With Great Power, comes Greater Arrogance?

[Due apologies to Ben Parker, the uncle of Peter 'Spiderman' Parker, whose quote has been mauled for supplying the title of this article. I must also say outright that the word 'Muggle' has been used for 'people who neither are in the bureaucracy, nor have any uncles in the bureaucracy', precisely for the reason that the whole expression might be quite unwieldy, and it is not used in a derogatory manner. Thank you, Jo, for creating such a nice word.]

After around 10 months from the date I left my office in Mumbai, it is time to take up public office once more. Most probably it shall come with some of what has been called, by persons ostensibly more learned, but suspected to be quite innocent of field-craft, “trappings of power”. Nothing too wild – a mode of conveyance, a place of stay, a designation that does not sound dodgy – little things, that have been described by some as ivory towers atop which bureaucrats sit and survey their domains. Yes, our kind has been described as suffering from many ills – venality may be the most highlighted one these days. However, as we have been told by many persons – bureaucrats and muggles alike – it is not the venality that hurts the people interacting with the bureaucracy the most. It is the arrogance. People say they are willing to forgive, or even aid and abet, the venality, if only it would help them avoid the humiliation that they face while interacting with the public service delivery system.

            As it is in my nature, I trace all the ills that riddle the governance structure back to our society at large – this article shall be no different. It is not that the author is oblivious to the arrogance the holders of public offices display. On the other hand, it might give some solace to the humiliated muggles that the bureaucracy reserves the best of its excellent ‘PR skills’ for its own people! What makes it worse is the consciousness which is fuelled by the notions of ‘Grade Pay’ and ‘Warrant of Precedence’. While the outrage of a muggle might stem from the public ‘servant’ dictating terms, it is a whole new level of humiliation when a person you know to be drawing a grade pay at least four steps below you makes you dance to his tunes! So, coming back to the point - our society at large has a proclivity towards arrogant behaviour. My ideas are derived from my interactions within the Northern, Hindi speaking belt; the same may be extrapolated, with caution, by the readers based on their experience. We tend to be arrogant in any relationship where there is a power differential in a transaction. The transaction may be of any nature, and the issue of contention may be of any type – the only common factor is that there exists a transaction, and there exists a power differential between the transacting parties.

One of the most interesting ways in which this arrogance manifests itself is in the arrogance of the ‘ladkeywaaley’ (groom’s side) in the traditional arranged marriage scene. Somehow, in this society, a greater stigma is attached to spinsterhood than is attached to bachelorhood. Combine that with the tradition of most brides being younger than the grooms, and the clock is already running out for the girls as soon as they hit the legal age. This puts an enormous pressure on the girl and her family to get a ‘suitable match’ as soon as the possible, putting them at a disadvantaged status in the arranged marriage market. That it leads to venality is manifest in the practice of dowry. However, venality is not the focus of this article. Arrogance is. The traditional arranged marriage scenario sees the worst kind of arrogant display of this power. The bride’s family is treated as second grade citizens, at least till the period the negotiations, or even the wedding itself, are not complete. The clichéd Hindi cinema meme of the hapless ‘dulhan ka baap’ (bride’s father) taking off his turban and placing it at the feet of the recalcitrant ‘dulhe ka baap’ (groom’s father) has more than a grain of truth.

Another common everyday scenario where our innate arrogance comes to light is in our little economic transactions, especially when it comes to our dealings with the little vendors – the roadside grocer, the street corner cobbler, the emaciated rickshaw puller. We would assume our right to a ‘bargain’, even at the cost of the already slim margins of these entrepreneurs. Many would say they are simply extracting their money’s worth. Think again. The same person would happily drink a 100 buck coffee at CCD, or buy a T-shirt, costing some 200 rupees, at a price range 10 times that. However, when it comes to paying a rickshaw puller Rs.15 instead of the tenner we insist on, we become apoplectic with rage, and start plying them with all the notions of market propriety. It is not that we do it consciously. I myself have gone livid with rage when the Delhi autowallah insist on charging above what has been deemed ‘proper’ (who does not). However, the same feeling of being cheated does not come  up that often when we are transacting with the big people – the lounge-suited owner of an upscale eatery, for that matter.

