When your diehard supporters become your liability

The 3 state set back to the BJP has kept the news channels alive with all sorts of analysis and dissection through their own sets of political pundits. Politics is not a platform where one admits one’s mistakes but I hope the closed-door ‘chintan baithaks’ will at least bring out the truth. For, acceptance of mistakes is the first step to success.  

Four years back, the BJP came in with a thumping majority and with lots of expectations. All these 4 years -  the common man, the so-called educated, urban, middle-class Indian has shown extreme patience with some irritants like high petrol price; high NPAs with the Banks that took away a major portion of the tax that he remitted in all honesty; some ugly social incidents that he discounted as more hype than truth; giving up on some subsidies as a contribution to a social cause; inconveniences of demonetization as a bold step in the right direction and many more.

This middle class Indian – primarily a working class group - has generally been apolitical but has supported a forward looking, honest party and has stood behind a hard-working, well-meaning Premier. This group has no permanent following and no hard biases.

He is not a ‘Bhakta’ but applauds good governance and is appreciative of fact that the path to good governance goes through some inconveniences and demands a few sacrifices. But he is very objective in his assessment.  He also maintains a stack of his expectations from the Government. Good governance, zero-corruption, stable economy, infra development, national pride and social equilibrium are all part of this stack. And above all, he seeks a safe living for himself and for his near and dear ones.

The results in Madhya Pradesh show that the BJP was just short of 36000 votes overall, as compared to the Congress. And the number of NOTA votes were about 1.5% - that would translate to somewhere in the range of 4 to 7.5 Lakh votes, depending on the percentage of voting.  As it appears, these fence sitters have made a big difference to the final results. Who are these fence sitters?  Is this a group of these apolitical common men? Who do not want to commit the past mistakes of bringing back a Congress government but are somewhat disappointed with the current dispensation.

This apolitical common man has immense patience. He doesn’t make noise but is not a mute spectator either. He is not a diehard ‘Bhakta’ but does not desist from giving a pat on the back.  He is not a zealot but his silent retreat from the polling booth will be deafening.  Today, he has only got on to the fence riding on NOTA and has rung the warning bell. Tomorrow, he might cross over to the other side and that would be a lethal blow. The ‘Bhakta’ is loud and is irrational - he can give a wrong impression of large scale approval. This objective, apolitical supporter might just whisper. The party should keep its ears on the ground to listen and to ensure the misleading cheers of the intransigent supporter do not drown these sane whispers.

The trait of being ‘disagreeable’

In the last couple of months, I have heard this term ‘Ajaatshatru’ to describe two tall leaders – Atal Ji and Ananth Kumar. They were described as the most affable leaders having no adversaries in their area of work – politics. And hence they were referred to and revered as ‘Ajaatshatru’ – the one having no enemies. Given today’s environment, it will be difficult to find a worthy successor to this particular legacy of these leaders.

Today, we are all well connected through the social media. We find different platforms to express our views on all and sundry topics of general interest. Be it a cricket match, a team selection, a political event, a celebrity marriage, a judicial decree or a simple nostalgic childhood picture – all of this gets discussed, debated and disputed in the closed-group whatsapp circles.  

In the recent weeks, in at least three whatsapp groups that I am a member of, I have witnessed political statements, positions, arguments and counter-arguments leading up to heightened tempers and near-disruptions to the otherwise congenial group dynamics. Politics and politicians who were always the butt of a joke in these ‘intellectual’ groups, have suddenly found unflinching followers from amongst these armchair experts. Positions are taken and daggers are drawn at the slightest provocation.

We as a society have had our own share of disagreements leading up to violence; impatience resulting in road raze and disparities resulting in crimes. However, the acquaintances and friendships were always above these conceited considerations. But the situation has changed now. There is little room left for disagreements. The much clichéd expression of ‘agree to disagree’ has lost its meaning now. Is it the mutated trait of a society, a nation or a generation? Or is it just the cognitive part of the Darwinian evolution that was never studied.

I am not sure when, where and how this mutation originated. How the otherwise indifferent living room analysts suddenly became die hard followers.  Was it the constant reference to someone’s foreign origins or the influencing of a prolonged embargo on someone’s US travel. Was it a crude jibe of ‘Maut ka Saudagar’ or a pun laced ‘Pappu’ - that started it.  The barrage of unsubstantiated information, popularly known as fake-news, has also added fuel to the fire. The dubious role of the media, that keeps ranting about ‘polarization’ despite being the most polarized itself, has not helped the cause either. And one thing that this neo-army of social-media activists fails to recognize is that very often their emotions are flared up based on information that is not received firsthand. A hearsay is not good enough and is not worthy enough to put your years’ of friendship and acquaintance at stake.

