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Burnt and vandalised cars left in the
Manesar plant of Maruti
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It was a black
day for the industrial community in India, the day when a young HR personnel at
the rank of a GM suffocated to death in his office due to a fire put on by
workers, who had no respect for law or order, least to say any worth for human
life. Media reports also stated that the same person was first beaten up by the
workers with steel rods and blunt auto parts, which resulted in multiple
fractures in both legs, thereby making the person an easy prey to the engulfing
inferno. Left to perish, with no help in sight, he finally succumbed to his
injuries and was reported death by suffocation along with 100% burnt.
This was no
one-off incident, which took place in a factory in the depth of rural India –
away from the civilized urban world. Unfortunately, this incident took place in
the very heart of civilization within 50 kms from Delhi NCR in Maruti Suzuki’s
plant in Manesar – one of the fastest growing industrial townships in North
India. And, this GM was not the only prey in this mob-frenzy that broke out
that day, in that doomed Maruti plant. Some 40 other executives, many of them
at the ranks of GM and some at the ranks of VP were predated upon by hordes of
workers, with little knowledge of what they were up to.
The above-cited
incident reflects on to an action, which can be commonly termed as mob-attack.
Let’s first try to understand the meaning of the term ‘mob.’ A mob is a crowd
of people with no defined objective, although the group is big, most-often
leader-less and highly emotionally charged. What starts off as a systematic
protest, in the above case, by a trade union, actually moves on to become a disoriented,
mass movement, with a goal to cause unwanted destruction of life and property.
According
to social psychologists, there are various factors, which come into play when
the term mob mentality or mob behaviour is referred to. Two of
the main factors are the greater anonymity that exists within a group and the
distribution of responsibility for the group's actions. These factors sometimes
make a person believe that they can act a certain way within a group and not
have the same consequences that the same actions would have if he or she acted
alone. For example, if a person is in a group that is vandalizing a building,
he or she might believe that there is less of a chance of getting caught than
if he or she was acting alone, because it might be difficult to identify every
person who was involved. He or she might also feel less guilt because other people
also vandalized the property.
Another factor in mob mentality is the sense of confusion or even panic
that can exist in a large group. An example of this can be seen when people in
crowds suddenly begin rushing in one direction. Although many people in the
group might not know why this is happening, they see the urgency in the group
and begin rushing in that direction, too. In extreme cases, the urgency and
panic increases, creating a sort of crowd hysteria, and some people might even
get trampled as a great number of people try to move in the same direction as
quickly as possible. Even for something as seemingly innocent as a department
store sale, a mob mentality might be evident as dozens of shoppers rush toward
the sale items, push each other out of the way and fight over the items.
According to
Floyd Allport (1924), noted social psychologist, "there is no psychology of groups which is not essentially
and entirely a psychology of individuals". When it come to collective
action, Allport declared, still more famously: "the individual in the
crowd behaves just as he would behave alone only more so". Crowd members
lose their unique and idiosyncratic identities and behave in terms of a
primitive animal substrate.
Crowd members who take part
in violent action or action against the social order might be expected to have
violent or anti-social personalities - or, at the very least, to be under-
socialised or marginal to society. As the official US Riot Commission report of
1968 acknowledged, the most prevalent view was that "rioters were criminal
types, overactive social deviants or riff-raff - recent migrants, members of an
uneducated underclass - alienated from the society." Drawing analogy to
the incident that took place at Maruti with the commentaries shared above, it
can be very well justified that the vandalism that took place there was ignited
by the demands of the working class – a demand to reinstate a suspended worker
– which was not to be accepted by the management. Although the workers were not
marginalized in terms of their numbers – the media had quoted around 2000
workers – but their sense of feeling marginalized was evoked by their social
class order (working class). When the long negotiations in the plant failed to
get any peaceful resolutions, the workers erupted in the most antagonistic
manner.
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| Most mob attacks or acts of vandalisms are caused by mindless, brain-dead individuals who have no concern for life of property |
As a common man, one can only
wish to stay away from such mob-attacks, but one never knows when he gets
dragged into one. The incident that took place in Maruti’s plant at Manesar is
no doubt one of the most horrendous incidents to have happened in my lifetime.
My heartfelt sympathies go out to the family of the bereaved as well as to all
the workers, for whom the future employment in the plant seems bleak. One
miscalculated, misjudged and mistimed step taken by an immature group of
brain-dead people has lead to undesirable consequences – most often turning
sour, rather than getting any sweet results out of such unwanted actions.
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