The Indianness of queue jumping

Ajit Rangnekar, former dean of Indian School of Business (ISB) and director of Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), released the book ‘The Good Indians Guide to Queue-Jumping’ written by Viswanathan Raghunathan at Landmark over the weekend. The event was organised by HarperCollins Publishers India. V Raghunathan is an author, columnist and director of Schulich School of Business (York University, Toronto), India (Hyderabad Campus).

“India is a fascinating country, where we can write a book even on the colour of a woman’s sari. My attempt is to draw the attention about the queue-jumping in India. Everywhere in India, people jump the queue’s to complete their work quickly as everybody wants to go first and they cut the line. We are always proud of our 5,000 years ancient culture and but we do not follow the ‘First Come First Serve’ (FCFS) method,” V Raghunathan shared.

Sharing about the various queue-jumping incidents he said: “At railway gates, people who come from both sides want to go first and that creates a traffic jam. Similarly, at airports, theatres, bus stops, shopping malls and everywhere we want to go first and we forget about the people who came before us. Many people state that this happens due to lack of education and poverty; however, that is not the case. Well-educated people also do the same thing.”

“Following queue creates fairness and decency between people. We should learn from foreign countries where they teach people to follow it from their childhood. We have to change our mindset to overcome this problem. But I think queue-jumping will never stop in India,” V Raghunathan opined.

This is Raghunathan’s tenth book and he states that he has cracked the code of book writing. “We have to write two hours a day to finish a book. I’m working on my next book which is on fiction and it will come soon,” he concluded.