It is not that we should not have a viewpoint or not have a followership.  Just that these are often only vicarious connects. It is more important to preserve the real tangible connects and place them over these so as not to lose them for nothing.  As Dr. Pranab Mukherjee pointed out in a speech recently - the beauty of debate and dissent is that we can disagree without being disagreeable, we can ideologically oppose and still be friends. And therein lies a message for all. For the politicians, to refrain from personal attacks and for the followers, in adapting to the ideological pluralism rather than adopting someone else’s hatred. We can all strive to be “Ajaatshatru” in our own realms.

Migrants and the Migrations

In the last couple of weeks, the news of local backlash in a state, against the migrant workers from another state, made to the major headlines. The misery of such migrant workers attracted good media attention – some socially empathetic and a few politically motivated.  This is not the first occasion when the rootless migrant workers have been singled out in a state. We have had different editions of this anti-migrant movements in different states – be it against south Indians or Bihari’s or the people from UP.

Meanwhile, a prominent lawmaker of ours from Punjab has made a statement that culturally he felt much closer to the Pakistanis than the people in Southern India. Amidst all the convergent voices towards inclusive diversity, such a statement coming from a lawmaker describes the mindset. I only hope that it is only his mindset – that is more attuned to a ‘laughter challenge’ than some serious business. I am sure he will soon learn that a ‘tongue in cheek’ dialogue of a comedy show could well turn out to be a ‘foot in mouth’ in serious polity.

On a professional front, I head the Migration Center of Excellence in my organization that takes care of software version migrations. Therefore, of late, whenever I hear the word migration, my ears turn towards the conversation (pun intended).

The earliest of such anti-migrant protests that I have heard of took place in the 60’s.  Though these happened before my birth but I have read about these from the reminiscences of RK Laxman, while he had described his close relationship with Bal Thakre. That perhaps was the defining moment for regional politics in India which evoked local passions against the migrant workers from other states. As was evident from RK Laxman’s memoirs, it was more of politics than any person-to-person hatred.

The local politicians have used this formula of invoking sons-of-the-soil doctrine to flare up passions against migrants from other states, from time to time, be it the recent case of Gujarat or the numerous incidents in the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu or the North Eastern states.

I am a Tamilian, born and brought up in Kanpur, UP. I love my birthplace as much as anybody else would. Whenever I had a low point in my life, I always pepped myself up with the thought that it was not for nothing that I was destined to have born in Kanpur, at the banks of the holy river Ganga – while my parents hailed from a distant Tepperumanallur in Tamil Nadu – some 2000 kilometers away. It required to change 3 trains to reach Kanpur from my native in those days.

However, in 1991, after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, there was a sudden anti-Tamil sentiment in the northern India.  My brother was traveling from Delhi to Chennai. And of all the trains, he chose the Tamilnadu Express. We had some anxious moments those 2 days of journey and the train was indeed stopped by protestors at some station in Madhya Pradesh but with some swift action from the authorities, the journey could be resumed after a short hold up.  That was the first time the very thought of being an ‘outsider’, in my own birthplace, hit upon me.

Over the years, I have moved from Kanpur to Delhi to Bangalore.  During my growing up years, Hindi was my first language of choice and I could never attain any fluency in Tamil.  Nevertheless, there have also been many occasions during my stay in Bangalore, when my Tamil origin gave me a few anxious moments. Further, my wife being a Delhi-bred Punjabi – that again is a fallacy as they are originally Bahawalpuri, with a distinct language and culture, but have lost their identity to the larger Punjabi bracket – my daughters have had little chance not to develop affinity to Hindi. And it bemused their teachers no end when they wrote their mother tongue as Hindi with a surname as Iyer.  Thus, with a dubious attributional evidence to prove my nativity, I sometimes feel lost in this seemingly parochial world.

On one hand I reassure myself that such regional extremities are far and few between and that the metropolitan society in India is largely pluralistic, on the other hand I am never confident about not having some political vested interests drawing boundaries to suit their convenience and short term interests. Just that one should not have the misfortune of ending up at a wrong place at the wrong time. And for that matter, is it not correct that most of us city dwellers are migrants. It is just a question of what reference point you are considering to prove one’s nativity and hence drawing the lines.

