Did #Ingratitude cause the #IndigoAirlines incident

The #IndigoAirlines incident of ‘abusing’ a passenger threw up predictable reactions from the social media. Most comments went something like this - “Absolutely disgusting behavior of goons from #IndigoAirlines”, “sick”, “shameful”,” very sad”, “#BoycottIndigoAirlines” hashtags, the usual stuff. Some of course were more balanced and said both the passenger and the staff were to blame

The airline on its part, went ahead and suspended the staff responsible for this and its President Aditya Ghosh issued a statement saying “We truly apologize for the treatment shown towards Mr. Rajeev Katiyal by one of our employees. At Indigo, dignity of our passengers and staff is utmost importance…. Under the code of conduct violation, this incident was investigated, and stern action was taken against the staff”

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So, the customer was apologized to and the ground staffer suspended. All is well, as they would end it. It just raises a small question here -

What if, after the investigations, it is found that customer verbally abused first and physically attacked the ground staffer first? Would appropriate action as per Law be taken against the passenger? Is there a Law for that? And will the same social media reaction, turn against passenger towards safety of other passengers and protecting the staff’s modesty?

The Story so far

You may watch the Video here - https://youtu.be/QxgpT4cPVn0

On watching the video, you would see that the ground staffer is requesting the passenger to speak respectfully like a senior citizen. Verbal altercation ensued thereafter, and after some point the agitated passenger was denied entry in the bus. The denial of entry into bus, though within the right of ground staff, agitated the passenger even more, who was now insistent of getting on to the bus, even after the door closed. It looks like the staff was restraining the agitated passenger and some scuffle ensued. The rest of the video is about the physical shuffle between the agitated passenger and one of the ground staff. At some point, the airline staff are seen restraining the passenger and pinning to the ground, possibly to ensure their safety and safety of the other passengers and around the tarmac.

1.   Could #IndigoAirlines have handled better?

2.   Could the citizen maintained calm and listened to the instructions to ground staff on boarding sequence?

3.   Who raised the verbal abuses first? Or who assaulted physically first?

4.   Should #IndigoAirlines stagger restrained himself even after verbal and physical abuse from passenger?

Larger Issue

But then, it raises a larger issue – a much larger issue that is troubling our society. This is the issue of mutual respect and respecting the other profession or professional.

Before I proceed further, I would like to clarify that I am not an employee, ex-employee or shareholder of #IndigoAirlines. Nor do I have any friends or family members that I know of working for #IndigoAirlines. What I share below is something that requires some serious thought on how we as humans and each of us behave in certain situations. If that realization comes in, I would be happy and am not casting aspersions on any one individual or community.

In many other countries even calling names or abusing (verbally or physically) an airline staff, public servant is a serious offence punishable by law. In such situations, the abusive passengers / customers are (deplaned and) taken into custody by marshals or law enforcing authorities to ensure safety of staff and other passengers/ customers.

However, in India, we see that passengers across the spectrum (not just politicians and film stars and rich and famous), verbally abuse staff pretty much every day with impunity. From security guards to bus conductors to phone company’s customer service agents to airline staff, they must listen to ‘tum kaon hote ho?”, “tera your aukaat kya hai” “Do you know your worth?” to “You are just a ….” “Do you know what I am?” to the many cuss words, the customer service staff in various industries take it all.

Irrespective of there being a law to protect public service staff against such behavior or making it a punishable offence, there seems to be a larger root-cause to this irresponsible behavior. It is not about airline vs passenger or a mobile company vs. the customer. It is one human verbally and/ or physically abusing another human. Some may say that the behavior is an ‘alpha male behavior’ and should be expected and ‘cost of doing business’.

Is butchering somebody else’s self-respect, verbal outrage of modesty, acceptable alpha male behavior that should be shunted under ‘chalta hai’? The staff at many businesses face this every single day. They are called names and sometimes even threatened. Even if, laws may exist to protect them, it is far more complex task for employers and individuals to work with the authorities. It is a messy situation in this age of social media. In fact, it gets further complicated if we include the behavior of people-people and not necessarily about powerful politicians.

Is butchering somebody else’s self-respect, verbal outrage of modesty, acceptable alpha male behavior that should be shunted under ‘ chalta hai’?

In general, we Indian customers (exceptions apart) do not seem respect the smaller staff member period. It spreads across the society. The house maid talks lowly and rudely to the garbage picker, the security guard talks rude to the maid, the driver speaks rude to the security guard. It is atrocious how this 'class' system works.

Is it then a surprise people talking rude to the person behind the counter - airline staff, or that security guard in apartment or that lady behind the Airtel counter. Unfortunately, we make the issue Airtel vs. customer or #IndigoAirlines vs. customer (big vs. small) and big always is at fault. If we swap it around in this case to that rich airline flier vs. the lowly ground staff - we might all have the different angle to this problem.

It is about human respect and respecting the other individual.

Finally, how does one resolve such issues?

Many times, when even we say, ‘thank you’, we seem say that more like an automated response, or if we are aware that we are thanking, it seems like thanking from a higher pedestal. Saying ‘Thank You’ is not for feeling of doing something good or proud.

One way to address this would be to start with teaching (ourselves) and our children to show respect. We and our children must learn to thank with respect and express “gratitude" to the security, maid or auto driver. The reason, I insist on “gratitude” is because gratitude makes ‘these givers’ the larger souls and us the ‘receiving souls’.

Hopefully there is a way of institutionalising #gratitude ??