Nation building – Make a line

Nations do not build themselves.  They are built. 

They are built by leaders, visionaries, philosophers, writers, poets, journalists etc.  Nations are built bit by bit, step by step, day after day thru well-defined, well planned, well targeted and well executed campaigns.  These campaigns first create awareness about an opportunity or an issue that needs to be addressed by following certain good practices, then educate and train the masses to start following those practices and then keep everyone motivated to continue following the practices till such time that these practices get engrained in the everyday life decisions one makes and it becomes their hallmark and others starts associating these practices with those nations. 

Nation building changes are behavioral in nature that help influencing people’s mindset for particular situations.  With the acquired new mind set people follow a positive and similar thought process when facing challenges of everyday life and are able to make decisions that are better suitable for them individually and for groups of people collectively thereby resulting in positive changes for the nation as a whole.  And the interesting part is that these good results get achieved without putting any extra effort by the nation as by then these behaviors are part of their nature.  It is their normal and consistent behavior. 

No challenge is big enough for a nation that collectively think it is doable.   Availability of time, resources, skills do matter but can become secondary against the resolve of a nation.  And we have tons of examples to prove the fact.

• How China became world’s largest economy from a starving nation
• How Germany once again became a world power after humiliating world war defeat
• How Japan regained its position in world economy after worlds war
• How Singapore became a regional trading hub without having raw materials

Changes that build a nation are of fundamental type that have far reaching positive consequences.  They may not look big on the surface, but their positive contribution can be huge.  These types of changes can either be regimented or can be communicated subtly thru other channels of communication that people generally follow/use.  But these things do not happen overnight.  It takes time and consistent effort and communication to change human behavior, sometime decades.

Let’s take an example and analyze the same:

Making que/line – So the idea here is that when more than one person or group need to get a product and/or service it should be on a first come first serve basis.  To determine who had come first we make a line.  Seems to be a simple behavior but has extremely far reaching positive impact on our daily life.  Following are just a few benefits of making lines:

• No confusion – Since everyone knows the process, knows where the line starts where it ends and what to do, there is no confusion.  Everyone comes when they come, joins the line and relax that now they will get served
• Organized crowd – Everyone falls in the line and get served one by one so no matter if there are 10 or 100 people to be served.  They all are get organized in one line and remain well organized. 
• Well behaved crowd – Since everyone knows that those who are ahead of them in the line have first right to be served as they had come early so no need to fight or push or pull or any other misunderstanding so crowd spends time pleasantly talking to each other and normally behave
• No pushing, pulling at the window – Everyone goes to the window on their turn so there is no crows there and no one need to do any pulling or pushing to ensure they get served or to keep others away from window etc.   
• Good time planning – Things can be planned better.  If we need to be served early, we can go to the venue before time, grab a position in line that is ahead of others and get served early.  Can plan our day accordingly.  Similarly, if we reached late but after knowing our respective position in the line and observing how long an average person takes to be served can estimate how long will it take and then plan rest of the day accordingly or inform our other commitments if needed.
• Peace of mind – Once in line everyone knows that they will get served on their turn, no worries that someone would push them out or they will have to fight their way in or a question of not getting served at all
• Getting good service – Since the person providing goods or services is handling only one person at one time at the window, is not being pressurized by a huge pushing pulling crowd at the window, the person works calmly and professionally, is able to deliver quickly and with a positive demeaner, so is able to provide good service
• Getting fair chance – Everyone in the line gets a fair chance of getting served depending on how soon or late they were at the venue.  No stronger individuals get unfair advantage by pushing their way in or no weaker person is at disadvantage of being pushed out.  Everyone gets a fair chance of getting served based on their position in the line
• Sense of getting reward – Those who come early gets reward with quick turn around so get s sense of reward of being early
• Habit of time planning – One can time plan thing before hand by determine their position in the line and gets into habit of time planning

And I am sure there can be several other tangible and non-tangible benefits of just a small behavioral change of making a line.  Also, once we accept the first come first serve principle and follow the same in every other walk of life a lot of other things will improve.  Also, this is just one small example, we need to learn a lot.

The blog post contributor does not consider himself qualified enough to belong to the elite group of people identified above (leaders, visionaries, philosophers, writers, poets, journalists etc.) but has every intention to remind the influencers to start making contributions to the important task of nation builders.  They owe this to their area of influence, to their nation.

Babar Saeed

bsaeed@yahoo.com

November 22, 2019