My Dear Fellow Passengers!

I have been planning to write this for a long time now. What better time to write than after a tedious 22 km drive back home in rain.  Now that I am all comfortable and have snuggled in my blanket with hot maggie to eat on my side, I have opened my laptop to pen my observations.

There are so many different people you encounter on the road when you are frequent rider. Here I have tried to narrow down people I usually encounter on the road, into categories that largely define them. Below are certain “types” of people you might encounter on the road. If I’ve missed out some types, please put them in your comments.

·         The Overtaking guy: This guy is very common and you can come across him very often. I’m not sure if its gender specific, but this guy “has” to overtake you. There he is happily going at his own pace without disturbing anyone. But the moment you have overtaken him, he goes bizarre. An immense amount of energy enters him as he switches into the next gear and overtakes you. He is delighted by his small victory and drives off in his own joy without coming back to his original speed.

·         The guy who “Spits”: Now I’m not sure if this is specific to Hyderabad but in Hyderabad, you can see them very often. Like the name suggests, these guys spit.. yes.. they just spit. They can be driving a bike, car or an auto. If you are driving behind them, you cannot predict when they decide to spit. So the moment they do that, you have to calculate a complex mathematical formula to understand the direction in which the spit is proceeding and with the help of your fined reflexes, move in order to avoid it and simultaneously balance your vehicle. You know just like how Shahrukh Khan in Main Hoon Na and Keanu Reeves in Matrix escaping their respective targets. But don’t think that these spitter guys are all idiots; some of them are very empathetic. They very cautiously bend down from their respective vehicle and spit so that it falls on the ground. Some of them are even talented to open the door of the running car, spit and immediately close the door. But I think they usually forget the laws of physics and don’t understand the importance of wind that can carry their saliva from one place to another. So if you don’t want a abstract tattoo design (usually red) on you, beware of the “spit” guys you drive next time on the road as these guys can be anywhere.

·         The Stalker guy: These guys are usually on a two wheeler and are usually found in certain areas. They play their own game of stalking like coming close to you and then overtaking you. But unlike the overtaking guy, these guys slow down to catch up with you. Some very artistic guys can also entertain you with a song while stalking you. What amuses me is their patience and persistence. Even though its 40 degrees hot or its raining cats and dogs, they are never disappointed. While everyone around you are irritated with the traffic and are waiting to get home as soon as possible including you, these guys have all the time in the world to stalk you. There are many ways to get rid of them. But one of my very proven way is to go up to them and ask, “Bhaiyya, kya problem hai?”. It works best because the moment you ask them this question, they are taken off guard. They have not anticipated this situation and are therefore not prepared. I also usually ask them to stop at the next traffic signal and that we can have a conversation if there is any problem. Nervous and afraid of the sudden turn of events, they either increase their speed and rush or take an unwanted turn.

·         The F1 Kids: Yes… Kids because these guys are not more than 18 years old. They usually appear on a bike that looks like a cross between our simple Hero Honda and those fancy race bikes. These kids loves stunts and are usually driving over 80 km/hr. I doubt if anyone of them have a driving license. What they don’t release is with their inappropriate traffic sense and over the top horn sounds, they create disturbance to everyone on the road. But I also empathize with these kids because they in their adolescence think life is such a jolly ride. Tomorrow when they have jobs, responsibilities and they have to drive their simple bike through hectic traffic to get home, they will not get these carefree moments to feel like the king of the world.

·         The “Splash” guy: You get to see these guys only during monsoons. Like the name indicates, these guys like to “splasshhh” water while driving. The entire road is almost empty but instead of driving on that end, they choose to drive through puddles of water. And by God’s grace, there is no shortage of water puddles, either large or small on our roads. A prolonged drizzle can create a mini swimming pool on the roads. Even though I don’t understand why guys in car do this, what amuses me most is when guys on bikes do this. The sadistic itch to drive through that dirty water which results in splashing everyone makes them blind to the fact that even they are getting drenched. But they just continue to do that. 

Why people hate Arvind Kejriwal

Before I start writing this article, I just want to clear that this is not a political analysis. I'm no political analyst and therefore can't do anything of that sort. I am here to write about what I know the best. I'm a student of psychology and I practice psychology day in and day out for my living. I am trained to analyze and understand the underlying psychological explanation for things. Fortunately or unfortunately, I tend to apply this to things beyond my professional work. 

I am here trying to understand why some people hate Arvind Kejriwal so much? There is a kind of anger you see in people especially in social forums where their expression of anger is not just limited to a political debate but goes beyond. The kind of language and the verbal abuse you can see in the social media is very personal. It often made me wonder why. There are so many corrupt political leaders (I mean we don’t even have to bother counting) and the reaction towards them or their deeds is very minimal. Even if people express their reactions, they do it on a superficial level which sounds more like a disappointment but more often than not it is not anger that is expressed. And then I see Kejriwal. I mean he is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and worked for the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) as a Joint Commissioner in the Income Tax Departatment. He is known for his efforts to implement the Right to Information Act (RTI) at the grassroots level and his role in drafting a proposed Jan Lokpal Bill. In 2006, Kejriwal was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership recognizing his involvement in a grassroots movement (Parivartan) using right-to-information legislation in a campaign against corruption. The same year, after resigning from the IRS, he donated his Magsaysay award money as a corpus fund to found the Public Cause Research Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO). He sounds like a good candidate for providing clean politics that we have been sulking for years and now that he is in political action, people are hating him like there is no tomorrow. Why?