We perhaps can take a few lessons from the great migration of Maasai Mara that extends across regions and countries, along a contiguous forest land. The natural migration of the animals aligned with the change of seasons and availability of fodder, does not require a force of law to coordinate the annual phenomenon. Albeit, there are no vested interests there and the animal world has developed a natural instinct that guides them amicably through this migration. Even the international boundaries respect this movement and make way for this mass migration.

Coming back to my profession, the migration of applications across versions has been an equally challenging task for the software industry.  Migrations across software versions, across applications, across platforms is an industry on its own. A certain illustrious senior of the Industry has indeed propagated the concept of ‘Timeless Software’, which talks about the seamless movement of data and application across versions flawlessly.  But that would not run the kitchens. So, we continue not to create timeless software and we continue to struggle through agonizingly painful migrations.

While the polity needs a whole bunch of statesmen who would perhaps erase these physical barriers, the software industry, probably, is waiting for another JC Bose. As he proved that plants too have life and emotions, some such scientist will postulate a theory that the migrant data and the data structures too have life and emotions. And therefore, to uproot them and migrate them is fraught with all the pain.  The migration process therefore, will not just be a soulless lift and shift game, it will involve creating ‘harmony’ across the data structures. The plurality of software versions and their coexistence will be a norm. And the resultant amicability will be a ‘timeless’ tribute to that concept.

                                                                                                       

Problem of the middle ones

Problem of the middle ones

Early in the morning, a friend of mine threw up a contentious point of debate in our whatsapp group – discussing about the injustice done to our particular batch of officers in a public sector bank. As per his research, the couple of batches senior to us and a few junior to our batch, were much better placed in the overall hierarchy.  Is it true that we were the only ones who were wronged – questioned my friend.

We – the middle ones -  seemed to have been sandwiched between the two pillars of success.  And that brought back my childhood memories. We were three brothers – and no prizes for guessing, I was the middle one.  And in all those Chandamama stories that I read in my childhood, I always observed that the King would have three sons.  In order to pick the smartest of those princes, he would put them to a test. And invariably, it was the youngest one who would win the contest.

And then there were those old style bollywood family movies, where the elder brother would make all the sacrifices and the younger ones would go astray. In the end, in a melodramatic way, the younger ones would realize their follies, repent and then would fall in line. The elder one will heroically smile through the last frame of the movie.

So, there was goodness around the elder ones and there was smartness around the younger ones.  And we, the poor middle ones, were nowhere in the count of those writers.  And as I grew up, I even observed that at the airline check-in counters, people pleaded for the window or the aisle seats, no one cared for the middle ones.

The trauma of the middle ones doesn’t end here. You speak to a fast bowler in cricket, the sparkling stars in his eyes while talking about ‘hitting’ the middle stump is something special that you don’t see if it were to be a leg or an off stump. I don’t know why bashing the middle ones gave them so much joy. In football, the mid-fielders are made to do all the hard work but they rarely get a chance to shoot a goal and do not enjoy the prominence of a goalkeeper either.

In the corporate world, the juniors play innocent and novice, the senior management does half its work on the golf course and it is only the ‘middle’ management that ends up toiling to earn bread for both these layers. No respite for the middle ones here too.

But there is a silver lining.  We have a very talkative friend and we once jocularly made a suggestion to him to always block the middle seat in the aircraft. In case the person sitting to his left got bored of his talking, he could always turn towards the right. He acceded to our advice with gratitude and lived happily thereafter. So, perhaps, someday the writers will write stories on the middle brothers; the middle management will have the highest paid roles in an organization; the mid-fielders only will get to score goals; and the ICC will mandate the middle stumps to be made of concrete – that can never be shattered. Amen.

My detective Mother would have put Sherlock Holmes to shame.

Last fortnight, I had the misfortune of realizing that I had lost my scooter that was parked in the basement of my apartment complex. The scooter was unused for the last 15 years and I was not sure as to when I had seen it last – after the last Aayudh Pooja. The fact that carrying a UP registered movable asset in Karnataka is more of a liability, is another story for another day. For now, let me just tackle and overcome this weird feeling of losing a personal asset.

The fact that I stay in a well secured complex where I pay a monthly maintenance that may be higher than the rental of a decent apartment, is not amusing at all.  But the fact that there was complete apathy from the office bearers of my association, in terms of helping me to trace the sequence of events and possible lapse in the security, is something that was disappointing and frustrating.  Again, that is not the story I want to cover today. But my attempt to uncover this mystery brought back my childhood memories of a theft that took place in my house at Kanpur and the after events.

