Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Mob Psyche and role of leader

In one class, we were given a case-let "you are head of an NGO, functional in a village, which geographically lies near a highway. One day, a truck got some problem and its driver and cleaner went to city for catching a mechanic leaving truck at the highway. Truck contained valuables. After their return, truck driver finds that truck has been looted by villagers. Instead of going to police he requests NGO head to get his valuables back. Villagers on the other hand are dissenting from the fact that they have looted the truck"

Possible solutions we discussed in class. Lets look it with a different angle
This may be a hypothetical story but Such mob psyche movements have created havoc in past. I tried to search out if any prudent person/leader (alike to NGO head) could stop mob movements in past. My short knowledge domain gives me only one such example; immidately after freedom riots of Noakhali were brought to hault by amaran anshan of Mr. M.K.Gandhi ( he disliked mahatma tag so i don't prefer to use mahatma word!!!). Other than this incident, where moral force of a leader compelled the masses to stop from wrong doings, most of the incidents reflect leaders igniting masses for going for wrong practices.

Onus i personally feel doesn't lie more on mass but on kind of respect and moral commanding leaders of today's generation hold on mass. Mass may at one or another occasion may resort to good or bad actions because mob usually follows herd cycle but how much moral command leader (i doubt if we have even one!!!!) can excercise to promote good (justified )mob actions and stop negative collective (should we even call it collective action and co-operation i am apprehensive!!!) actions.

We IRMAN's ,who are considered to be change agents , need to ponder upon sincerely on this, as some among us will for sure face such incidents.

Sharda Gautam
28042

2 comments:

Hiral Parikh said...

Collective action if doesn't bring results on time than it is of no use and actually people are fooled at the end of day. This is particularly true where so called CAC leaders form a union with those in fault and power and finally leaves mass in a position where it is not aware what could be done even without such so called leaders. Recently last year two girls were raped and killed brutally in Junagadh on Girnar. People gathered and protested against it and finally the minister (Mr. Purushottam Rupala) from the same caste resigned from state government and assured that he won't join the government again until justice was done but what finally happened still murderers are not found he fought the election again and won it. These shows how public sentiments are being often played with and how short the memory of people is. So whatever collective action is taken it should be on time with outcomes in shorter time duration whenever possible.

Himanshu Jain said...

i think that, the incident was not of riots as riots are the social moment which affect only a section of population it was more like a revolution, as it involved all section of society living in the territory at that time.
The reason behind the inefficency of our leaders to curb the mob moment may be that mob at time of riot is incted by a hostile belief and this hostile belief can be countered only by a ideology and the present day leaders are lacking that ideology which was there with mahatma gandhi.