Then one day when I was seeing one of his speeches, I realized what was creating this situation. Kejriwal always says very specifically in his speeches or his discussions that “Dosto, hum sab ko milke is desh ko badalna  hai” (Friends! We together have to change the political scenario in this country). He always says “WE” and never uses “I” when he is talking about running the country (This has been my observation that he has used “WE” in almost every occasion). But what is wrong with using the word “WE”? Ahh! Don’t you see, This is exactly what makes people uncomfortable. The moment he says “WE”, it means shared responsibility. Suddenly the idea of a corrupt free government is not a politician’s responsibility anymore; you have to do your bit too. This means no getting a tatkal ticket through a broker, standing in line to get your vehicle registered and no escaping the law by paying rs.100 bribe to the traffic police for not carrying your papers. And suddenly all these small ways of managing things no longer exist or if  you still indulge in them to make your life easier, it will be frowned upon. How any other political leader differs on Kejriwal on this is that, they never use the word “WE”. There is always an assurance given to the public that if their government comes, they will deliver everything to you. All you have to do is sit back and relax and enjoy the development. For us who have always had politicians working for us and our involvement in politics is only restricted to a vote once in five years, this idea of lettings the politicians do their work is soothing. And of course when they don’t do a good job, we always have the classic reaction blaming them for their actions. But definitely it is better than sharing that responsibility.

Here starts the person’s discomfort with Kejriwal’s entire ideology. Evolutionary psychologists argue that we are evolved in such a way that we give ourselves more moral credit than we actually deserve. This means that we feel we are more morally outstanding than we generally are. Robert Wright who have done credential work in the field of Evolutionary psychology have argued that there is also a tendency in human beings to think we are morally superior to the next individual and are skeptical when we have to accept other’s morality. A brilliant example of this was given by Rajat Sharma in Aap ki adalat while talking to Kejriwal about his party candidate. If you see the interview, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPkMu1cMBSE from 27.10 to 27.50 minutes, the journalist’s speculation to the other person’s morality indicates the same behavior that compliments the above argument.

This doesn’t stop here. Somewhere in this entire process of questioning other’s morality and no willing to take certain responsibility, the person also feels morally judged. And this is something we always avoid. So therefore when you feel somebody is either questioning or asking you to prove your morality and this case to your country, you not only become unconformable but also feel angry. When I seeing a lot of comments on different posts related to Kejriwal, majority of the comments looked like this “Good, it happened to him. What does he think? He is more morally superior to others?”, “He always blames others? He thinks he is the only honest one?” All these comments reflect a single idea that asks Kejriwal how dare he question their morality? But what we miss out in this process is that who is actually questioning your morality? Neither Kejriwal nor his political associates or any political leader of any political party as a matter of fact has ever asked us how honest we are. So who is asking these questions then? The answer is; it is the individual him/herself.

So the process usually is like this. There is a discomfort first because of the new ideology. We are not sure why this discomfort is arising but we know it started. But we can’t live with it, so we try to fix it. One way of fixing it is by making ourselves believe that there is no discomfort at all. So you kind of let it go without putting too much energy into it. The other way and the one that I’m writing about is by fighting with it and venting it out through anger. Since we love our own self, we never question or blame ourselves. Instead we find an external source to displace that anger on. And here my friends, we have the most suitable target, Mr. Kejriwal. But we also have innate survival instincts and therefore to avoid any danger from our actions, we assess the target first. All we see is a common man who believes in non-violence, who doesn’t have direct co-relation with powerful or the rich, who doesn’t have a political backing and we get comfortable because we know we will not be harmed if we show our anger verbally or physically. Probably this is what all those guys thought who physically attacked Kejriwal. And maybe this is why Delhi’s Ex Police Commissioner has recited a hideous sms in a public forum like India Today Conclave 2014 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtRUwZgmERU, Minutes 56:20 to 57:55) without worrying much about the consequences. You couldn’t even think doing something like that with any other politician. And of course one of the safest ways to displace the same anger without any bit of danger involved is through social media. So you can vent out your anger as much as you want and use language that can be abusive as you want. This why even though you are the 1657^th member to comment on a post and even though nobody will read your comment; you feel a kind of relief when you post it. Of course access to internet and the emergence of social media as a strong communicative tool in the recent times added to this. It is the same survival instinct due to which many of the politicians who are corrupt or have done hideous crimes are never verbally or physically attacked.

Basically we are social beings and when we see our peers supporting our idea, we feel rewarded. Working on rewards or punishments is a core concept in psychology to improve or end a behavior. So when a person finds a peer group in a social forum that not only justifies his/her anger but also compliments it, he/she feels rewarded for that behavior and they continue to do it. Similarly, when they don’t get rewarded for their actions, there is a decrease in the behavior. This is the same principle that is seen applied in various social forums.

But maybe since the result is out and things are less threatening, it is time to look into that anger and see where it is originating from to understand why is the anger even caused. Little bit of introspection might be uncomfortable but will definitely not cause any harm.

On the whole Mr. Kejriwal reminds me of a quote from my favorite book, “The Fountain Head” where the dean of the college asks the protagonist in the book, “"My dear fellow, who will let you?" And Roark answers, "That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”