I was too young at that time – may be studying in 3^rd or 4^th standard I suppose. So, it is some 40 or 45-year-old memory but somehow it is very vivid in my mind even today.  We had a regular maid for the household chores by name Rampyari. Quite trustworthy – as it used to be in those days. To the extent that one night she was thrown out by her husband and she had taken shelter in our terrace for the night before the issue got settled between them.

One fine day, my mother realized that Rampyari had suddenly disappeared from the house, while still on to some regular chores. Much later, my mother found that her Godrej almirah and the locker inside were unlocked. And on further inspection, she found that her most valuable and precious necklace – both in terms of monetary and emotional value – was missing.  Only after joining together the sequence of events that she realized that she was robbed of the necklace by her ‘trusted’ maid servant.

The police investigation followed and, without any surprise, nothing could come out of that. Call it the impact of a heavy financial value attached to the necklace or the immense sense of personal loss through a breach of trust – the same that I feel today – my mother became restless and started to probe further on her own. Today, I can imagine how difficult it would have been for a typical orthodox Chennai bred Tamilian lady to traverse through all the maze of this entire trail of her investigation in a primarily Hindi speaking city of Kanpur.

She started her probe by visiting the house of Rampyari at a chawl like building – at Idgah colony, if my memory serves me right. She found out that Rampyari had actually eloped with a neighbour named Rajkishore, who was a police constable.  Rampyari’s husband Mahavir had no clue about her whereabouts. So, then my mother started tracking Rajkishore. She found out, from some other neighbours, that Rajkishore had a relative, who used to pull cycle-rickshaw and was attached with a rickshaw-stand at a distant locality called ‘Naugharha’.  Next she went on to trace this rickshaw-puller named ‘Baggad’ but without the luxury of current day communication channels, it was very difficult those days to contact a person without a home-address. I assume she left her address with the rickshaw-stand and one fine morning this person – Baggad – knocked at our doors.

As Baggad sat outside our door, my mother served him tea and snacks and had a long conversation with him. The person indeed had good amount of information and told her that Rajkishore had taken Rampyari to his native town of Farrukhabad and perhaps had sold the necklace there to a jeweller to get some cash.

My mother broke the news to my father that evening, with complete details of her probe. My father was perhaps not aware of all this investigation being carried out by mother – everyday, after he left for office. Now, Farrukhabad was a completely new place for my parents and finding out a stolen piece of jewellery, with just a photograph of the jewellery (I think it was my elder brothers first birthday photo) to identify the same and no other information, was something impossible to achieve.

My apartment complex in Kanpur had a few single rooms at the 4^th floor terrace and a lot of students from nearby towns used to stay there during their college studies. One such gentleman by name Dixit, used to stay there and study and as my mother was very social by nature, she would have hosted these boys for a tea and snacks on some festivals. The only other information she had was that Dixit’s family had a famous music shop by name Dixit Radios in Farrukhabad.

One early morning, with that little piece of information, my parents traveled to Farrukhabad. They found that music shop easily and could meet Dixit within no time. They narrated the entire story to him. From there, Dixit used his network with some local official – who perhaps was responsible for the quality control on gold shops. He was well aware of the shops where such stolen ornaments were sold and took my parents to one such shop.

May be our good luck or the influence of that Government official, the shopkeeper heard the complete story from my mother. He also looked at the picture of the necklace that my mother was carrying. My parents further apprised him of the sentimental value of the necklace and that they would not mind paying up for the same.

After some discussions, the gentleman shopkeeper opened up. He told my mother that such stolen jewellery is generally melted immediately but he liked the typical south Indian design of the necklace very much and hence decided to retain that. The shopkeeper further told my parents the amount that he had paid to Rajkishore.  He also told them that had they come down to the shop with the police, he would have just passed on some message to his team to immediately melt the necklace and they would have never found out.

Late evening, my parents returned to Kanpur.  My mother was beaming with pride and satisfaction. She had singlehandedly managed to recover her favourite necklace. It would have taken a couple of months for this whole exercise but her sheer tenacity and unstinted faith on a positive outcome kept her going on from one clue to another. And therefore I say, given the situation, given her constraints and given the lack of support from the system, this whole trail would put Sherlock Holmes to shame.

