Orderliness - that's the one thing that strikes you when you visit any western country. This is evident the moment you land at one of those huge, sparsely manned airports out there. On disembarking, you just have to follow the directions meant for passengers, you don't need need to be specifically guided. Should a problem arise there will always be a young, smartly dressed security officer to direct you to the right counter where a courteous person will be at hand to attend to you. Within a few minutes of your landing, you find yourself walking past the immigration desk. Within a few more minutes, your baggage is with you and you are ready to leave the airport.Once outside, you cruise on wide, clean, well-marked highways. The area around the highway is well landscaped. As you move closer to the city centre, there could be a fair degree of hustle and bustle, but a sense of orderliness still prevails. In fact, orderliness is the hallmarkof these societies, be it a hotel, departmental store, shopping mall or any public place. For us, who are accustomed to living in the chaotic conditions of developing countries, orderliness of this kind can unnerve one, yet there's no denying that orderliness makes for greater efficiency.This efficiency manifests itself in a myriad ways. For instance, you can spot an incapacitated lady shopping all by herself in her motorised wheelchair or an old man safely riding a cycle on a lane meant for cyclists. It is orderliness that allows this to happen. On closer scrutiny, three factors make for this orderliness: respect for law, respect for work, and respect for fellow beings. These, in turn, translate into respect for one's country.The vast majority of people in these societies observes laws worked out to their minutest details and obeys social norms evolved over a long period. It is common to see rules and social messages being well-displayed in universal symbols, wherever possible. At some point of time, fear of penalty may have led people to observe these laws, but now such behaviour has almost become a habit. Together with this there is a respect for all living creatures. Individuals in western societies value and enjoy considerable personal freedom and have learnt to respect the freedom of all living beings.Finally, there is a widespread respect for labour, whether manual or intellectual. Consequently, everybody takes pride in his or her work and does it with dedication, irrespective of whether their progress is being monitored or not. Good work then, apart from bringing kudos from peers and colleagues, is also a source of personal satisfaction and joy. That's why the standards of both workmanship and scholarship in these societies are so much higher than those that prevail at home in India. Higher professional standards ensure that nobody resorts to opportunistic behavior.Education, without doubt, plays a key role in bringing all this about. But mere schooling, which develops the ability to read and write, is only one of part of this education. The ability to read and write will, without doubt, is vital but educating people by word of mouth and by living-by-example is no less important. As a matter of practical importance, right attitudes can be cultivated even before one is able to read and write, and is quite independent of the years of schooling one has had. Our day-to-day interactions with our neighbours, domestic workers, street sweepers, vegetable vendors and shopkeepers are just as important as classroom instructions. Cultivating the right attitudes and uplifting the human spirit can become contagious - even in our cities teeming with people and chaos.
