The carrot or the stick?

I have often wondered - Is discipline a product or the carrot or the stick and is there any other option?

Can discipline be enforced by simply giving carrots? It is successful considering we have grown up with inducing our kids with something so that they fall in line. When the carrot fails, at least for the kid there was the stick. I say was because now the kid can complain of abuse and can get the parent and sometimes the teacher behind bars.

Is there a third way? Can a person be disciplined completely by external stimuli or is discipline inborn? Does a person become disciplined or is he born one? I grapple with these questions each day when I drive when I see the appalling indiscipline on the road. Just today four incidents disturbed me as they all happened in the space of a few hours in and around Anna Nagar.

1.   A school van driver (actually a contract carriage) with school kids drove on the wrong side and mercifully missed a MTC bus that was coming on the right side. I shudder to think that I missed tomorrows breaking news. School kids dying makes news but the reasons don’t.

2.   An auto driver with a passenger carrying some long rods that jutted high above nonchalantly made an U turn and drove up the wrong side of the Koyambedu flyover making the oncoming traffic to scramble for room

3.   A  young woman on a two wheeler jumped a red light and almost got hit by LCV, but she seemed to be more embarrassed by the cop who screamed at her than the near miss

4.   Another young woman trying to squeeze through a gap in the median meant for walkers in the middle of the traffic when the U turn was hardly 50 metres ahead. Finally the never ending traffic forced her to take the U turn.

These people who take their lives for granted and also expose others to danger do not deserve to be on the roads but they are there. For my personal safety I wonder is there a way these people can be disciplined? Anyone?