THE MODUS OPERANDI

A friend of mine, a former professor of Applied Behavioral Sciences at one of the Indian Institute of Management recounted this incident to me. It was a cloudy day with intermittent

drizzle when he decided to go to this distant relative’s house to condole a death in the family. After a few minutes’ wait, he was received in the sitting room by the grieving wife of the deceased. There was an uncomfortable silence. This is one occasion when words fail you and many a times you are found fumbling to make the right statement. However trying to make an earnest effort to express his grief he was about to speak to her when she suddenly interrupted him and said, ‘Look it has started to rain again! How many times shall I go and spread the clothes outside to dry and again rush to gather them lest these get wet again. I am tired of this exercise.’

Many a times when we have nothing to talk about, we try to break the monotony by discussing the weather. Be it  meeting someone for the first time, filling an awkward silence or breaking the ice, what’s going on in the sky can always kindle or revive a conversation. Ask a British. He will vouch for it though the professor didn’t in the current context.

Applied Behavioral Sciences, the professor had explained to me once, is in simple terms the study of the behaviour of humans. We can look at what people do or make assumptions about the way a person appears or behaves from the point of view of the study of society and the activities and relationships of individuals and groups within society.

So the professor was a little taken aback by the out of context and sudden outburst of this lady’s annoyance at this intermittance of the rain and how she was being bothered about it. He stopped in the middle of the sentence and looked hard at her. After a minute’s silence he spoke, “Many people must be coming to sympathize with you over this irreparable personal loss. Isn’t it? And every time you must be getting up to receive them and be there to accept their condolences? This continuous process must be quite exhausting. Perhaps you would want to be left alone.” The bereaved lady was too shocked to react and before she could say anything he begged leave of her and came away.

As a probationer at the National Police Academy, my instructor on law and order and crowd control was a very senior officer of West Bengal Cadre who rose to become the DGP of the State and later Governor of a north-east State briefly. While dealing with the subject of crowd behaviour and the behaviour of individuals in a crowd and various theories pertaining to it, he pointed out that besides the rains-the god’s own policeman, music is a great behaviour modifier and helps divert the attention of individuals and can be used as an instrument for crowd dispersal.

One cold evening in Darjeeling following a visiting Prime Minister’s refusal to concede any of the demand for a separate State, hell broke loose in the town. There were several incidents relating to law and order all over. I was stationed not very far from the Raj Bhawan and my brief was to ensure a smooth VIP movement to the Governor House that evening where the

Governor had hosted a reception for the Prime Minister. As the news spread, a large crowd including women in big numbers collected at this point, agitating  and in the process, obstructing the passage of invitees and if provoked further, to storm the Raj Bhawan. Darkness had already descended and the situation was turning so serious that I and my officers and men saw no hope of holding them back or dispersing the crowds without using force. There were strict instructions not to do so as it was a very sensitive issue being agitated by the locals. Suddenly I noticed that the slogan shouting, anger and frayed tempers gave way to laughter and giggles. Everyone was looking across the road to a slope on which was perched a drunken man with a khukri in his hand and dancing wildly. In any hill station on a wintry night Bacchus has to have a field day. As it turned out he appeared to be known person to most them. Now the crowds started cheering him on and some amongst them even suggesting dance moves. The drunken man had found a captive audience and started moving with added vigour, perched dangerously on the slope. No one tried to bring him down either. This was a window I thought god had given me to see that most of the cars carrying VIPs crossed over. The reception was to give over around 10 pm.  Seeing that there purpose was not being served and 10’o clock being almost midnight in hills, they dispersed slowly and slowly to our great relief!

Based on human behavioral patterns, the British pioneered a system of classifying a lot of communities as ‘criminal’ and notifying them. By consulting the history of old recorded crimes, cops in the field could arrive at some findings based on the behaviour pattern of criminals, particularly in property crimes because every particular offender or a criminal group had a signature modus operandi that could help in their identification, apprehension, or detection, and could also be used to determine links between crimes. For example a lot of them eat food at the crime scene, offenders from a now de-notified criminal tribe invariably defecated at the scene of crime before leaving and some others will dig holes in the walls to affect entry and so on.

Human behaviour is indeed unpredictable owing to the enhanced creative capacities of human brains but the behavioral scientists are continuously at work to unravel its mysteries and they indeed are of great help in understanding the mind even that of a criminal through his interrogation and also by way of studying his modus operandi. No matter how surprising, outlandish, or even impossible it may seem, the professor agrees that one of the next challenges of modern Applied Behavioral Sciences could be the modelling of human behaviours.

One day, a man ran into Judge Molla Nasrudin’s court-room and said, “I was just robbed at the border of this village! It must have been someone from here, and I demand justice! The robber took everything from me—my shoes, my pants, my shirt, my coat, my necklace, and even my socks…he took everything, I tell you. I demand justice.”

“Well now,” Nasrudin replied, “I see that you are still wearing you underwear—so the robber didn’t take that, did he?”

“No,” replied the man.

Nasrudin responded, “Then I am sure he was not from here, and thus I cannot investigate your case.”

“How can you be so sure?” the man asked.

“Because if he were from here, he would have taken your underwear as well. After all, we do things thoroughly around here! “

Professor, you are in exalted company !