I remember reading Zen and the Art of Motor­cycle Mainte­nance by Robert Pirsig a while ago and reflecting on the nature of Quality as described by the author. Although the ideas described by Pirsig in his medita­tive narra­tive weren’t exactly novel, he did paint a layer of clarity over the things we see in day-to-day life, like a lens that magni­fies some parts of a specimen and brings to the fore an aspect that simply wasn’t noticed before, even as it stared us in the face.

But today, I was travel­ling around the streets of Mumbai, and it got me thinking about what sets nations apart from each other, especially the tenuous distinc­tion between the devel­oping and the devel­oped nations. The distinc­tion most certainly isn’t techno­log­ical — from consumer products to manufac­turing techniques, India has every­thing it needs to be on par with any other nation. In the cases where it doesn’t, there is a penalty of economic cost — we simply have to pay a little extra to get the same benefits. Alter­na­tively, the distinc­tion could be economic, but that expla­na­tion doesn’t fit either. While there are plenty of people in India below the poverty-line, there are plenty of rich people as well. But being rich doesn’t make life any easier in India, unless you are so rich that you can liter­ally pay someone to live your life for you.

To take a simple example, imagine that you need to get a new passport, and it takes several hours and several visits to the passport office to overcome bureau­cratic hurdles and get the job done. There are no missing pieces that prevent this system from functioning equally well in devel­oping as well as devel­oped nations. Except that you would expect this system to work better in a devel­oped nation, gener­ally speaking.

Or to consider another example, if it takes forty-five minutes to commute one mile in suburban Mumbai simply because the traffic is terrible (because traffic rules are not spelt out properly and seldom followed), whom do you blame? If that commute is impor­tant to you, it doesn’t matter how rich you are, such comforts cannot be easily bought. Again, the traffic is not terrible because of poverty, or lack of educa­tion, or limited access to technology.

What is missing is something that can be very accurately, if vaguely, described by the term Quality. Look around and you will see people not willing to make an effort to put in their best work, doing a shoddy job simply because everyone else does. They are surrounded by others who accept this situa­tion and get on with their lives as if it didn’t matter. The accep­tance breeds indif­fer­ence, completing the circle.

In many ways, this idea is scarier than the naïve assump­tion that gener­ating more indus­trial and agricul­tural output will magically trans­form the country into the ideal we cherish in our dreams. It is the people themselves who need to change in some hitherto undefined fashion; simply demanding more resources, more technology or more money does not help in this regard.

Somewhere along the way, we started writing down numbers in spread­sheets and ledgers, and lost track of what is really impor­tant to us.

Reading Zen and the Art of Motor­cycle Mainte­nance by Robert Pirsig, I came across this passage that reminded me of some ideas I’ve had in the past. At the very least, it gives us a refresh­ingly different view of something we may never have thought about before:

“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confi­dence in. No one is fanat­i­cally shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it is going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanat­i­cally dedicated to polit­ical or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.”