What is the biggest hurdle for a nation to progress? I feel it is the national attitude. Let me compare this with an industrial unit or even a disciplined army unit.
The most difficult to change even in such cohesive organizations is ‘people’s attitude’.
Let me illustrate this with an example of a college- a postgraduate college where two batches coexist, the juniors and the seniors. If the culture of the college is rotten then it is an uphill task for the new incumbent principal to change it. It seems simple but it has an inherent problem which I call the ‘trickle effect’.
The batches learn good and bad traits from each other on campus. You set things right and you will see some good results but not perfect results. This is a ‘collective bad culture’ you are trying to set right. When a senior batch goes out or passes out it leaves some bad traits with the juniors who now are seniors. They pass it to the incoming juniors. The reason is that when a new junior batch arrives you cannot insulate the two current batches. So it is passed on in small packets down the years- generation after generation. It becomes a residual debris which takes several years to change into a perfectly good culture.
Same problem is faced by a commanding officer of an army unit, but in a different form. It goes the same way for a new MD/CEO of a large corporation.
The biggest challenge for us is to change the attitude of 1.4 billion people – our understanding of things, our attitude and our perception in general- all put together it is the national attitude, national character. The ‘saab chalta hai attitude’ and acceptance of things as they have been running for the last six to seven decades are referred to by many in disgust as a DNA problem. They also say this because they know DNA cannot be changed- this is largely correct. People feel we are like this only and no one can set things right. People in disgust say the system is rotten to an extent that nothing can be done to set things right. People blame red tape, bureaucrats, politicians, government, Industry honchos, and businessmen and it seems it has gone into our blood- fair enough. Every year in winter, Delhi faces severe pollution problems and words like a gas chamber, living hell come out of the closets and the same debate starts all over again- but nothing is done and they also promise that next year at the same time they would be discussing (the same panel on TV) the same issue.
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. This is a building block of life if put in simple words.
What is a gene? A word which we so casually use almost routinely? A gene is the basic physical and functional unit of heredity. Genes are made up of DNA.
Every person has two copies of each gene, one inherited from each parent. Most genes are the same in all people, yet a very small number of genes a person has (less than 1 percent of the total) are slightly different between different people. These small differences contribute to each person’s unique physical features. This also impacts a person’s temperament.
Scientists estimate that around 20 to 60 per cent of temperament is decided by genetics. Several studies indicate some genes that play a role in temperament. These genes are involved in communication between cells in the brain. Some variations of genes could contribute to particular traits related to temperament. For example, KATNAL2 gene variants are associated with self-discipline and carefulness.
Gregor Mendel gained popularity and was honoured as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for centuries that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favour certain desirable traits, Mendel’s pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity more scientifically, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance.
Each generation we go back is expected to halve the amount of autosomal genetic material an ancestor gives to you. As this material is inherited in chunks, we only have to go back nine generations until it is quite likely that a specific ancestor contributed zero of your ‘autosomal’ material to you. Autosomal dominant inheritance is a way a genetic trait or condition can be passed down from parent to child. One copy of a mutated, altered (changed) gene from one parent can cause the genetic condition. A child who has a parent with the mutated gene has a 50% chance of inheriting that mutated gene. This process is random, as the process of recombination – the breaking of chromosomes into certain blocks – and transmission are both random events.
A corollary to this is that one could inherit traits from ancestors as back as nine generations! From your great great-grandfather’s great grandfather’s great grandfather till nine ladders back!
That is why sometimes parents cannot figure out or determine how their child has acquired some trait which none of them has! If his grandfather was a miser, and his parents are not, he could end up being a miser- ‘dada par gaya hai’ is the conclusion. This is how complex is human nature. And at the level of a race or nation, it could become impossible to decipher the havoc.
Emotional Intelligence is a case in point
Anger is a very strong emotion. It was given to mankind by nature, millions of years ago when man had to save himself from predators. Fight or flight was the reaction because of a combination of anger and fear. Anger impacts the adrenalin flow/production which gives you that energy to fight or run.
Today predators don’t walk the cities but we still have a lot of ‘residual anger’ in us! That is why road rage, losing one’s cool, hitting out at someone on little provocation are still with us- the trickle effect.
DNA of 1.4 billion will take time to heal or repair
If we start now it would take a consistent effort of seven generations or maybe nine to completely clean up the slate. But it is possible and that is the good news. So patience is required- we have started with clean India, stand up India and now it has to be ‘wake up India’ and ‘shake up India’.
I feel today more important than Skills, Science, Arts and Commerce is to work on the national attitude and build a solid national character. We should have set the course right immediately after independence, which we didn’t and we have lost a lot of time. Another corollary to this hypothesis is that it takes less time to write on a clean slate but a dirty slate needs to be first cleaned and then rewritten. We built great institutions, technical colleges, universities, science, medicine and other things but missed character-building. What we see every day on TV debates, the rot, frustration and helplessness is the result of this one big mistake. We are so busy learning new skills to build a nation, and become a great economy with high GDP growth but which way are we heading if this is the state of affairs?
Gross Domestic Character-GDC
We need to work on CQ- character quotient as a high national priority. Start top down and bottom up simultaneously. The executive and judiciary have to crack the whip hard from the top. ‘You sacrifice a few for billion happy tomorrows’. Will not be a bad deal.
Values and nation first kind of an attitude needs to build from KG upwards. You need to give it a top priority as a red hot priority in the school curriculum- you can alter habits if you alter them at the very beginning of a child’s life. If you want to become a superpower and a respected nation, a nation at peace with itself, then this has to be done first- we have no choice. We can change our DNA one step at a time. Wish we had a ‘National Gene editor’.
As Mark Twain said ‘A habit cannot be tossed out of the window. It must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time’.
