Individual actions erode or build national character.

Hit-and-Run

In the last few months, the press has treated us to the stories of politicians’ sons running over people and getting away with their crimes. These incidents, in themselves, are terrible, shocking, and horrendous. If everything ends here, we are fine, but the stories don’t end here.

In each case, the errant son gets away with a tiny slap on the wrist. The parents help fabricate evidence, the police stand by in mute surrender, and the courts cover themselves with shame. In one case, the court asked the lad to write an essay about the incident and stated he was under severe mental pressure. If the boy is old enough to consume copious quantities of alcohol, drive an expensive car, get drunk, and then kill someone, he is old enough to handle the punishment.

In another case, a politician’s son ran his vehicle over farmers protesting for their rights.

No one mentions the fate of the families of those who died. They are ordinary folk, members of ‘the little people’ whose lives don’t matter.

What will you learn from these unsavory incidents if you are the son? You realize you can get away with anything if you are rich, powerful, and influential. You also discover that the lives of ordinary citizens don’t matter.

Breaking Rules and Regulations

I will move to another example. I walked along the pavement between Darya Ganj and Chandni Chowk in Delhi. It is challenging to drive and walk along these crowded streets, which are too narrow for the number and variety of vehicles plying their paths. I carried my Fujifilm X100V camera, photographing the scenes and people. To my horror, I saw an ambulance riding the pavement, driving in the wrong direction, speeding in my direction. Examine the photograph; men are almost squeezed between the wall and the ambulance. I wondered if they were about to join the other patients in the vehicle. A man carried his child and kept walking as the ambulance sped towards us. I kept shooting, wondering if this was my last day on our planet.

Too many people break traffic rules in India, with Delhi setting an awful standard for infractions, including driving the wrong way. Worse, people now believe it is their right to break the rules. People across the spectrum, rich and poor, schooled and unschooled, consider it a badge of honor.

Small actions coalesce into disaster or glory.

These examples may be stray incidents, but they set the stage for declining moral standards and national character. If you can get away with minor transgressions, you push boundaries with tiny steps that become bolder as you realize you can get away with anything. This attitude transfers to your work (as we witnessed in the ten bridges that collapsed in Bihar), and the country either stagnates or declines.?

Attitudes determine behavior. Character determines attitude, and attitude determines character: a decline in one will drag the other down, and they create an autocatalytic cycle, leading to death.

Excellence is an attitude, and unless you fight for it, you will not become or remain competitive, no matter what geopolitical experts, economists, business leaders, or politicians state.