Perception or Reality

Perception is commonly understood as the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted and Reality is referred to the state of things as they actually exist. Perception easily becomes reality or rather subsume reality and has the potential to typecast an individual, group, community or even a nation. It certainly does not imply that perceptions are without any basis. These are based on individual or collective experiences. 

Some years back in Berlin, while trying to adjust to time zone, in the middle of the night, infact it was past mid night, gazing outside from the hotel windows I saw a man walking down the street and wanting to cross the other side.  He waited for the pedestrian light to turn green before crossing an empty road. Next night I saw him again. Seeing this reality it confirmed my perception about the German's self discipline. 

In another setting in a different city in Germany,  listening to some eminent Germans of their perceptions of doing business in India. One of them mentioned that in India, more work gets done in informal settings than formal meetings. His experience could have made him carry this perception. Another one said that no work gets done unless there is a regular follow up. His perception was no follow up means you are no longer interested. Another one, being late for a meeting or keeping others waiting is a sign that you are really very busy. 

Interestingly, one of them pointed out that Indians are very quick to launch or execute any project, they would typically use 20% of the time to launch and 80% time after that to correct and modify.

These may well be individual experiences leading to perceptions and typecasting a nation, but may not be completely out of place. Haven't we as Indians experienced some of these realities.  Don't we often put the cart before the horse in a hurry to launch a project and try to cover it with a argument of being a country in a hurry !! 

Surely, we do recollect some of the simple street scaping projects to flyovers that do not really help movement of traffic.  Large scale schemes for Skills Development launched with huge fanfare still undergoing course correction after two failed versions or the large impact ones like Demonetization and  implementation of GST resulting in visible hardship to general public and loss of business or the most recent one, the new Income Tax Portal launched on due date goes into correction mode immediately after the launch!! The frequent scheduling and rescheduling of meetings or keeping the participants waiting with complete disregard to other people's time. 

As I mentioned,  perceptions are based on interpretation of individual or collective experiences.  I leave it to judgement of the reader whether these or similar experiences are perceptions or reality. In any case a conscious effort is required to bridge the gap between Perception and Reality.