India: Where is the creative facet of our culture of destruction?

In recent weeks a couple of incidents told the true story of India in a manner that nothing else can. The Delhi metro bridge crashed killing some poor people one early morning a few weeks ago. When my quality control friend of Indian origin in the US saw the photographs of the accident scene he said that the position of pillars was so wrong that even a first year civil engineering student would not have erected them that way. He asked me what I had to say about this. I had no option but to look sheepish.

Now comes the news that there has been a derailment in the Delhi metro although the system is almost new. One can cite thousands of such examples at the end of which we are forced to ask the question — what is really happening here? Is there a fundamental issue here beyond what appears on the surface?

There can be several answers but I shall highlight a few here.

Incidents like collapsing bridges point to not just poor execution and maintenance but to total lack of respect for life. The company that built the metro bridge probably had to pay so much money under the table in getting the contract that in its effort to recoup this ‘investment’ the company compromised on quality even if it meant a human disaster in the future.

I make bold to say that such compromises occur in almost every project in India. For example, contractors are known to compromise on not only on the quality of road construction to ‘recover’ their under-the-table investment but also to get the contract to repair the road after the next monsoon. Such stories lead me to find the underlying cause…the greed to get money even if it means shoddy work costing human lives.

There is a total disrespect for life.

It is sometimes stated that Indians are poor at maintenance of assets. This is true but reduces the issue to a managerial failing. I suggest that this trivializes the issue and diverts attention from the larger more sinister issue of the pursuit of wealth at any cost including human lives.

To return to the more superficial issue — our poor maintenance record — I feel that this indicates the reversing of roles of the trinity of the Hindu pantheon. Thus Brahma the Creator seems to have a small role to play since we create few assets. Vishnu  The Preserver has a marginal role since we are poor at maintenance. It is Shiva the Destroyer who prevails as we destroy assets at will in a riot, or even in a morcha. Apart from this we have no compunction in destroying lives. India is a Shivaite country! The only intriguing issue here is that Shiva stands for creative destruction. We have imbibed ‘destruction’ and ignored the ‘creative’ aspect.

Here’s a joke I read in an Indian newspaper that shows how poor we are at maintenance and how we can be corrupted to ignore maintenance.

A man dies and goes to hell. There he finds that there is a different hell for each country. He goes to the German hell and asks, “What do they do there?” He is told, “First they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they lay you on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the German devil comes in and beats you for the rest of the day.”

The man doesn’t like it, so he moves on and checks out the American hell, the Russian hell and hells of other countries. He finds that they’re all more or less the same as the German hell.

Then he comes to the Indian hell and finds that there is a long queue of people waiting to get in. Amazed, he asks, “What do they do here?” He is told, “First they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they lay you on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the Indian devil comes in and beats you for the rest of the day.” “But that is exactly the same as all the other hells; so why are so many people waiting to get in here?” wonders the man. He is told, “Because the maintenance here is so bad that the electric chair does not work, someone has stolen all the nails from the bed and the Indian devil is a former government servant, so he just comes in, signs the attendance register and then goes to the canteen.”