Why do Indians always try to jump queues?

I have always wondered why fellow Indians are never interested in standing in a queue. Even when they did, most of them will be exploring opportunities to break the queue. Initially, I thought that it is a phenomenon in localities where more uneducated folks lived, but it has nothing to do with education. It is all about the way we are brought up. Let us try to understand the problem in a little more detail to understand the reasons behind this behavior and possibly try finding a solution.

India has always been a country of shortages. It has to do with the policies we followed soon after independence that gave the government the power to decide how much of each commodity / product is produced / sold. The other name for this is license raj. Because of short supply of almost everything, people had to wait for their turn or grease palms to break the queue and get the stuff. People who had access to the corridors of power or money used the corrupt route while the rest had to wait for their turn.

The net effect of the above phenomenon was that the rich and powerful got used to breaking the queue while the rest wanted to become rich and powerful so that they can also break the queue. The economic reforms released some of the controls and lot of stuff became available in plenty, but it also put more money into the pockets of the people. Lot of people became rich but not necessarily powerful. None of these folks would want to wait for their turn.

On the whole, the situation is pretty much the same as before. The only thing that has changed is the fact that people have more money now which canceled out the extra supply in the system. So, wherever you go, bet it airport or railway station or post office, you can always see people crowding the ticket counters even when there are only 3-4 people waiting and they can very easily stand in the queue and get the work done quicker. Someone once said "In the United States, people stand in the queue and patiently wait for their turn because they are sure that their turn will come, but in India people always try to break the queue because they are afraid that their turn may never come"

What could be the possible solutions to this problem? There are no complete solutions because it will mostly take a generation for the change to trickle in. But what I found working at some places is having boards like "Please stand in queue. Everyone will be attended to". At airports we have mechanisms which force people to stand in queue. Such mechanisms should become prevalent wherever possible. At-least having a board "Q Please" will do 50% of the work. But unless we people make up our minds to wait for our turn, nothing will work.

In summary, till each one of us get into the habit of waiting for our turn instead of looking for ways to get things done quicker by crooked means, neither the corruption will reduce nor the country will prosper beyond a point.