears as if we Indians are no different than others. However, in your last lines you are saying exactly what I wanted to say in opening my debate. Japanese must have worked wonders after second world war, but they worked wonders even before that when there was no crisis. They build a most formidable army, navy and airforce and attacked the most mighty nation on Earth. British developed Raiway systemn when there was no crisis in Britain. Most of their canals and other infrastructure was developed during the same period.

RK^2
 
When there is a crisis you are left with no option but to act. So in that respect Indians are no different. But if you say that Indians handle crisis better than anybody then I have my doubts.
 
its human tendency

Uncle ji namaskar,
Learning from crisis or mistakes is general human tendency. but when we see this with respect to indians they are well ahead to world in this sense. Not only the indian nature but so many other factors are there that make indians as crisis learner. Latest example is Tsunami alert system, We all knew it that it is a necessary system to avoid any big natural crisis but we installed it after we had been ruined by tsunami. In this we can say that not only our laziness but financial factors also matter. Indian govt. or indian people can not do many things because they dont have sufficient money to do this type of projects.

But its natural phenomenon that every human being learn from crisis. human history also tell the same story that we came from stone age to high tech age now, its a journey full of crisis.
 
I believe in the fact strongly that we Indians deliver our best under crisis.

You people can see so much examples like war, natural calamity, elections, financial crisis or any other thing. we don't care about them unless thay start to haunt us Indians.

We don't care about the early warnings of an Earth quake, draught, war etc. But when things happens we do our best to cope with that.

Our government or people didn't care about the Pakistani presence in Kargil, but when situation became critical it seems that every Indian was an patriot. Same with Bhuj, Tsunami and all other crisis.

Even most of the students don't study in whole academic year, but during exams they study round the clock. What is that ?

My views concluded in the fact that we Indian deliver our best in crisis whatever is the reason behind that !
 
Its lack of vision

A would go with Phogat bhai that its human resilience that performs best under crisis situation.

Brits developed infrastructure when there was no crisis but we did not till it became a cricis situation. Thats because we are not visionaries. Taking the whole historical experience of India in the previous 1000 years and the educational system, we find that it has led to developement of a culture that does not look beyond today.

It will take some time for the culture of 'thinking big' to become a common virtue. Then crisis will arise with much less frequency.
 
Rajender ji, your observations are quite to the point. I know it's hard to digest but true that we work only in crisis time. Had we worked with urgency in normal times, we would have portrayed a different picture of india. I think our indian "Kar lengey" or "Ho jayegaa" attitude lets up put off the work till the end and then inorder to achieve that we work like donkeys!

It's true in today's scenario as well because Indian economy is progessing well, our big cities are bursting with money flow, GDP growing but we don't have infrastructure to support all this. Bangalore is the best example, it has progessed verl well but infrastructure is in 'Lachar' state. And moreover they haven't started expanding it!

Another example may be power sector. No new power plants etc are put in place unless we are atleast 50% short of power. Basically we create a crisis situation first and then work hard. I think it's a big source of earning for politicians, beaurocrates...they earn a lot in these situations as there is no option.

A slight observation of this mentality...When in engineering college, most of the students don't really study all year/semester long. they just study 2 days before the exams even if there are 4 days gap for the exam. Basically they create an inevitable need to study day n night. On the other hand, there are a few who study all year long, need not panic in exams as they know their stuff. It's same as looking forward to a problem in advance. This attitude carries forward to work as well,may be a little but it adds to overall Indian mentality. I don't know about other streams how they study.

We need VISION!
 
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This is a superb post and a very worthy topic. I would have to agree with all that critical infrastructure should be high on the priority list. Long range strategic thinking is SO important for India at this stage. However, a small group of thinkers cannot achieve success. Rather, a well publicized "National Strategy" for the future would be a right step. While the National Government is the starting point, this way of thinking must filter to the smallest communities.