And today, I feel helpless – with eight cameras in my apartment complex and some 8 security guards deployed 24x7 to protect my property – someone flicks away my asset. An asset that was my very first purchase after I started working and hence had a sentimental value. With a non-cooperative environment, I have just given up on that. But I am sure, if my mother was alive, she would have persuaded me to trace out my scooter from wherever it was. For, the Sherlock Holmes in her would have never given up.

A Life Full of Near-Lynching

Lynching is a dirty word. But it has been doing rounds in our midst for the past few months. We have heard enough of this in different contexts – be it a religious belief, issue related to social diversity or a societal threat.  The mob mentality has ruled the roost.  Be it the birth of a new social class and hence the vote bank or the death of a political leader, a set of people can get together and flow their emotions into some gratuitous lynching.

I was keen to know if it was specific to our country but realized that even the US had its own share of this disgrace. As a matter of fact, the word originated in the US, derived from the Lynch Law introduced by William Lynch, as far back as in the 18^th century.

Some of us perhaps have a propensity to impose our ideas and beliefs on others. And when a group of people converge on a common belief, the intensity of the focal point breeds irrational behavior.  As I traverse through my life experiences, I realize that some of the situations carried similar thrust and were just short of lynching.

During my childhood, we used to play cricket at a big iconic ground called Motijheel. On other side of the ground, there was a locality largely inhabited by people of a particular faith. Whenever we had an outcome contrary to the predilection of those boys, we got into trouble. A complete lot from the other side of Motijheel will gang up together to have it their way. The commotion that followed was just short of lynching. We just managed to escape every time, albeit losing a few of our cricketing gear in the process.

I studied in a Government school. Corporal punishment was not much of a taboo amongst the teachers those days. Two of my classmates used to get bashed by every other teacher on every other day. The boys had their own limitations that fell well short of the teachers’ expectations. Sometimes, it appeared quite vindictive and merciless. I wonder if all the eight teachers had gotten together on a given day and time, the result would have been nothing short of ruthless lynching.

Driving on the chaotic roads of Delhi and Bangalore had never been easy.  There have been occasions when I have witnessed an otherwise sane car driver inadvertently brushing through an auto-rickshaw. The ensuing fracas, with a dozen auto-rickshaw drivers surrounding the hapless car driver, had always been just short of lynching. I am sure, the experiences at Chennai and Kolkata would be no different.

And why leave behind Mumbai.  My Mumbaikar friends tell me - If you ever attempt to get into the Virar local while it stops at Andheri station, the result would surely be a case of near-lynching.  I have deliberately used the term ‘attempt’ as I am told, no newbie could ever succeed on that.

As I write this blog on a Sunday, my wife has been reminding me repeatedly of the chores lined up for me. The weekly visits to the grocery shop, the vegetable market and to get the leaking tap fixed. Her tone has been changing with every reminder, I could notice. I am only happy that the God gave me only one wife. Had it been more, the rising tempers could collectively have resulted in another near-lynching.

Boons and Banes of an Innings Defeat

The Indian cricket fans’ reactions have always been mercurial. One day they raise their heroes to heavenly heights and the very next day they throw stones at their houses. The recent innings defeat of the Indian team in England also flared fiery emotions across all modes and breadth of the news media. This innings loss also brought back my childhood memories of similar defeats.

In those days, we used to have only one bat and the owner of that bat had to be kept in good spirits. He was a privileged player and used to get at least two chances to get out – the umpire had little choice but had to pretend - lest he would run away with the bat. Most of us had a penchant for batting and therefore, bowling or fielding were just the necessary evils that we had to carry out. 

Unlike the international cricket, in the ‘gully’ cricket, the teams losing by innings went back home happy as they got the opportunity to bat twice as against the opposition who got to bat only once. The joy of batting twice while making the opposition sweat and toil all over the field was far over-weighing the little pinch of losing the game. On the other side, a few players would be elated to the levels of winning a world cup while there were others who would lament the missed opportunity of a second knock.

In the corporate world, particularly in the IT industry, the term ‘second innings’ has a specific connotation.  There are many employees who, after working in a corporation for a few years, leave the organization for greener pastures. And quite a few of them come back to their earlier organization after a few years, albeit at a higher position and with a fatter pay-pack.  This is colloquially called a ‘second innings’ by the employees. And here again, the loyal employee playing a long steady innings with the organization feels defeated while the one playing two innings laughs all the way to the bank. The innings defeat turns around into a boon for the second inning players.

