Perhaps mine is lone odd voice in the matter. Lots of dust have been stirred over the issue, and perhaps not all of that have settled yet. So, sticking my neck out may not be a good idea after all. Yet I believe this must be told, whatever the odds. But before you start branding me for or against, let me say that the incident at Schiphol airport at Amsterdam has 2 sides to it. One is spontaneous, the other deliberate.
First the spontaneous. A general consensus among air travelers is that Indians who travel abroad – specially in economy class – cut a very sorry figure. They tend to think that the mid-air airline staff are all theirs to be served and demand more than what is permissible – drinks for example – and also manage to irk co-passengers in no time. If you happen to seat next to one of them, you’ll shortly be at your wit’s end, praying all the while for an early end to the ordeal. If you think I’m imagining too much, just refer to Sunanda Datta Ray’s classic article in 26 August’s The Telegraph.
Schiphol Airport – Gateway to trouble? (Picture source)
It is not difficult to imagine that something of this sort happened in the ill-fated Northwest’s Amsterdam-Mumbai flight. News reports suggest that the Indian passengers in question have been passing around their mobile phones, cutting jokes aloud and – to the horror of co-passengers – walking up and down the aisle as if it was the verandah of their homes. But of course all these were spontaneous without any ill motive, because – as mentioned above – their collective habits thought nothing of anything else.
What happened next has been reported widely. The Dutch erred here since they already believed that the 12 people they detained were suspects and proceeded to treat them as such. Handcuffing them was nothing less than an affront to liberal values and therefore a gross mistake. Had they simply led them away for questioning and informed their families without the elaborate notion of arrests, much of the brouhaha won’t have taken place.
In the end, the lesson is that cutting a sorry figure hardly helps, specially in the present supercharged atmosphere. Even if it is granted that the Indians’ mid-air behavior is hardly going to change in a hurry, gaffes such as this on the part of airlines and authorities will not go well to serve their or overall interests in fighting the menace of terrorism. In the whole episode, the silver lining perhaps is that Indians may now learn to behave responsibly in air journeys. Let’s hope so.
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