Popular discourse itself shows traces of societal arrogance. We tend to discount, and deem ourselves superior to, the ‘voting classes’. After all, who hasn’t heard of the story that they sell their votes for liquor and amusement? They constitute a class of which the individuals are powerless compared to the individuals of our class – so how could their judgement on how the nation is to be governed be right? As some people are discovering the ultimate helpless of the ‘once-considered-powerful’ bureaucracy, at least in the arena of verbal dueling, a sense of propriety has given way to arrogance. The ‘civil society’ claims that the public ‘servants’ should behave like ‘servants’, not masters. There is an element of scorn in the utterance of the word ‘servant’. This vision of ‘servants’ is quite different from the Western version of the ‘help’ – the ‘servant’ has to be servile, docile, and able to brook all sorts of abuse. No doubt the government is looking to legislate for the welfare of the actual domestic servants of this very civil society, who, as a whole, have not been very civil to their helps.

Is the situation totally hopeless, and are we doomed to a life devoid of propriety and ‘gentlemanliness’ in our social interactions? Well, we have had individual examples of thorough ladies and gentlemen in our lives. At IIT Delhi, we had the good fortune of having, as our Finance instructor, Professor P.K. Jain, an epitome of right conduct. He addressed all his students, the canteen workers, the helpers, in fact any human being, of whatever age, background or qualification, as ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’. He never used any ‘street level’ word, even when he had all reasons to do so. Even his admonishments, which were rare, sounded like a well drafted letter! We all would have come across such persons in our life. It is a pity that they are so rare that chancing upon them is such a memorable thing.

It is also a pity that in such an arrogant society, a non-arrogant person who has to deal with a lot of public has to develop a retaliatory ‘instrumental arrogance’. I can tell from the experience of holding office for 10 months that a ‘nice person’ faces a hell out there when faced with people who are confused about their parentage – the “jaante ho mera baap kaun hai” (do you know who my Dad is?) types. If it is not their Dad, it is their uncle, their Aunt, their friend, their student. However, it might be a good idea to shut down this defence mechanism once in a while – and to give the other party a chance to show some innate decency. It is one such incident that prompted me to write this piece, and it is quite illustrative. It so happened that I was traveling with family across the length of my State by a train, which touched the departure station at an hour later than the midnight. When we boarded and reached our berths, we found them occupied with a lot of uniformed men, all armed with INSAS rifles! Now this is the point of panic – government servants, in a huge group, armed, uniformed, and in illegal occupancy of one’s berths at 1 a.m. I was preparing to bring out the whole ‘steel frame’ and stuff – asking them to vacate the berths, tell the name of their commander, their post, their antecedents, and their reasons for being in illegal occupancy of the berths of the family of an officer soaring in pay-grades miles above them! I knew nothing lesser would have worked – given their advantageous position, and I was worried if my affectation of righteously hurt bureaucratic pride would be convincing, given the fact that I was in a 2 day old T-shirt and was carrying a rumpled bag on my shoulder. Fortunately, the showdown never came. Dad requested them to vacate, and they did! All they said was – “Sir, kindly let us wear our shoes, and keep some of our luggage in the vacant holds”. I felt bad for them, in a split interval of a moment. So when they had made their way to a vacant berth at the end of the coach, I started small talk with one of them. I learnt that they were no ordinary ‘chowki’ policemen, but the armed security detail of one of the senior-most Cabinet Ministers of the State which I am about to serve, who was traveling in the First AC coach next to ours. It was good I had not pulled rank in front of them – after all, what is a mere Assistant Collector in front of a Cabinet Minister! One may argue that they were in the wrong in occupying our reserved berths, but the society in the area the train was passing through did not set much store by such laws; and anyway, how was one supposed to enforce those laws there. Yet, despite their immensely powerful position in this transaction, those men chose to be civil. They chose not to be arrogant. They chose to do so with a so called ‘aam aadmi’ (a better heeled one, may be, judging by the fact that he was traveling in Second AC, but an ‘aam aadmi’ nevertheless, since we had not been introduced). It was heartening that this departure from the sad societal norm was done by one of the most vilified segments of the society in this regard – the uniformed forces. The incident redeemed my faith in a better future for our social discourse. Let us bring civility back (if it ever was here to begin with) in our society – avoid the innate arrogance, and let down on the instrumental arrogance, once in a while. We might just usher in a more pleasant world.