Chalta Hai India: When ‘It’s Ok!’ is Not Ok

By Alpesh Patel

India once commanded a massive 30 per cent share of the global GDP and led the world in most fields, but today the country sadly is a developing nation. People often attribute India's sluggish progress to the malaise called the Chalta Hai ('It's okay', 'Let it be') attitude, but not everyone agrees with that presupposition. Debates on the subject are often inconclusive and discomfiting questions remain unanswered. Are we really a Chalta Hai nation? Is Chalta Hai ingrained in our DNA or is it just a bad habit which can be easily exterminated? Will this attitude stop India from becoming a global power?

Alpesh Patel delves into this quirky Indian approach and answers these questions by examining the country's pace of progress in fields such as education, infrastructure, films and sports since Independence. The book revisits our cultural, ideological and political history over three millennia to trace the roots of the Chalta Hai attitude of Indians. Interesting facts and unsettling inferences force the reader to introspect and awaken him to the need for an urgent action. Finally, the book charts out methods and suggestions on how to get rid of the Chalta Hai attitude and take India closer to the dream of becoming a developed nation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Oct 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9789388038683

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PART ONE

Exploring the ‘It’s Okay’ Life

1

DEFINING AND MEASURING CH

In a Bajaj bike advertisement aired in 2012, three men were shown saying, ‘Discoverer nahin hai, par chalta hai.’⁹ Actually they aspired to own ‘Bajaj Discoverer 125’ bikes but had to settle for something lesser. In contrast, a young man was shown racing on his Bajaj Discoverer on a highway and a voiceover proclaimed, ‘Discover 125, yeh chalta nahin, daudta hai.’ Bajaj Discoverer was showcased to be a bike for those who believed ‘Good enough is not enough!’ Explaining the advertisement, Abhijit Avasthi of O&M had said in an interview, ‘The baseline "Chalta nahin, daudta hain" takes a light-hearted dig at those with the Chalta Hai attitude in life.’¹⁰

***

Indeed, CH is Visible Around Us

Signs of Chalta Hai never leave us in our daily lives. Many of us grew up seeing a garbage heap outside our building, and the filth only grew over the years. First, there was no dustbin, but even after the municipality put up a dustbin, the garbage still didn’t vanish—after all the people just wouldn’t bother to walk up to the dustbin. They happily tossed their garbage-filled plastic bags aiming for the dustbin standing inside their building premise. The dustbin remained only partially filled and garbage piled up around it!

Amplify this phenomenon at the national level, and we get dirty beaches, temples, hospitals and railway stations, resulting in the breeding of mosquitoes and flies, causing malaria, cholera or dengue. No wonder, Surat railway station, which is visibly unclean, was ranked the sixth cleanest station in India in a study by the Ministry of Railways. One wonders how the twenty-fifth ranked railway station would look like.

Take a road trip from Delhi to Chennai, and you will rarely find even a reasonable level of compliance with traffic rules by drivers. Breaking traffic signals, taking wrong turns, parking at wrong places, honking at every opportunity and over speeding is rampant on Indian roads. The drivers, traffic police and pedestrians blame one another for the chaos. ‘Chalta hai, ek signal hi toh toda hai. The signal was taking so very long to turn green.’ The result of this culture of traffic indiscipline is that India tops the world in the number of road accidents and related deaths. We have an unreasonably high number of vehicles on the roads which are uninsured, our roads have unbearably high levels of air and noise pollution and the average speed of vehicles is much lower compared to most of the comparable countries.

‘It’s okay!’ culture isn’t just limited to cleanliness and road indiscipline. Our Chalta Hai attitude allows us to leave water taps open, bribe liberally, sell fake shoes, leave electric wires open, arrive late for meetings, disrespect agreed deadlines, break queues, copy scripts, urinate on the roads… the list is long. And these add up to swamp us with national issues like water scarcity, corruption, low productivity, unpleasant public transport, piracy and poor record on commercial contract enforcement.

