BEHAVIOR SPECIAL...KING OF A LAND OF RULE BREAKERS

KING OF A LAND OF RULE BREAKERS

May 17th brawl between MCA officials and Shah Rukh Khan kicked off a nationwide debate — power-tripping superstar or protective parent? Irrespective of the verdict, the real question to ask is why do Indians, famous or not, have trouble following rules.

    AT 11.30 pm on May 17 at Mumbai’s Wankhede stadium, ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius was proven right yet again — a picture speaks a thousand words.
    A battery of press photographers captured Hindi film star and owner of the Kolkata Knight Riders IPL team, Shah Rukh Khan abusing security guard Vikas Balkrishna Dalvi and Mumbai Cricket Association officials for preventing him, his 12-year-old daughter Suhana and her friends from entering the field. Dalvi stood with a deadpan expression, whistle in mouth, arms spread out; his left hand pointing towards the exit. Khan, sweating, fuming, had his hand folded in a fist, inches away from Dalvi’s face.
    Audio transcripts proved the actor used lurid language. The father in the superstar called this violence an attempt to protect the kids, who he alleged, were shoved.
    While the controversy, and its conflicting versions, now lie housed in a file at Marine Drive police station where MCA lodged a complaint, and the cricketing world waits for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to decide if Khan will be banned from Wankhede, pictures plastered across the papers tell a simple story that night — Khan was nothing but a brash rule breaker.
    That night, or on April 8 when he was caught on camera smoking at Jaipur’s Sawai Man Singh Stadium during a match between his team and Rajasthan Royals, Khan, it seems, was no different from the average authority-loathing Indian, who jumps a queue and a traffic signal with equal defiance.
Blame the British!
Adman and social commentator Santosh Desai sees this as a cultural malaise. “Each culture holds a certain set of values in higher esteem than others. For us Indians, community, caste, and money’s might are more important than say, our neighbourhood, or the law of the land. We’ve got accustomed to hierarchical superiority,” he says, hinting at a colonial hangover.
    Social scientist Shiv Visvanathan agrees, observing a lack of civic responsibility among most Indians. “Outwit the rule, is our rule. In our minds, power seems to reside with people, not with institutions.”
    And when there is intervention, a reminder of a law-break, defiance melts into abuse. Author and columnist Shobhaa Dé labels Indians an indisciplined lot. “We are rude, ill-mannered and boorish. We yell, we abuse and we lack plain decency. But the funny thing is, we start behaving ourselves the minute we land in another country,” she says. Dé’s claim is supported by Khan’s behaviour, when he was stopped at Newark airport on his way to Yale University where he was delivering a lecture in April. Sources claimed he was “very, very upset” and took a while to calm down. “Whenever I start feeling too arrogant about myself, I always take a trip to America. The immigration guys kick the star out of stardom,” he said in his opening statement of the lecture.
Tu janta nahin main kaun hoon!
And it’s not just superstars that India’s law enforcers have to tackle. Politicians, bureaucrats and their distant kin are just as challenging. BCCI president N Srinivasan’s son Ashwin hit a policeman at a Mumbai pub when he was refused a drink after close-down. Maharashtra public health minister Suresh Shetty brought Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital to a halt when his brother-in-law couldn’t be admitted due to lack of beds in the ICU.
    Delhi traffic police chief Satyendra Garg gets the “do-youknow-who-I-am” phrase thrown at him often. His favourite story is of a lady driver, who was dished a challan for speeding. “She said she knew the joint commissioner of police. ‘That’s me,’ I replied. Next she tried to get me to speak to her IAS officer husband. Eventually, she just had to pay up,” he says.
    Journalist and media personality Pritish Nandy says we have ourselves to blame for creating the ‘atmospherics’ that facilitate the breaking of law. Ayaz Memon too, sees a problem with the system rather than the individual. He doesn’t hold Khan alone responsible. All major sporting events are governed by stringent rules of access, says the cricket journalist. “The IPL needs to lay down rules (...) Processes and systems are not in place for spectators, team owners or state association officials. Colour coded passes can easily determine who is allowed and where, inside the stadium. That could have easily avoided the Shah Rukh incident,” he says.
    But there is a view that argues, irrespective of the circumstance and provocation, Khan could have handled it better.
‘Protective’ father is a bad role model
Star wife Maheep Kapoor, whose 12-year-old daughter Shanaya was in the group accompanying Khan, says the girl came back home, excitedly narrating the incident. “SRK was doing what any father would have done. If my husband was there, he would have done the same thing,” she said.
    Alan E Kazdin would debate that. The professor of psychology at Yale University, and the author of six journals on child psychology, believes kids imitate adults, no matter what. “The main idea to bear in mind here is that modelling — teaching by example — affects behaviour far more than telling your children what to do,” he writes in an article published in online magazine Slate. “The child learns just by observing. He does not have to understand what the parent is doing in order for the learning to take place (...) Brain research has demonstrated that there are special cells called mirror neurons. When we watch someone do something, our mirror neurons become active, as if we ourselves were engaging in the same behaviour we are observing,” writes the author of The Kazdin Method: Parenting the Defiant Child. “By indulging in such behaviour, parents confirm the belief that everything is right with you and everything is wrong with the world,” says Mumbai-based clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Varkha Chulani. She speaks of kids as young as 10, pulled up for bad behaviour at school, fearlessly defying authority in the knowledge that their parents will rescue them. “If the child sees a parent trying to circumvent the law, it’ll grow up believing that’s acceptable behaviour.” In Khan’s words, he was doing little else than being a responsible caretaker for the kids, but the icon to millions did all else except teach the 12-year-olds a lesson in good ethics.
WHY HAVE RULES?
A rule is a set of explicit and understood regulations that govern conduct in a particular sphere. It helps identify criteria on the basis of which decisions are taken within a system. Forming a queue, for instance, points out that the one who comes first, will be served before the others. And there is a price to pay for breaking the rule. It could involve exclusion from the system (banning SRK from entering Wankhede, is an example) or pay a heavy financial penalty. Rules are necessary for the smooth functioning