What do the traffic lights mean to you? Well if we go by the book the red one is for ‘Stop’, the yellow one for ‘wait’ or ‘relax’ and the green one for ‘Go’. For most Indians however the denotation of these lights change somewhat. Most of the time people don’t want to stop at red lights. Even if they do they will probably have crossed alm
ost half the road and standing at the middle of the crossing sometimes even on the zebra crossing which is supposed to be an offence.
The yellow light seems to have a sort of humorous connotation for us Indians. In most of the developed countries the yellow indicates that it is time to slow down and wait for the light to turn red. But as they say, India is a land of peculiarities where meanings are twisted and modified to suit one’s own requirements. I have observed time and again that almost every time the light turns yellow a sudden urgency comes upon the person and he or she tends to rush ahead caring little about the problem it could cause to fellow travellers. At all costs one has to avoid the light turning red. This could lead to dire consequences as one would have to stop and abide by the traffic rules. I guess the only light that makes sense to the Indian masses is the green one except that at certain times some people don’t understand that the light turned green only for the ones taking a right and not for them. But since it is green irrespective of the direction it is indicating they need to tell the people in front of them that it is high time they made a move. And this can be only done by an incessant honking of their horns which must have been gifted to them by their father-in-law. I simply don’t understand why people in India behave so strangely especially when they are on the road.
I guess we Indians h
ave over the time developed a general tendency to break the law and care the least about the problems social and otherwise that it could create. Even the recent ban on smoking in public places has been taken as a sort of challenge by most of my smoking friends. And I believe this is the general scenario across the country. People seem to get a kick out of breaking the law. One of my friends said ‘Lets see what they can do?’. It is another thing that this ban in itself is flawed because you cannot stop people from smoking if the cigarettes itself are available in public. What I think they should have done is start a drive to removing all the cigarette and pan shops from public places like bus stops, roadsides and corners of colony markets.
But whatever the government is doing and whatever the next one will do we have to make sure as individuals to rid ourselves of this habit of breaking the law. If the laws were strictly applied and people were even a little scared of the guardians of order then may be many of the troubles of the country could have been avoided. When the court threatened to ban the Bajrang Dal for its coercive and anti-social activities across the country especially in Orissa then they dared them to do it. They warned of grave consequences that could befall the governments and the law and order situation as a whole. What has given them the guts to do so? I guess even here the subconscious tendency came into play. They are least scared about what could occur to them because according to them “Nothing can happen to them”. The system itself is running on black money and unless all the leaks and faults are not checked we will never be able to realise the economic progress that the country is witnessing right now. 
It is strange and somewhat funny to hear experts opine that India could be somewhat immune to the global meltdown scenario. This is not because the country is not very involved in the global economy and transactions but because of the massive amount of red tapeism that prevails in every sector. This tends to decrease the trickle down effect of the fluctuations and hence our country will survive a Recession if there’s any. Funny isn’t it. In fact we should be ashamed of not being part of elite club as yet. No doubt the country is making rapid progress in every sphere. Be it the nuclear deal, the 8% growth and fast growing forex reserves. But it could have been much faster. An expert stated that the economy is moving outward with a huge centripetal force and making rapid progress. But an even greater centrifugal force is dragging it in and reducing the overall effect of the force. This centrifugal force is in the form of corruption, red tapeism, communalism and of course external threats as well. As long as these components are not neutralised India will never be able to challenge its global competitors. And I still maintain that underlying all these major deterrents is the simple tendency to break the law and being selfish. Until every individual realises this we will have to Wait??? Are you still in doubt?