But are We a Chalta Hai Nation or It’s Just a Slogan?

While most Indians will acknowledge that signs of CH are visible everywhere, we can’t seem to agree on the extent of Chalta Hai that exists and whether Chalta Hai is a deep-rooted Indian trait that will never go away. In other words, not everyone would agree whether we are a CH nation. As a part of my research, when I met groups consisting of people from various spectrum—CEOs, entrepreneurs, professionals, students, teachers—debates often got heated, tempers rose and swords came out. If the sceptics on one side swore that we are indeed a Chalta Hai nation, those proud of our motherland discounted the presence of significant CH in India. ‘Come on, CH isn’t like a deadly cancer inflicting all the Indians or a sign of our defective genes,’ they would argue. They had a point. If CH were a ‘genetic’ deficiency ailing all the Indians, we wouldn’t have been one of the greatest civilisations and the most prosperous nation with achievements in science, maths, medicine, architecture and arts. After all, India had been a thriving, progressive civilisation which produced universities like Takshashila, great languages like Sanskrit, scriptures like Vedas, religions like Buddhism and the world’s most beautiful monument—the Taj Mahal. If we Indians had (and have) CH attitude, how could India have been at the forefront of developments in so many diverse fields for so many centuries?

When the debate shifts to modern day India, the proud ones recount India’s recent achievements to prove the absence of significant CH among us. They remind us that today India is one of the few countries possessing nuclear weapons, and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has registered achievements like sending Mars orbiter in the first attempt, discovering water on the moon, and offering commercial satellite launches to even developed countries. India has achieved one of the highest mobile phone penetration levels in the world, built airports which are consistently rated number one in the world, retained global leadership position in IT and pharmaceutical industries, designed and built indigenous cars and nurtured auto component export hubs. India has also built (and is building) massive national expressways and metro-rail networks across many cities. From being a food-deficient nation at the time of independence, today India is among the world’s top two producers of cotton, rice, wheat, most vegetables, fruits and spices, and is the largest exporter of wheat and meat. With the help of White Revolution, India has become the largest producer of milk in the world. The country has managed to eradicate polio and achieved massive reduction in poverty. In sports, India generally retains world number one ranking in cricket and kabaddi and produces world champions in chess and billiards. Further, we successfully host mega sports events like IPL, Formula One and badminton and football league tournaments. And above all, India has produced Miss Worlds, Nobel Prize winners (Rabindranath Tagore, Amartya Sen, CV Raman, Venkataraman Ramakrishnan, Har Gobind Khorana, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and VS Naipaul), Booker Prize winners (Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga) and Indians repeatedly appear in the global lists of the richest people in the world. India has great institutions like the IITs and the IIMs and Indians like Sonia Gandhi, Indra Nooyi, Chanda Kochhar and Arundhati Bhattacharya often appear in the list of most powerful Indians or business persons. The proud ones told me, ‘If Indians are take it easy people, how have they achieved so much?’

And, look at the Indians abroad. They comprise the most educated and richest ethnic migrant population in the USA. Indian kids are winners of global spelling bee competitions, many Indians are heading global B-schools as deans, and Indian women (Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams) have made a mark in the field of space exploration. Many Indians are in leadership positions as CEOs of global companies, and the Mittal Group was the largest biggest steel producer in the world for a long time.

For months, over many group discussions and debates, I kept hearing the same examples of Chalta Hai and n-CH (nahin Chalta Hai, the absence of Chalta Hai). But gradually the debates matured, we dug deeper, and we began to spot the contrasts between CH and n-CH within each example. While India is deploying metro trains in many cities, the project is completed on time in one state, but delayed by many years in others. Mumbai has uninterrupted electricity, but other cities have massive power cuts (including the town of Gurgaon, (now renamed Gurugram) a global BPO destination), cricketers are among the richest sportspersons in the world, but till a few years back, hockey players struggled to get even basic amenities. Many Indian women have won Miss World titles, but we do get news about girl children being killed and discrimination against women. India is one of the world leaders in software services, but there are hardly any world-class Indian software products (like Microsoft Windows or SAP). Mumbai has the world’s tallest residential building under construction, but the plan to revamp the largest slum area in the same city is still on paper (not even fully on paper). India has a town with the highest rainfall in the world, but has a shortage of drinking water in most cities and towns. India has the world’s largest inward remittance of money, but has a tiny share in global exports.

