A confrontation with yet another rude cop on New Delhi’s streets brought to mind a 'solution' suggested by the Delhi Police Commissioner to that and related issues during an informal chat with journalists the other day. If people want the average cop on the street to be polite and helpful, he said, let IPS officers start service as constables. He did, of course, concede later that although such a system would work in theory, it could never really be put in place. Although it goes to the police chief's credit that he readily accepted his department's flaws and came up with a positive suggestion for it, the root cause of the rot in the system is not just the relative lack of literacy and pedigree among the lower ranks of government personnel, but a peculiar trait embedded in the Indian psyche: an intolerance most Indians seem to have for any measure of success achieved by their co-workers and acquaintances. Put another way, the average Indian seems to be subconsciously programmed to discourage anyone in his/her sphere of influence from getting ahead in life in whatever manner. This could manifest itself in any number of ways, many of which cannot be stated in so many words, let alone quantified. You could have your colleagues indulging in and character assassination, your superiors discrediting you in front of juniors despite putting in good work, your subordinates chatting about your personal life behind you back. The list is endless. It doesn't count if the person has worked hard towards something and deserves the reward, or that there's no rational reason to try sabotage his/her path to success through tactics ranging from criticism to vicious rumours amounting to character assassination to downright demoralisation. A lot of people, even in professions like the media seem to think nothing of breaking a relatively junior colleague's spirit and will to succeed, justifying it to themselves as 'testing where the person really stands'. Or to decide on some basis best known to them that someone does not deserve the right to fair treatment or even being in that particular profession. And no matter how talented or resourceful someone might be, the hierarchy must prevail, and you dare not question if the people at the helm are competent or qualified to be there in the first place. For, if someone's got to the top, s/he must deserve simply because with everyone pulling you back all the time, only a very few ever make it over the top. This curious phenomenon, obviously, percolates down to all walks of Indian life, not excluding the mass media, where an individual's intellect/intelligence, talent and sense of ethics should be all the qualifications necessary for a journalist to survive and thrive. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and your ‘superior’ is just as likely to let ego do the talking as mortals in any other profession/trade. Especially if you happen to be better than him/her at the job. Or because s/he just doesn't like you. Or a thousand other reasons, impossible to spell, far less quantify. And this is where it begins to cause damage far beyond the individual level, considering the crucial role the mass media plays in community-building. This is not a sweeping generalisation, mind you, which is a trap too many people get into all the time just because it's easy to do so. And it's true that the characteristics in question know no borders, international or otherwise. It's just that that is the way we really are as a community, whatever the reasons might be: the densely packed population, the poverty et al, which obliges far too many people laying claim to scarce resources just to survive. Or maybe it's just the climate. The reasons are not the point here. The point here is that there's good reason why the United States of America rules over the world, explicitly or implicitly, and it's nothing to do with the collapse of the Soviet empire: the overriding respect for individuality. It's impossible to say whether every American treats superiors and juniors with respect and fairness, of course, and there are all kind of people everywhere. But considering that American culture traditionally puts individualism and respect for human life and thought over everything else, it's unlikely that anyone consciously tries to put another down so the latter doesn't "get ahead". Unlike here, where everyone wants to get ahead even if others have got to be pushed aside for that, an attitude reflected well by the state of the traffic on our roads. Considering the circumstances, then, there's no assurance that if ever implemented, the rather drastic suggestion by the Delhi Police chief would make any difference to how things work in general. It's best to let the system exist in present for, rather than wasting time and energy trying to devise a new one. Instead, try get the team everyone should try developing respect for colleagues, junior or senior. At the end of end of the day, all that counts is peace of mind. And everyone's entitled to it.