Arrogance and Scarcity
India is a country that has always had a scarcity of resources. Per capita, it is one of the poorest countries in the world. As such, the people were constantly competing for everything, from food, water, and housing, to education. The Supreme Court just a couple months ago passed a law that schools could not interview pupils under 5 for admission. Children as young as 3 had been subjected to gruelling entrance exams and interviews while trying to get into the best preschools. After hearing this, things started to make sense to me. I will use my professor as an example here, but we have all had an Indian coworker who acts in this manner. My professor is constantly saying that he attending India’s "elite" institutions, that he ranked 86th out of 500,000 on this entrance exam, that his brother and sister own a house worth USD $500,000, etc. Another example is the coworker who starts every comment at a meeting with this credentials. While there is no excuse for arrogance, we fierce competition for scarce resources in India is what breeds that behavior.
DISCLAIMER: There are many, many Indian Americans who are not arrogant like our professor. I realize I have made an overgeneralization, but I think we all will agree there are enough Indian Americans who display these behaviors to make this exercise interesting.