Gradually, it became clear to me that the contrasts between CH and n-CH existed in almost every field. Take the field of education. Centuries back India established world’s first universities like Nalanda where students from other countries and continents came to study. But today, no university from India ranks among the top hundred universities in the world. Indians are globally the best doctors, scientists, technocrats and entrepreneurs. But after seventy years of independence, India hasn’t managed to provide good quality doctors in even mid-size towns, the public health system is bad and there are ignoble instances of sweepers working as doctors in Uttar Pradesh. There is a severe shortage of judges (or lack of efficiency) and lakhs of court cases are pending with a backlog of many years to clear.

Or take the field of infrastructure. Yes, India built a world-class metro network in Delhi and airports in cities like Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru are rated among the top three best airports in the world in their categories. But step out of the Mumbai airport and a few miles later, one encounters potholed roads, dilapidated buildings and slums with poor sanitation standards and no water supply. India increased its road network by thousands of miles, but accident rates on roads are the highest in the world. Take the Indian Railways for instance. It has established one of the largest train networks in the world, it also runs the largest ticket booking website in the world, but it has one of the dirtiest compartments, cumbersome ticketing process (improving gradually now), poor history on timeliness, unenviable safety record, inadequate passenger assistance, unhygienic food supply, unkempt waiting lounges, inefficient luggage handling and dismal medical facilities.

After a series of debates, it was clear that throwing random examples of n-CH would not result in a satisfactory assessment of the extent of CH in India. To judge the extent of CH at a national level, it was required to take a deep look across many fields (for example, transport, sports and films) and objectively ‘measure’ the extent of CH. But even before that, it was necessary to define this beast called Chalta Hai. What exactly is Chalta Hai?

Defining CH

I started making a list of various expressions and usages of Chalta Hai from daily interactions, and I found something exciting. We Indians use the phrase Chalta Hai in a variety of different contexts, to express various shades of black, white and grey—often with contradictory meanings! Look at a sample of expressions below.

Chalta Hai, isse kaam chal jayega — This is good enough (‘satisfied’)

Chalta Hai, iss se achcha kya hoga? — This is the best possible, can’t be bettered (‘complacent’)

Chalta Hai, isme kya galat hai? — It’s okay to do this, I’ve done nothing wrong (‘quick-fix’)

Chalta Hai, galti ho jaati hai — Pardon the shortcomings (‘accommodating’)

Chalta Hai, kya kar sakte hai? — What can one do? (‘resign’)

Chalta Hai, humey kya farak padta hai? — It doesn’t affect me, so why should I care? (‘apathy’)

Amazingly, we use the phrase to express contradictory meanings—being satisfied on the one hand and apathy on the other, pardoning others on the one hand and taking shortcuts on the other. So when one looks at the Mumbai slums and thinks, ‘Chalta Hai, the poor also have a right to live,’ one is being compassionate and accommodative towards the poor, which isn’t a bad thing. But then, one is also supporting the unabated spread of unhygienic and anaesthetic city spaces by letting things be the way they are. CH can be felt even when the phrase Chalta Hai isn’t used at all. This sports headline, ‘India is now assured of at least a bronze medal in wrestling’ smells of complacency in contrast with a more aspirational headline ‘India now two wins away from an Olympic Gold’. Chalta Hai, medal toh milega na! (It’s okay, we will at least get a medal) When a politician was asked about his plan to stop waterlogging in the city during monsoon, he proposed, ‘Pray to God to stop the rains.’ He actually meant, ‘Chalta Hai, why do anything? Rely on Gods to come and save us!’

