Every journey in Bangalore begins the same miserable way. I leave the apartment and walk down our bomb-scarred approach road to the auto stand where a pack of flea-bitten rickshaw drivers try daily to extract every last paise from my pockets. A short ride to the “sig-nill,” 2 km away on Wind Tunnel Road, costs 20 rupees and anywhere beyond this natural boundary, the price jumps to 100 rupees, an arbitrary amount they know the can get from me. The current dollar rupee to dollar exchange rate is 47 to one, so why get in a tizzy about two measly bucks? After a while in India, it’s necessary to stop thinking like an American and behave like a local.
I don’t mind paying a little extra, but I abhor the feeling of being scammed. When I get a driver who seems nice and charges the metered rate, I don’t mind throwing in a little tip, which I’m told is a big no no!
When I told my roommate how much I dislike being overcharged for rides by rickshaw drivers, he told me it was my own fault and then fault of every Western bleeding heart who comes to Bangalore. It seems there is blame aplenty. Could the fault lie with multinational corporations, whose giant campuses have caused property values to soar and kickstarted neighborhoods overnight? Is it the flood of expats and Non-resident Indians who brought their Western customs and hard currency to the local market? What about the tourists who cling to Bangalore’s scant cultural offerings for out-of-towners? Why not call it a little bit of everything. After all, this is India.
The pyschology of tipping has many layers. As an American in India, I’m happy to pay the same off meter price I consider extortion, if I get to feel it is given as a tip instead of an overcharge. The notion of a choice, however, is crucial. In the U.S., we’re expected to tip enthusiastically and often. It’s not a choice; it’s a hard and fast social convention with little or no escape. Cab drivers, barbers, waiters, mechanics, bar tenders, florists, and delivery boys are just a few of the folks who expect tips for their work, in New York, arguably America’s most expensive city. With already high sticker prices, people in service industries earn meager wages in exchange for generous tips–the adage goes–in order to survive. In Bangalore, says my other roommate, a tip of five percent is considered acceptable, depending on the nature of the service, but there is no hard and fast rule.
A gratuity or a “tip” is a word of mysterious origin, but the meaning is clear. A tip of some amount is given to the servicer on top of any standard charges as a gesture of appreciation for outstanding service and a measure of goodwill.
According to Straight Dope columnist, Cecil Adams, the practice of tipping may have Latin origins, in which case it was a “stips” or gift, but tipping as we know it today has its origin in Great Britain. Adams writes,
Tipping spread from England to colonial America, but after the revolution it was frowned upon (temporarily) as a hangover from the British class system. One only tipped one’s social inferiors, which, lest we forget, did not exist in the brave new world. Unfortunately, the working class eventually got around to swallowing its pride, and tipping returned with all the fervor it possesses today.
As an American, the very idea of being someone’s “social better” makes me as squeamish as paying. From that point of view, its easy to see how a display of largesse is not about altruism at all, but instead reinforces the class standing of the server and the served. In India, with its outlawed though well-reinforced caste system, the idea of different social classes doesn’t strike anyone as a big deal from my personal observations.
