That Mumbai has been voted the rudest city in the world by a recent Reader’s Digest study has come as a shock, even insult, to several of the metro’s citizens. Many Mumbaikars, after all, take pride that unlike the rule-obsessed and dehumanising culture of the West, Mumbai’s is a culture founded primarily on social relationships, one that operates not only on the basis of mutual trust, loyalty, and reciprocity but also on an abundance of human warmth.

Yet the findings of this study warrant introspection not only because self-reflection is a virtue in itself but also because despite anecdotes attesting to individual instances of Mumbai’s generosity, lived experience of the common man in the metro produces mixed responses to the question of rudeness. What stands out is that the response varies not only according to the personality of the individual being polled but also his/her position in Mumbai’s socio-political hierarchy. Mumbai’s rudeness, in other words, points not only to a difference in manners and cultural interpretation between the East and the West, as some elite Mumbaikars have pointed out, but also to a general insensitivity that the metro’s haves show towards its have-nots. That perhaps is why while the metro is home to some of the wealthiest corporate houses in the world, it is also home to some of the world’s largest slums, as well as to a staggering number of abandoned and exploited street children. Put another way, Mumbaikars, and Indians, must acknowledge that despite their textbook commitment to democracy and its principle of equality — the bulk of the metro’s, and India’s, culture still embodies deep asymmetries of power.

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