So if there are so many contradictory usages of Chalta Hai, what is common across these expressions? Well, it is ‘inaction’. So, Chalta Hai can be defined as ‘not doing enough about a problem or inferiority’ or ‘sitting on a problem and accepting inferiority without taking action’. Irrespective of whether CH is used to mean satisfied or complacent or quick-fix or resignation or apathy, in all cases, it reflects a tendency to resort to ‘inaction’—to let things be the way they are.

On the one hand, CH is about lack of action when the problem is tactical and its solution is ridiculously simple (for example, disposal of garbage in dustbins). On the other hand, CH is also about not doing enough when the issue is of extreme strategic importance and the solution is difficult to find (such as terrorism and pollution). In either case, though the issues are well recognised, they remain unresolved not due to lack of resources but because of lack of attitude or motivation to act.

Chalta Hai, As They Say in Other Countries

Interestingly, the expression or sense of Chalta Hai isn’t unique to India and many cultures have something similar of the sorts. Take the Latin American term, ‘manana’ which means ‘tomorrow’ but is actually meant to suggest an indefinite, ‘not now’. It represents the attitude of ‘Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow?’ Latin Americans are known for tardiness and use the light-hearted expression ‘Sorry I’m late; I’m on Latin time.’ Its nations often score badly in global surveys on punctuality. In fact, Ex-foreign Minister of Mexico, Jorge G Castaneda, tried to decode Mexico’s culture and its implications in his book Manana Forever? Mexico and the Mexicans. The Peruvian President tried to fix the culture of manana or tardiness, believing that the laissez-faire attitude of his countrymen was harming national productivity and deterring foreign investors. Attacking their reputation of poor time-keeping, in 2007 the Peruvian government promoted the benefits of being on time in a campaign called ‘La hora sin demora’ or ‘Time without delay’.

Then there is the Middle Eastern ‘Bukrah, insha Allah’ (Tomorrow, God willing) attitude. Some say it in a religious sense to mean that everything that happens is God-willed. Though, often, it’s used as a way of expressing hope amidst uncertainty—about whether something (promised or committed by someone) will happen on time, or in fact happen at all. The French come close to expressing Chalta Hai with the all-encompassing term ‘C’est la vie’ (That’s life!). It is sometimes used as an expression to say that life is harsh but one must accept it. C’est la vie could thus mean ‘submission to fate’, ‘moving on’ and nearly reveals an attitude of unwillingness to fight against an adversity. And then, Chalta Hai is a popular phrase across the entire Indian subcontinent. Search for the phrase Chalta Hai on the Internet and there will be sizeable results originating from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal in their blogs, news or tweets. In fact, phrases such as ‘Ye Pakistan hai, yahan sab kuch chalta hai!’ (This is Pakistan. Everything is going okay here!) are frequently used in the tweets by Pakistani tweeples.

Measuring CH in India

So how do we measure the extent of CH? If CH is about letting things be, the first obvious measure of CH (or the lack of it) is the speed at which people bring about changes and the pace at which things change. The second indicator of CH is the progress we have made compared to the world—especially compared to similar and better countries. In other words, we need to ask, ‘How have our lives, products, services and practices improved or deteriorated compared to the other comparable or developed countries?’ The third measure of CH is the extent of pressure that general people put on the system, the government or society to bring about desired change. Let’s call these three measures, the ‘SIP’ parameters for measuring CH.

Speed of Change—Speed at which things change.

International Benchmarks—How do our products, services, practices and well-being compare with the best or average standards internationally?

Public Pressure—Pressure put by general people to get rid of inferiority.

As we establish below, SIP parameters have a distinct and solid correlation with CH and we will use them extensively to measure CH in India in the following chapters.

Speed of Change—How Long Does it Take to Make a Change?

