Fault Tolerance
Systems in India are really poor - Manual, outdated and slow.
Take the example of road traffic - People jaywalk, there is no concept of lanes, no speed limits - In short, its absolute chaos.
The Western world has superb systems to manage road traffic - Lane management, on-ramps, coordinated traffic lights etc ...
So, how do both these systems end up with almost the same number of traffic casualties ? How is it that the lack of systems in India doesnt increase casualties drastically ?
In my opinion, the biggest reason is the high amount of "Fault Tolerance" built into an Indian's brain - Even if the traffic light is green, drivers will look all around them to ensure that they can go ahead. On the other hand, in the US, drivers assume that every other driver will drive according to the rules/system - So they dont look around when the light is green and never slow down at intersections - In other words, their tolerance for a fault is very low .....
Of course, this is nothing for India to be proud about !
This fault tolerance is just a reaction to the lack of systems and is probably adding a buffer on top of everything that ends up slowing things down.
For example, remember those railway crossings in India that would be closed 15 minutes before the train came by. In the US, its hardly a minute before and a few seconds after - Of course, if there is a similar error in the signalling system, there will be far more casualties in the US than in India simply because Indians are expecting the worst at every point of time !
Take the example of road traffic - People jaywalk, there is no concept of lanes, no speed limits - In short, its absolute chaos.
The Western world has superb systems to manage road traffic - Lane management, on-ramps, coordinated traffic lights etc ...
So, how do both these systems end up with almost the same number of traffic casualties ? How is it that the lack of systems in India doesnt increase casualties drastically ?
In my opinion, the biggest reason is the high amount of "Fault Tolerance" built into an Indian's brain - Even if the traffic light is green, drivers will look all around them to ensure that they can go ahead. On the other hand, in the US, drivers assume that every other driver will drive according to the rules/system - So they dont look around when the light is green and never slow down at intersections - In other words, their tolerance for a fault is very low .....
Of course, this is nothing for India to be proud about !
This fault tolerance is just a reaction to the lack of systems and is probably adding a buffer on top of everything that ends up slowing things down.
For example, remember those railway crossings in India that would be closed 15 minutes before the train came by. In the US, its hardly a minute before and a few seconds after - Of course, if there is a similar error in the signalling system, there will be far more casualties in the US than in India simply because Indians are expecting the worst at every point of time !
Comments
Its just that I wanted to highlight the fact that Indians are ingenious at doing good things with scarce resources.....