a mARTIAN dIARY

We, by virtue of our strength (and weakness) in numbers , are a country that needs to focus more on queuing theory. The fact that our vast numbers and a matched dearth in capacity to service these numbers, still has not permeated an expected level of obsession with queues is itself a comment on our culture and our concepts of fairness and self respect (or lack thereof).

In paranoidland It may be safe to assume that for us to actually become a super power , which seems to be the obsession and motive behind a lot of radical cries in the media today , we will have to cultivate a better queuing culture. The dichotomy of a guy who will push aside a septuagenarian to get into a running bus but who will without question queue up in front of a liquor shop is something that must be reconciled for any super power ambitions as it is also the social aspect that will make or break countries in this era.  But I digress

But even within this unfair asylum following a dictionary sans the word “queue”  there are areas where the sanity of queues prevail. From the liquor shop that we visited earlier to a school or college where people get queued for anything and everything. The subtle  hint of authority that can reprimand is probably the pill that creates this sanity but never-the-less sanity it is.

But having established the basic need for queue sanity in these places, there is a obvious question of ordinance to decide the order and here is where we find another human folly. A lot of situations present themselves with a natural order of things that we can easily translate to the law to be used for ordering. Let’s call this “natural fairness”. But then there are other areas where nature abandons us  and leaves us on our own. Imagine a roll call for a viva, or anything related to ordering in a class room of students.  Where is the unfairness you ask?

Imagine two scenarios

People are ordered on the basis of their roll number which is decided on the alphabetic ordering of our names

People are randomly ordered by a pure random selection

Which seems more “fair”. The first right? I have seldom seen fist-fights being broken down or many a agitated minds being calmed down when it is told “…the lists shall proceed alphabetically…”. With the A’s most cheerful (or dreadful as is the case) and the Z’s sharing their counterpart’s anti-emotions. The result ? Conditioned fairness.

While alphabetic order seems like a good order to get back order (I always wanted to say that ) , its only as much arbitrary and more unfair than a pure random selection. The letter that one’s name starts with, be it the product of painstaking research of one’s parents thru peer reviewed classical academic treatise like “1000 Hindu names for your baby” or “Names for Games” , or be the product of a eureka moment of the father (even mother) after 3 pints of beer , is still , surprisingly , arbitrary.

And it’s more unfair than pure repeated randomness because the unfairness has be institutionalized. For once the guy/gal is named there are no more random events controlling his fate at least in this respect  (for the vast majority of course, judging by the scant number of name change advt’s in newspapers).  On top of that the poor “Zuhaib” or “Ankur” has been conditioned to believe that this is fair while the “Manoj’s” of the world go around scott-free cushioned on both sides.

So my final world? Make India a superpower. Invest more in queuing theory research