I think India should push federal incentives down to small communities who build this infrastructure, develop trade schools that stimulate job interest for the lower income bracket, and monitored in such a way as to prevent corruption by mid-level politicians. In the end, India has a lot of intellectual muscle and patriotism. However, the lower income bracket is also an untapped resource that can be harnessed to transform India's infrastructure.
Again. Great post.
Ravi
 
ravichaud said:
............... Rather, a well publicized "National Strategy" for the future would be a right step. ..............Ravi
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Like we have Naval doctrine, Science mission etc, there is no doubt that we must have something called National doctrine which should define very clearly where we want to take India during next 50 years. I wrote to our PM quite some time back on this. We must initiate an intense public debate to develop National Doctrine. We are still missing a National Infrastructure Development Plan, which includes every aspect of Physical Infrastructure. Most of infrastructure plans get bogged down in court cases, as land acquisition is a lengthy process and often marred by public protests. I suggested a very simple system here on Jatland and also wrote to our PM. We can execute whole development without affecting our farmers and without incurring excessive costs to the government. Anyway this is a bit further away from the subject of this thread.

RK^2
 
rkumar said:
Like we have Naval doctrine, Science mission etc, there is no doubt that we must have something called National doctrine which should define very clearly where we want to take India during next 50 years. I wrote to our PM quite some time back on this. We must initiate an intense public debate to develop National Doctrine. We are still missing a National Infrastructure Development Plan, which includes every aspect of Physical Infrastructure. Most of infrastructure plans get bogged down in court cases, as land acquisition is a lengthy process and often marred by public protests. I suggested a very simple system here on Jatland and also wrote to our PM. We can execute whole development without affecting our farmers and without incurring excessive costs to the government. Anyway this is a bit further away from the subject of this thread.

RK^2
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Rajendra bhai jaan i will get you back to the topic proper: aap ye batayein ki INDIANS hi kyun harr insaan irrespective of his/her origin or where he/she dwells does perform better under pressure situation bccause as and when faced with a crisis situation,the body and mind starts working at the optimum levels of performance because the very exsistance of the being gets threatened and we do our best to salvage whatever we can.......In such circumstances an indvidual gets surprised to see the power of human mind and body and a new realization takes birth while the body and mind gets stretched to the extremes. Good Topic to discuss.
 
And our 'Blue Boys'?

Well Khalkhundeji, I sure hope we are discounting team India (Cricket) from all this hypothesis! :D

...Just kidding! Actually they have been performing much better in crisis in recent times than the usual quote we all had got used to of newspaper reports proclaiming,"India makes heavy weather of it AGAIN!" after being in a commanding position... and worse still totally buckling under when the pressure was on!...

BTW, The match is evenly poised (First test vs England) and unfortunately India squandered away a commanding position when they had the English team against the ropes by not being able to wrap up the tail enders...Now they have posted a 400 (almost) total for us....
 
devdahiya said:
Rajendra bhai jaan i will get you back to the topic proper: aap ye batayein ki INDIANS hi kyun harr insaan irrespective of his/her origin or where he/she dwells does perform better under pressure situation bccause as and when faced with a crisis situation,the body and mind starts working at the optimum levels of performance because the very exsistance of the being gets threatened and we do our best to salvage whatever we can.......In such circumstances an indvidual gets surprised to see the power of human mind and body and a new realization takes birth while the body and mind gets stretched to the extremes. Good Topic to discuss.
Click to expand...

Totally agreed. However, individuals can address only their individual problems and not the collective problems. Problems like freedom from British, Payment crisis of 1990, and now the infrastructure problems can not be termed as individual's. No individual can solve such problems. These have to be addressed collectively. It was for such problems that I intiated this thread. At collective level we Indians don't seem to plan ahead for such eventualities and try to tackle them only when they become crisis. So is not the case in western countries as far as I can see.

RK^2
 
we follow. from green revolution(1960) to libralisation(1990).
indian have collective approach. we are not individualistic.
first we c what others r doing and only after that v do that.
there were examples in front of us and we follow the successful one. we never experienced ourselves.
the statement that we deliever in crisis is not only for india its naturel for states or person.
but we have to choose the way less travelled only than we don't have to worry about crisis.
 
"Indian" Politicians in particular

Ram Ram Khalkhundeji,

I think this is slowly changing esp if the issues are related to national Interests, but you are right to some extent that Indians politicians have been of reactive nature, I suppose the main reason could be our current political scenrio, more effort is put into gat bandhan kind of politics, how to remain in Power hence most their engergy is diverted there.

But on a positive note our current PM has taken a very proactive step by finalising the Nuclear Treaty for civil puposes with US, which India will require if they have to grow at 6-8% per annum.

So a big thumbs up to Mr Singh.


 
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