Social scientists have always marvelled at the huge impact of two simple words on human behaviour. The words in question are “please” and “thanks”. Utter these words at the appropriate moment, most people would go out of their way to be nice and courteous in response. Don’t use these words, deliberately or otherwise, you will see how relations with people can get unnecessarily strained and tense. Indeed, the two words have become the most useful instruments for lubricating relations with people in our society.
An apology or saying sorry is also a lubricant of the same variety. People make mistakes. But if they say sorry after having done something wrong, those mistakes cease to be a barrier to better relations. Even if you are not genuinely sorry for having done something wrong, an apology or a regret note helps improve your relations with the affected party. And if you refuse to apologise, whatever be the reason, you can always be assured of a marked deterioration in your relations with the people who have been affected by your action or inaction.
With governments, however, apologies do not always work the same way. Recently, the Australian government issued an apology for the maltreatment of its aboriginal population. It is not clear if the Australian aborigines have accepted the apology. The Chinese made no bones about not accepting Japan’s apology in 2005 for its attacks in Asia during the Second World War. But the Japanese believe that their apology was the correct move. Even if the Chinese dismissed the apology, Japan can at least breathe a little more freely.
Back in India, Manmohan Singh apologised to the Sikhs for the atrocities that were committed on thousands of them in 1984. Did the Sikhs accept that apology? It is still not clear. But going by the recent Delhi assembly election results, the Sikhs decided to bury the past after the Manmohan Singh apology and move on. With the CBI giving a clean chit to Jagdish Tytler for his alleged role in the anti-Sikh riots in 1984, it seems the Sikhs may now wonder about the genuineness of that apology from India’s prime minister. Yesterday, Home Minister P Chidambaram got a taste of the simmering Sikh anger over the CBI move.
So, apologies may work when they are perceived to be genuine. But if doubts surface over the genuineness of an apology, the backlash can be serious. The Congress may face the wrath of Sikhs in Delhi in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. Whatever gains it made in the last few years may not only be lost in Delhi, but this may have an impact even in its electoral performance in Punjab.
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The CPI-M, too, may get trapped in this apology game in West Bengal. There is no doubt that the developments in Nandigram and Singur were a major failure for the Left Front government in West Bengal. The rural voters in the state now have doubts about the CPI-M and what it would do for them. The CPI-M leadership has also recognised the credibility gap between the Left party and its traditional vote bank. Therefore, senior CPI-M leaders are now offering apologies to the farmers and seeking forgiveness from them for all that happened in Nandigram and Singur. Whether the apology works or not will be known only after the Lok Sabha election results are out next month. But it is clear that even the Left sees apologies as an instrument of renewing a relationship that has got strained.
Disclosure is another such instrument. It is an attempt to come clean. But there are always doubts about the real purpose of such disclosure. Several years ago, Enron made the disclosure that it had spent a few million dollars on educating the people in and around its Dabhol project site about the benefits it would bring for them. Many people had doubts about the real purpose of that expenditure and the disclosure.
Candidates contesting Lok Sabha seats are now forced to disclose their financial assets. The reporting format for such disclosure can still be better to capture the real value of the assets. But it is now possible to see how a Lok Sabha member has increased his or her wealth over a period of five years.
In the US, Lawrence Summers, who is the director of President Obama’s National Economic Council, has now disclosed that he received $67,500 from Tata Consultancy Services for a “speaking engagement” and another $187,500 from Reliance Industries Limited as “advisory board fees.” The question such disclosure does not answer is why these companies were so generous in paying these fees for a speaking engagement or for work on its advisory board?
Like apologies, disclosures too need to be genuine. To make them appear genuine, it is important that disclosures must be accompanied with an explanation of how a member of Parliament, for instance, increased his wealth over five years and what the terms were for receiving such fees from some companies. Without such details, even disclosures will fail to cut much ice with people.