Friday, June 20, 2008

Excellence in India II

[This follows the first part, Excellence in India I]

Pursuit of Excellence

I see the pursuit of excellence in a culture as a three step process. First is recognition of excellence. Second is rewarding excellence. Third is celebration of excellence, making it a part of the culture itself.

1. Recognition of Excellence

I believe we are not trained to recognize excellence. It’s not a part of our culture – if it was indeed a part of us in the remote past, we have already lost it. Instead, we deride and ridicule excellence, belittle it, scandalize it, defame it, and then discard it. In turn, we inculcate a culture of celebrating mediocrity – democratizing it. When everyone has it, we are all equals, that way, we all feel good.

We are not trained to recognize what ‘excellence’ is. We are not looking for it. And we fail to see it even when it is thrown at us.

Once in a while we will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened.

– Winston Churchill

It is the same with stumbling upon ‘excellence’. Most Indians just pick themselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened, to stop over at the next place where mediocrity is being displayed. There they stop and relish in it. Excellence makes them feel small and inferior while the mediocrity makes everyone feel like a king.

Indian Crabs

This attitude reminds me of a fable about Indian Crabs. During an international exhibition showcasing crabs from various countries, Indian crabs are the only ones with no lid on the vessel. When an observer asks, ‘How come you do not have a lid on it, wouldn’t your crabs escape?’ the clever Indian remarks, ‘Don’t worry, these are Indians Crabs. If one guy tries to move up, the others will pull him down’.

In a University in India, a renowned scientist who attracts lot of fame is seen as an unnecessary nuisance. If only he just stopped making news; their inadequacies would not come to light. Hence, a plot is hatched to ensure he does not get his next set of laboratory experiments so that he cannot continue his research. This way, the majority is happy, at the cost of misfortune and disappointment of one single scientist. This is how we curb excellence.

Indian Universities or government organizations ensure they never promote excellence. The guy who actually delivers is booted out. The guy who pleases everyone though he never does his job is promoted. We want to be surrounded by mediocre people so that we all feel we are all successful.

This attitude is all pervading almost making it a chronic ailment of Indian psyche. Whether it is politics, economics, governance, movie-making, or IT industry, mediocrity is encouraged, Excellence is snubbed. Everyone gets to say about everything, democratizing almost every aspect of our society, including the most specialized fields such as medicine, technology, astronomy, archaeology, and every other field you name it.

7 comments:

  1. I suppose we have achieved the highest human ideal. The dictatorship of democracy and true anarchy. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excellence is in the eye of the beholder. If we have so much hatred towards particular subject, we cannot find excellence in it.

    Fanatic Hindus cannot find excellence in Bible. Fanatic Christians can never find excellence in Vedas. Capitalist will always say communism as worst and vice versa.

    Persons with neutral eyes/ears/senses have found excellence in Indian movies like Lakhan, Indian singers like MS Subbulakshmi,Indian software like Iflex which was acquired by Oracle.

    Ancient indian arts like Yoga looks impressive to many people. Some people wonder how Hinduism concept of God incarnation matches so closely with evolution theory.

    You may be able to find excellence if you take out hatredness towards India from your heart.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Abhi:
    May be, you find excellence in India roads. I don't. We are just wired differently, I guess.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sujai,
    Any Country,groups,individuals,systems have strengths, weaknesses, excellence and mediocrity. But if a person has inherent hatredness against country,group,individuals etc he will never be able to see strengths and excellences in those objects. Whether Bin laden will be able to see excellence in christianity?

    I do see lot of weakness in our system. Even pointed out many in comments section of your articles. I never said Indian roads are excellent.

    There is some excellence in the whole country that is why we are able to cruise at double digit growth rate and attract foreign investments. If you and die hard supporters of you do not see any excellence, probably something wrong with your eyes.

    For example, I stayed in Indonesia for 1 year, I was able to see excellence in their Jakarta road infrastructure and indiscipline in following road discipline like India. Whereas after few days visit, you were able to see excellence in road discipline at Jakarta. Probably you may have observed with hatredness towards India and I may have looked it from neutral point of view

    ReplyDelete
  5. We are just wired differently, I guess.

    Short circuit I guess.

    ReplyDelete
  6. LOL short circuit!

    @sujai, for someone who spends so much time generalizing about indian mediocrity, can you list some of your own achievements? or are you just another mediocre indian?

    let's hear it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. "In a University in India, a renowned scientist who attracts lot of fame is seen as an unnecessary nuisance. If only he just stopped making news; their inadequacies would not come to light. Hence, a plot is hatched to ensure he does not get his next set of laboratory experiments so that he cannot continue his research. This way, the majority is happy, at the cost of misfortune and disappointment of one single scientist. This is how we curb excellence."

    is this story based on a true incident or did you pull it out of your @$$? you'd better start meticulously referencing your posts if you wish to retain even a semblance of credibility. cheers!

    ReplyDelete

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