Indian "Herd Mentality"

Indian population has crossed over one billion and is estimated to surpass China by 2030, a UN report says [see here]. Infrastructure is already over burdened and seeing the current growth rate of population, condition is sure to get worse . We can see long queues of people at different places be it bus stands or railway booking counter or ration stores or say any public place. People here have become so habitual of waiting in queues that if they see a window with out any queue, they consider that window is not functional :-)

A similar happening I saw in our mess. Though it has not as much crowd as the places I mentioned above, but never the less people are habitual of these conditions. So what I noticed today afternoon at lunch time was that out of two counters for the self serving here one was having a queue of more than ten persons while other was empty. I could not understand the reason. But later I realized that probably the reason is people thought that other one is empty so its non functional. The reason sounds humourous but still seems very true. Have this thought ever come to your mind when you went to railway reservation counter and found it empty?