Viswanathan K's Thoughts

When David Cameron apologized for Jallianwala Bagh almost a century after the event, it hardly created a ripple. About the only thing it did was to make people realize the Brit PM was in town! So I found this Guardian article on the apology interesting: it said such a late apology hardly helps anyone. In fact, the article said, the timing of the apology seems suspect given that Cameron came as part of a trade delegation to one of the fastest growing economies of the world. Instead, if Britain was truly apologetic, the article recommended making the teaching of both the good (Indian civil services, educational reforms, the railways) and the bad of British colonialism (other massacres, the looting etc and not just in India) a part of the British education system. Because: “For we must never forget that whatever its achievements, the British empire, like every empire before or since, was both gained and maintained by military might, and built over a mountain of skulls of those i...

Everyone’s familiar with apologies that are not sincere or don’t sound sincere. But have you run into a situation where the sincere apology itself offended others? If not, check out what happened to Starbucks in Argentina. Some time back, Starbucks ran out of the imported cups with the Starbucks logo in Argentina. So the company decided to use blank cups made locally. They also decided to proactively apologize via Facebook and Twitter: “We apologize, as due to a temporary supply shortage, some shops are using national cups and sleeves. Salutations.” The choice of wording couldn’t have been worse, could it? It sounds as if they are apologizing for using Argentine cups, doesn’t it? No wonder the reaction was angry and, unsurprisingly, went viral on Twitter. And so Starbucks ended up apologizing for the apology. Starbucks was trying to be upfront and transparent about the situation; instead it just got into more trouble. I guess that’s why they say that no good deed goes unpunished!