Aaj Kare Toh Kal Kar,

Kal Kare So Parso,

Itni Jaldi Kya Hai Pyare,

Jab Jina Hai Sow Barso!

(Delay today’s work for tomorrow, tomorrow’s work for day after; Why hurry when you have a hundred years to live!)

Dharavi, a locality in the heart of Mumbai, has been in the list of world’s biggest slums for many decades and has been wanting to get transformed for better. But all attempts of ‘redeveloping’ the place have not moved beyond intents and grand schemes. ‘A new plan is on to develop Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, but its residents are sceptical’ read a headline¹¹ way back in 2004 which claimed that at least three grand schemes over last twenty years (before 2004) had already failed to take off. Seven years later, not much had happened and in December 2011, the Bombay High Court rapped the State government for not implementing the Dharavi redevelopment plan, fourth of the grand plan so far. Ironically, just a few months earlier, in July 2011, Dharavi had lost its dubious distinction of being Asia’s largest slum because three other slums in Mumbai had outgrown the slums of Dharavi! So even as other slums ballooned, Dharavi was still waiting to get redeveloped. While everyone—the residents, government, NGOs, financers and builders—wanted Dharavi to be redeveloped, projects after projects were getting delayed and then shelved. Dharavi epitomises the unfortunately slow, Chalta Hai pace at which change takes place in India.

In 1960, India was a more urban nation than China (eighteen per cent people lived in cities, compared to China’s sixteen per cent). But between 1960 and 2016, China urbanised far more rapidly to reach urbanisation rate of fifty-six per cent, compared to thirty-three per cent in India. If we thought China is an exception, urbanisation of some other countries show a similar trend. From 1960 to 2016, urbanisation grew from five per cent to thirty-four per cent in Bangladesh, twenty-two per cent to thirty-nine per cent in Pakistan and four per cent to thirty-nine per cent in Bhutan.¹²

‘China is Tearing Down Mountains to Build Cities’ read one headline¹³ as China took unprecedented steps to acquire land and incentivise people to move to newly built cities to achieve urbanisation. Unlike the alacrity and speed displayed by China, our pace of change remains slow on all fronts. Almost all metro and mono-rail projects across the country are delayed by months. Decision-making is painfully slow and files move desks but no signoffs happen. The Sewree-Nahwa sea link in Mumbai was planned in early 2000 and even after a decade, the construction work was not even awarded. Environment clearances take decades and road projects are commonly delayed by years. Even after serial blasts, Mumbai setup CCTVs only after a decade, purchase of arms was unreasonably delayed and coastal policing is still only a concept.

Reforms take unduly long. In 2016, we finally shelved over 1,000 obsolete laws, some of which were a century old and even had a mention of ‘Her Majesty’ (Queen of England) in the texts. Hardly any steps are taken to tackle farmer suicides or pollution in cities even as over a dozen farmers commit suicide daily and Indian cities rank among the most polluted in the world. Chalta Hai is visible in terms of slow changes not only at macro level, for large projects or strategic areas where there are constraints, but also at an individual, local level when the solutions are simple and known. Even after sustained campaigns by the administration for decades, we don’t wear helmets when driving, stop littering in public places and stop defecating in open. The slow pace of change around us is a sure way to spot prevalence of CH.

International Benchmarks—Comparing Performance with the World, External Benchmarks

In 2010, when the New Zealand team arrived at Commonwealth Games venue in Delhi, they were horrified at the dirt-caked bathrooms and soiled rooms in the sports village. Organising Committee Secretary General Lalit Bhanot tried to deflect the criticism by saying, ‘Foreigners want certain standards of hygiene and cleanliness which may differ from our perception.’¹⁴ Hell broke loose and there was outrage across India. ‘Hygiene is hygiene, whether it is in India or anywhere else. I feel embarrassed by that statement,’ said one panellist on a television debate. This incident shows how a comparison with global practices is essential in assessing our CH attitude.

