This mornings Economic Times in Mumbai misspells its title on page 18. This is not the only publication that has done it. I regularly see this in a few quality English publications in the country. The reason this is shocking, is having worked in the magazine and newspaper publishing business, I know how important this is to the editor/s. For an editor, the published word is sacrosanct and how it comes through, should be nothing short of perfect.
Even if the data entry operator has made a mistake in typing the correct word, the page proof reader should have picked it up and if not that, the page editor who finally signed off on the page should/could have picked it up, before the page moved for pre-press, pagination and printing. When this chain does not work, there is probably a larger issue at work.
Could it be, that in this fast paced life of ours, we have lost an eye for detail? Or perhaps we no longer care, for such outdated things like “spelling” and “sentence formation”? What with the new twitter, sms and chat cultures, correct spelling and sentence construction has become a lost art.
Perhaps its reflective of the Indian culture and its management practices? In field after field, one can see, we lack the “finishing touch” or the level of “detail orientation” true success requires. We will put up a swashbuckling building, but will not complete the interiors to “global standards”. We will put up a sea link, but not complete the entire design. We will create a new stadium, but leave it unpainted. True success, needs an eye for detail, and the ability to actually complete the job. Its called ‘execution’, all the way till the end.
Dennis Taraporewala 
That is indeed a shocking story and I am very sorry to hear about the same. This over confidence is a bane actually, that is quite endemic in the new culture enveloping the country. I also often find this in many of the youngsters who overestimate their ability and behave over confidently; none of it based on past actual/real performance which they may have built over time. There is this constant hurry that “we know everything”, when actually there is a lot of mastery left. This is the result of over-the-top media consumption, where instead of understanding ourselves, we take on projections and perhaps over glorify ourselves in our minds, since we get confused between ourselves and our own projections on the media screen.
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Well penned Dennis! i might like to add here that an eye for detail goes beyond success. Sometimes, it can be a life saver especially in the medical profession or an eye saver as in this case. My father got operated at Breach Candy Hospital 6 years ago for a deviated septum by a leading ENT surgeon of India. He went about the surgery, like it was business as usual; very overconfident and nonchalant. The deviated septum was corrected all right but none of us were prepared or ready to accept what was to come. Inadvertently, this very leading doctor made a grave error while rectifying the septum. His omission to detail and a sense of overconfidence got the better of him and he cut my dad’s optical nerve. This led to an irreversible blindness in his right eye. The doctor was all apologies et al. But look at the damage caused. Would an apology suffice???
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