BackWhat are we queuing up for?
Queues reflect the evolutionary stage of a country or an economy; from scarcity to plenty, from labour to love
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One thing that fascinates us is observing queues, or more specifically, observing what people have to or opt to queue up for. On a recent road trip in Chhattisgarh, we rolled into the town of Bilaspur one weary evening to find a serpentine queue in the town square. This immediately rekindled memories of ration shop queues that had once been part of our daily lives and we started lamenting the fact that people still have to queue up for hours to get the basic necessities of life. As our car drove on, a pleasant surprise awaited us. People had not lined up outside a dusty hovel selling subsidized (and generally adulterated) wheat, rice and kerosene but outside a spanking new, brightly lit pizza outlet. We were later told that the outlet had opened in Bilaspur that very day and the response had been overwhelming.
That set us thinking about what we queued up for in the past and how that has changed. Bleary-eyed queues at the local milk centre, the sweat-drenched ones at the Indian Railway reservation counter before summer vacations, nail-biters for college admission, once-in-a-lifetime variety for household gas connections, raucous ones for film tickets—the list went on. Queues were a part of everyday life with one having to swap places with siblings in the especially long-winded ones. The disappointment that lurked at the end of many of them either in the form of a House Full or Closed for Lunch board was frustrating. What compounded the agony was that one would be immediately accosted by a tout offering the same film or railway ticket at an atrocious premium. Our parents tell us stories about years of wait for a telephone connection or a new scooter. It was an era of perennially unmet demand and rampant rent seeking to help you jump the queue.
Queues have different connotations for different people. For us, they remind of the age of scarcity but to others they may mean discipline or grit. That two Britons can form a queue is a joke that we Indians find difficult to understand. Images of well to do Brits queuing up for bread in the freezing winters during Second World War spoke about the country’s stoic character in the face of adversity. The British obsession with queues and discipline stays intact with the Wimbledon tradition of “The Queue" for same day match tickets, complete with a Guide to Queuing issued by the All England Club. The guide contains a detailed Code of Conduct where the most important instruction is “Queue Jumping is not acceptable and will not be tolerated". Online accounts of The Queue veterans are an entertaining read and it is quite evident that, for them, the ritual of queuing is as important and enjoyable as watching the tennis match itself.
What people queue up for also reflects the evolutionary stage of a country or an economy. As the one outside the pizza outlet showed us, people in India are now opting to queue up for items of discretionary consumption rather than having to queue up for items of daily need. The advent of technology has ushered in transparency and consistency. Once you are used to booking movie tickets online, selecting seats, snacks for interval and getting a discount on your credit card as well, the House Full board and the lurking tout seem like a bad dream. IRCTC’s website for railway reservations has ensured the same thing at a bigger level—the whole swarm of “railway agents" has evaporated. Need for people who helped you jump queues is obviated and that is definitely a sign of progress. It speaks of ample supply and an established process to make demand meet supply in a transparent and fair manner. The fact that the current generation does not know the meaning of a pay-in slip book or passbook is definitely progress. Nobody from earlier generations can forget the grouchy bank tellers who made you sign umpteen times on the reverse of a bearer cheque—what it takes now is a simple ATM personal identification number. Similarly, doing away with the public distribution system and opting for direct benefit transfer will do away with the need for those dreary ration shop queues as well.
While these things help alleviate our daily lives, it is heartening to see them being replicated in issues of national importance. We think it is fair to assume that all natural resources—be it spectrum waves or coal blocks, would henceforth be allocated based on a transparent process.
Jumping the queue is becoming very difficult now and we hope that the unholy nexus of the seller, the conniving buyer and the fixer-middleman is permanently dismantled. This will create a level-playing field for new entrepreneurs while challenging the incumbent entrenched powers.
To be sure, we are not eradicating queues just yet and our next generations will find reasons to queue up as well. Call us old-school but we have never really understood the midnight queues before a new Apple product is launched or before the release of the latest Harry Potter book but clearly many people find the pursuit more worthy than a night’s sleep. But those are queues of love and not queues of labour. The ration shop line though is an experience our children will do well without.
Amay Hattangadi & Swanand Kelkar are portfolio managers with Morgan Stanley Investment Management.These are their personal views.
Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com
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