In debates regarding CH attitude, what is often missing is the quantification of CH using international benchmarks. In every field, there are world benchmarks set by people and nations which can be used as a barometer to gauge the extent of CH. Swiss are known to produce best watches, Germans are known for their cars, France is known for setting fashion trends and Americans are known for innovation. India has produced most (along with Venezuela) Miss Worlds in the world. And Japanese railways are among the most punctual in the world with average delays of less than a minute. In Japan, when trains are delayed for as little as five minutes, the conductor makes an announcement apologising for the delay and the railway company may provide passengers with a ‘delay certificate’, as no one would expect a train to be that late. Global rankings like most liveable cities, most polluted cities, best airports, best countries to do business with, most innovative companies, most corrupt nations and best universities too are vital in assessing CH.

So we will measure the extent of CH by comparing India’s products, services and practices with comparable countries (BRICS nations and our neighbours) as well as developed countries. While, arguably, India should be compared with countries which have GDP or per capita income similar to that of India, we will compare India with BRICS and developed countries for two reasons. Firstly, considering India’s prolonged historical greatness in the past, India has more potential compared to countries which fall in its current GDP or per capita slab. Secondly, it is better to benchmark ourselves with more developed nations to better appreciate where and to what extent we are going wrong.

Public Pressure—What is the Level of Public Pressure Against Inferior Products, Services and Practices?

When Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘One who tolerates injustice is no less at fault than the one who does injustice’, he meant, accepting inferior services and practices is nothing but sinful CH behaviour. By not accepting inferior products and services and raising the demands, people can put pressure on the government, administration, service providers, vendors and society to raise the bar of what they deliver. There have been noteworthy instances in India when demands by individuals have brought about path-breaking changes like the case involving the Indian Railways. The first train chugged in India in the year 1857 but for decades after its arrival, the train bogeys did not have any in-built toilets. Then, in 1909, an angry train passenger wrote this historic complaint letter¹⁵ to the railway office of Sahibganj division in West Bengal.

Dear Sir,

I am arrive by passenger train Ahmedpur station and my belly is too much swelling with jackfruit. I am therefor went to privy. Just I doing the nuisance that guard making whistle blow for train to go off and I am running with lotah in one hand and dhoti in the next when I am fall over and expose all shocking to man and female women on platform. I am got leaved Ahmedpur station. This too much bad, if passenger go to make dung that dam guard not wait train minutes for him. I am therefor pray your honour to make big fine on that guard for public sake. Otherwise I am making big report to papers.

Yours faithfully servant,

Okhil Ch Sen

This letter, replete with bumbling errors, however had such a powerful impact that it forced the railway authorities to conduct an investigation which subsequently resulted in the introduction of toilets in all trains in India. So the next time you enjoy the toilet facilities in an Indian train, you should thank Mr Okhil Sen. In another instance, after losing their 27-year-old pilot son in a MIG-21 crash, parents Kavita and Anil Gadgil didn’t sulk in pain but decided to do something to improve pilot training facilities. They set up a flying school, Jeet Aerospace Institute, near Donje village, equipped with India’s first mobile flight simulator. Then, there have also been mass movements like the Mandal Commission, JP Movement (that led to the Indian Emergency) and Lokpal Movement by Anna Hazare which are indicative of n-CH attitude of the people.

We will assess how promptly and aggressively individuals or groups in India react to unsatisfactory products, services and regressive practices to measure the extent of CH.

Time Window for Measuring CH

When assessing CH, we will not recount the glories of our ancient past and only consider the facts and data of the period after India’s independence. Here’s why. In the pre-modern era, India was a global superpower and in 1000 AD, India contributed to more than a quarter of world’s GDP.¹⁶ If the Nobel prizes were awarded then, India would have won in most of the categories including science, literature and mathematics. But since the advent of the modern era, the world has changed tremendously and the rules for winning are different today. If spices, cotton and jewellery were most coveted goods then, today oil, automobile and electronics are more sought-after products. If individual skills and craftsmanship