ATTITUDES AND THEIR COMPONENTS

ATTITUDES AND THEIR COMPONENTS

To celebrate the New Year along with my family , we went to a restaurant. I asked for a fork and all I got was an attitude.

Attitude is a settled way of thinking about something. It can be further added to state that it is an expression of favour or disfavour towards a person , place ,thing or event. Today,we find display of attitude ( invariably in an abrasive manner) quite commonplace.

Winston Churchil writes," Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference."

We boast about " Incredible India" , but does the country really believe in the philosophy of " Atithi Devo Bhava". On one side of the spectrum are world famous trains like -" Palace on Wheels", " Fairy Queen"." Royal Orient Express" and the " Deccan Odyssey" to name some and on the other side of the faultline are the infamous " Nirbhaya Rape Case", abnormal delay in the passage of the Juvenile Justice Act , fleecing of tourists and a general unhygienic and unclean environment.  These act as deterrent for the potential tourists visiting and revisiting the country. We imminently need Swacch Minds and Swacch Bharat .  Indians have become apparatchik  of unholy traditions holding on to geek gadgets.  No where men!

The country is blessed with a salubrious climate, a large countryside, extensive coastline, rugged deserts ,majestic forts, marvelous temples and places of worship of different faiths with extraordinary architecture,cool climes of the Himalayas, yet we fail to exploit the true potential of tourism.. Tourism can be a money spinner and generate massive employment.

The problem is our archaic and abrasive attitude.

Thomas Jefferson , once famously said," Nothing can stop the man with the right attitude from achieving his goal, nothing on the earth can help the man with wrong mental attitude."

Attitudes consists of the way a person feels and thinks about something ,aswell as the person chooses to behave. Some of the broad components of this human trait are Affective, Behavioral and Cognitive approaches to behaviour.

a) The Affective component of an attitude is the way a person feels about any object, person  or a situation . It broadly implies " emotions"  and " feelings". It can be zeroed upon as an emotional component. For example an individual may find  Hindustani classical music soothing to the ears and uplifting . So such a person gets connected with this genre of music quite easily. However  our attitude  towards tourism is not sympathetic nor  we can empathise  with the tourists . Thus  we score pretty low on the score .

b) The Behavioual component  of an attitude is the action an individual takes with regard to the situation . Now the Hindustani classical  loving person would purchase a large cachet of such a collection. He would be attending concerts and watching the programmes  on TV .  I find our attitude towards tourism industry is  that  of neglect.We  treat our customers is a  disparaging   manner. Thus the potential tourist gets  lost in the maze and labyrinths of irreverent behaviour.

c) Finally the Cognitive component of attitude formation. This is purely the way a person thinks about himself, an object, a situation . Such thoughts , or cognition's , include beliefs  and ideas about the focus of the attitude.   An individual would place classical music on a higher plane in comparison to other forms of music and patronise it to the fullest.

Unfortunately , the czars  of tourism industry  do not even posses this  cognitive aspect of attitude formation . They seem to have a low esteem about the entire industry they head  and  thus cannot  project it in a positive  manner  .  Thus on all scales our component of attitudinal behaviour are lackadaisical .

Attitudes are formed through contacts, instructions, interactions with others and observational behavioral patterns.

Tourism in India has a negative connotation and therefore we  cannot  advertise our product effectively.  Further attitudes are formed through direct instructions. Like parents can impress upon children that smoking and drinking are unhealthy vices. Children would  over a period of time learn  and stave off  from these addictions. But the reverse is true of our tourism industry . We beget negativity and there are virtually no learning.

Interaction with people also form an impression on our attitudes.  A non smoking parent , peers, siblings  have a significant impact on attitude formation  of a child. The propensity of the child not to smoke enhances. The recall value of tourism industry is woeful , and moments are captured only on camera or cellphones and not in our minds.

Finally attitudes are  influenced by other people in the immediate  world and also by the larger world of the education system .  However the ecosystem of tourism in India has become so corrupted that  the prospective foreign client is put off by the delinquent behaviour.

Interestingly we talk about the  ingress of foreigners increasing from 1.7million to 7 million between 1991 to 2013.. But are we making a comparison to countries in South East Asia like China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia  and Sri Lanka ?  Absolute numbers mean nothing .

India has to make a clear  break away from the past and concentrate as Carl Jung says," focus on the  conscious and unconscious,extraversion an introversion, rational and even irrational " to rejig our attitudes . Only then can we be a hospitable country.

Yoga and Yoga mats are exported today, so is Spiritualism . May be it happened always............ Buddhism and Vipassana left the shores of this country!