Sunday, February 10, 2008
C-block victory "JATRA 2008"
Jatra is one of the occasions at IRMA which is celebrated or rather participated by almost all the residents in the hostel block. C block was never considered to be in the race for the cup, but the result is for everyone to see. For a block that was at the bottom of the rankings the previous year, this comes as a surprise to all. The success of C block can not be attributed to one particular person but to all the residents in the block who contributed to the victory in some way or the other. i won't name people here but each one of us did what we could do best and here we are. many would shut our Jatra victory off as an ordinary event, but to me it was a sheer example of the so called "collective action and cooperation" where the 27ers participated shoulder to shoulder with the 28ers. I have no idea as to what theory to use here but one thing that i can write here is that our victory in Jatra 2008 is collective action and cooperation to me..
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2 comments:
Nishanth has raised an interesting point of winning through collective action which reminded me of an exciting but unnoticed common mass behaviour – “People hate winners”. We see this behaviour in our normal day-to-day life, but go unnoticed. Everything is fair in love and war!! A competition becomes a war when every group wants to win. A person who is submissive and poor at studies may gain a professors’ sympathy but at the same time a person or a group which is dominant but intelligent may become repulsive to him. If we think a bit this might have happened in everybody’s life.
Every move made by champions is scrutinised to such a degree that even a whiff of wrongdoing is highlighted and blown out of proportion. If they make a habit of winning, accusations of cheating follow them around like particularly persistent and bad-tempered ghosts. This is like we dislike Australian team more because of their irritating habit of winning everything in sight rather than for any offence they might cause through their on-field tactics. Constant success, it would seem, is a one-way ticket to unpopularity. Win a game too many and at least as many people will begin to hate your guts as those who like you. Along with the usual feelings of awe and envy, perpetual victory seems to inspire distrust and fear in people as if it is unnatural to be so gifted. These sentiments perhaps manifest as boos and accusations of cheating or bad sportsmanship. Nor is the phenomenon limited to sports, it is just more apparent. Large corporations and successful NGO’s fall victim to the same mentality. Like I have witnessed the aversion to Byrraju foundations’, work by a part of the local community in Andhra Pradesh. When the NGO started its activity, it got an overwhelming response. But once it gained its reputation, people started attaching a caste tag to the NGO, as it is run by Raju community. The crowd loves to love the underdog, but will stop supporting them the moment it thinks the underdog no longer deserve the tag. Fame, it seems, ensures mass hysteria one way or another either the public loves you or hates you. There is no such thing as a happy middle ground.
I agree with you Nishant that C block victory was a good example of collective action and cooperation.....but i believe all the blocks in JATRA had put in best of their efforts....its just that someone has to win at the end of the day........
What i am trying to say that collective action was not only their within each block but also between blocks which led to successful completion of JATRA. There were fights all the way between blocks where each one was not ready to give an inch to their opponents.....at one time one of the blocks even boycotted the whole event which was really a shame for all of us.....but at the end of the day, every block cooperated.
In the end it was the block which deserved the most won.....
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