I am fascinated by queues. Why do they work so well in some places, but not at all in others? Public behavior in queues and queue-type situations raises several interesting questions, many of which have wider implications.

Obviously, there is an immediate private advantage in trying to beat a queue (say cutting in at the front with some ‘urgent’ excuse, or merely muscling your way in). What’s the downside if you attempt this? Worst case someone will force you to back up and join at the end, which is where you would have been anyway. If you have a sufficiently thick skin, you should always try to beat a queue – even if in 20% of the cases, you manage to get ahead, you are better off, and in the remaining 80% you are no worse off than before.

Queues are therefore inherently unstable, delicate mechanisms. Given a slight push in the wrong direction, a well functioning queue can quickly degenerate into chaos. For queues to sustain, two critical control mechanisms are required – a) a mechanism to prevent people from wanting to beat the system and b) a mechanism to restore order / prevent people attempting to jump the queue from gaining private benefits.

The most overt control is policing - queues with security personnel enforcing order usually have no trouble sustaining. The presence of enforcers acts both as a deterrent and as a damage-control mechanism. Self-regulating queues are more interesting – how does a queue sustain itself, when there is no one to police it?

Public disapproval can act as a reasonable deterrent. Many people may be unwilling to risk the glares / comments from people standing in line to realize their gains. Here is where the general civic demeanour makes a huge difference– in some cities / situations, queue-jumpers get quickly yelled at by the people in line, whereas in others they don’t.

But does this mean that people ‘follow the rules’ only when they know that they are likely to be penalized if they transgress? Is it a foolish pipe dream to imagine that people are capable of self-regulation, even when they know there is no chance of getting caught or penalty for offences? Take a simple example – you are driving in a small town at midnight, nobody’s around and the signal turns red. There is no traffic on any of the roads, no likelihood of any cops around. Do you stop? Two millenniums back, Plato asked this same question with an analogy – “If a man had a magic ring which made him invisible, in effect allowing him to do anything he wanted with no risk of getting caught, would he continue remaining moral?”

There is another strong internally-driven (as opposed to externally enforced) motive for following system rules. This is the realization that behavior that results in short-term private advantage inevitably results in long-term chaos. If you jump a queue, you have to accept that everyone will, and there will eventually be no queues at all. Therefore, it is in your own private long term interest not to jump queues.

Now this line of reasoning can (and does) lead to ‘gift-giving’ behavior. Basic etiquette, courtesy and ethical conduct are founded on a group of people having realized at some point that gift-giving is best for all in the long run.

However, this presupposes two deep-rooted and related conditions. The first is our sense of identity - our notion of who we are and who we believe belong to us, who we define are a part of us. The second is a matter of trust, or lack thereof – what we believe we can trust others to do or not do.

In any optimization, the ideal is to weigh and balance several interlinked variables and constraints to get a globally optimum outcome, rejecting the many locally optimal, or sub-optimal solutions that abound. . However, before one even begins looking for solutions, optimal or not, one first has to define what the globe or the system is, for which one is seeking to find the best result. If one defines the entity, not as the whole but as a part, one gets the solution that is right merely for that part.

A sense of identity that is purely private / individual is anathema to the concept of ‘gift-giving’. The notion of giving freely, giving way is founded on two expected outcomes – that by foregoing something in the immediate, short term, we make the system better off, and that in consequence, we ourselves would be better off, assuming everyone does likewise. These outcomes crucially depend on the two issues I mentioned. The desire to make the system better off, even if it is only to gain ourselves in consequence, presupposes that we think about something more than just our individual selves. The expectation that everyone will do likewise is founded on the principle of trust.

Conventionally, people attribute freedom from want as a cause of gift-giving behavior. Where scarcity mentality prevails, it is believed that people will be far less likely to give freely in the short-term. Therefore, the conclusion goes – developed countries are more likely to have self-sustaining systems, and people who are higher up on the economic ladder are less likely to indulge in rule-breaking. Certainly there is some truth in this, but it isn’t the entire truth. There are plenty of counter examples: Relatively well-off Indians scramble for the exit door with no sense of decorum when an aircraft lands; groups of well-heeled tourists scramble in front of museum entry points; corporate excesses across the world demonstrate that high income levels are no guarantee of ethical behaviour.

Also, we shouldn’t under-emphasise the importance of sheer habit and upbringing. Societies that work hard to inculcate basic civic discipline and belief in systems in their children have a better chance of sustaining their rule-based institutions.

Looking at Indians in general, we are confronted with twin challenges:

On the one hand, our multi-faceted heterogeneity poses a huge barrier to our sense of a larger identity beyond our immediate self / family. Given the number of variables along which one could split an average Indian city-street (language, religion, caste, socio-economic status and so on), it is unsurprising that people hardly regard ‘belonging to the same street’ as a basis for defining their identity. The only places where I’ve seen un-policed queues work in India are inside corporate organizations (where the organization seems to provide a strong basis for identity), in Bombay (where the heightened sense of civic discipline is amongst the first things that strikes the first-time visitor from other cities in India, and is among the few redeeming features of living in that infrastructure-starved city) and in family weddings, where people have no problem giving right of way to their guests and to the elderly. Take out Bombay, and you can almost guarantee that when a group of strangers is involved, lawlessness will prevail.

On the other hand, far from emphasizing law-abidance and respect for systems as values in kids, I increasingly see people regard law-breaking as something positive. With eyes firmly fixed on ‘getting ahead’ in a competitive economic and social environment as the all-encompassing goal, families treat rule-bending and ‘do whatever it takes’ behavior in children as ‘street-smarts’. The child that stands in line, studies hard and doesn’t cheat is a nerd with no initiative / enterprise. The child who uses every trick in the book (and then some) to get ahead is encouraged to treat these exploits almost as badges of honor. Increasingly, the philosophy at work seems to be "The only sin is getting caught".

We need to look beyond GDP per capita as the ultimate indicator of development as a society. Perhaps we should look at our queues, at the way we drive in traffic and the values we pass on to our children as better indicators of how civilized we are, and how far we still have to go.