Shah Rukh Khan

WORK CULTURE DIFFERES BECAUSE THE SYSTEM DIFFERS

-SANJOG MAHESHWARI

Recently the issue of frisking and detention of Shah Rukh Khan at the Newark airport in New Jersey for two hours sparked so much outrage in the country that even Information & Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni suggested tit-for-tat action and pleaded for equally stringent frisking and scrutiny of Americans visiting India.

It is unfortunate that the incidence was not viewed in a broader perspective. The episode exemplifies the 'no-nonsense' work culture in the US. Khan was detained by a US immigration officer because his name came up on a computer alert list. Although some of the other officers present at the airport tried to vouch for Khan, the officer concerned refused to budge. Unfortunately, this culture of dedication to one's duty is something that we can never imagine in India and that led us to give vent to our impotent fuss and fury; blowing an otherwise innocuous matter out of proportion to the hilt.

Not only the incidence has not gone well with our national psyche of "so-called VIP versus Mr. Nobody" -a legacy of colonial culture of the Raj days, it also highlights the huge difference between work culture of the two countries: Ours typified by “sub-chalta-hai” attitude vis-a-vis theirs rooted in “duty is supreme; nobody above the Law” ethics. Pandering to self-delusion and parading our fondness for pretentious affectations, we take delight in parroting the oft-quoted, worn out catchphrase: “howsoever high you may be; you are not above the law” ,but has anybody ever seen the long arm of law catching up with a tainted VIP? Almost always, invariably in any given situation, the big fish manages to escape scot-free.

This American culture of dedication to duty can't possibly be implanted in the Indian psyche for obvious reasons. For it to happen in India, we will have to completely delink the Executive from the Legislature. Under the extant arrangement of things the former is the handmaid of the latter. The Judiciary is also subservient to this unholy yet formidable combination. In US and many other democracies, these three institutions work separately, but in tandem, in the best interests of their people as against the entrenched vested interests of a few.

This is not the first incident in the US where an officer in the line of duty has had an 'encounter' with an influential person. Sergeant James. M. Crowley had arrested Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., a friend of US President Barack Obama, on the charge of disorderly conduct when a neighbour suspected a case of burglary at the former's residences. Instead of transferring the police officer, ,as it could have happened had the incidence occurred in India, the police unions demanded an apology from the President for saying that "the officer acted stupidly" . The very next day, at a press meet the President not only praised the Cambridge cop for being an “outstanding police officer” but also invited him to the White House along with the Professor and the American Vice-president for a beer to assuage frayed tempers and hurt egos of both the sides. He could not do anything better to redeem the badly bruised honour of his friend, who in his own rights also, is not just another man out there on the street.

Not so long ago, his predecessor in the office, George Bush looked the other way while his daughter cooled her heals behind the bars for the whole night for the charge of illegal possession of alcohol. The US is a democracy where not even the Presidents of the country, notwithstanding the fact that they hold the most powerful post in the world, cannot wield their authority to bend or twist the law of the land. This is what a true democracy is all about. In our country such things are unimaginable.

For an emotional India, venting its ire against the American security procedure could only be as meaningless as the U.S. ambassador Timothy J. Roemer's recognition of Khan as a global icon. It is our problem that we don't have that system of democratic governance and the work culture which invests us with the moral authority to return the American compliment.

-SANJOG MAHESHWARI