Coming back to the national cricket team’s ignominious defeat at the Lords recently, I only wonder if these were a bunch of my childhood playmates who thought it was fun to field once and bat twice and let the opposition sweat out on the field with two outings.  Thankfully, these blokes don’t look as cheerful as my childhood friends used to be. They have much more to lose than just sacrificing the Sunday morning for a losing cause.

Whatsapp Group Rule That Threatened My Domestic Peace

As we sipped our tea on a quiet morning, glued to our own copy of the newspaper – we, my wife and I, subscribe to two newspapers to avoid any conflict early in the morning – the trending topic of controls on Whatsapp came up for a discussion. She wanted to know, if ever we were to be restricted to 5 whatsapp groups, what would be my order of preference.

As I was about to respond, I had no idea that I was walking straight into a well-laid trap. I quickly jumped into evaluating the various groups that I was a member of.  One group that generated maximum clinks on my phone was that of a large family group on my maternal side – a typical Tambram group spread across the globe – sharing a few good or bad family news, some jokes some riddles a lot many divine pictures, shlokas and reminders or alerts to the upcoming festivals and rituals.  This group kept me connected with my roots and therefore I declared my large extended family group as my first choice. Her face appeared to be quite blank and expressionless.

For the second choice, I picked up my colleagues’ group – the group helped me to stay updated while I was traveling.  And by far, this was the group wherein I was most active, amongst all my groups.  Besides, the group was always very generous in its appreciation for my blogs and hence I did have a vested interest in that.  Then came my apartment friends’ group. It was equally important as it carried a lot of gossip, some internal politics and all the important announcements on the basic amenities. I was quite active in this group as well. And I could notice a slight change in the expression on my wife’s face now.

The fourth group was a no brainer for me. It was a group of my ex-colleagues from my previous organization. We were a bunch of youngsters who had joined a large public sector together. A few of them left the organization mid-way but many continued. This whatsapp group kept us connected and brought a bagful of happy memories of the past. The good old days, as they say. I wouldn’t want to stay away from this group either – I declared.

Now, picking the fifth and the last group was a big challenge. My wife was running through the pages of her newspaper but had all ears on my last choice. I realized that I had not yet named her large extended Punjabi family group and it would be akin to scoring a huge self-goal if I did not include that in my final list of five. On the other hand, I had this strong tilt towards another group of my school /college friends who kept alive those spirits of my adolescence. The memories of that gay abandon. The remembrances of those childhood crushes.

As I was about to commit a cardinal mistake, the Manager in me woke up just in time. I cleared my throat and told her that the last group was very critical. And I explained - Your family group is most important for me. I love those Punjabi-Multani jokes doing rounds there. I admire some of the intellectual posts shared by your brother. At the same time, I wouldn’t want to inadvertently share any of that crude stuff that sometimes slips in from my college group. You know what I mean.  I would, therefore, not like to freeze it on some particular group for the fifth slot. Let me keep it flexible and I will take it based on the context and significance of the topic.

I was not sure if I had completely doused the fire, but from the reaction of my wife I could make out that a major damage was avoided. At least, the tea session ended peacefully.

The Fading Ethical Divide

Two major events that kept the social media engaged in India, over the last two weeks, were from completely different domains but had a common streak somewhere deep down their behavioural origins. For the cricket lovers, it was the rude shock of a team’s collective involvement in deliberately altering the condition of the ball and thereby unethically reverse the swing. For others, it was the alleged complicity of a well-known and well-respected top-notch banker in some business transactions involving her husband’s company and that of a large client of her own bank, that could well have crossed the proverbial ‘Lakshman Rekha’ between business ethics and improbity.

In the corporate world, we are much familiar with the pressures of performance. With large scale commercialization of sports, the same pressure is felt amongst the sportsmen as well – be it an individual game or a team sport. With multi-million-dollar advertising and media industry lapping up sporting heroes at mind boggling remuneration, the motivation and urge to stay on top surges manifold. Winning becomes more important than playing the game.

With big money involved, the sporting world has also been corporatized to a large extent. There are equal number of managers, coaches, motivators and other support personnel as the number of players in a team. A lot many professionals are involved in sports management and that has emerged as a serious, lucrative career option. The high stakes bring in cut-throat competition and razor-sharp performance measures. The game hasn’t remained a game anymore. It is a business venture and hence it unconsciously propagates the philosophy of winning by all means – fair or unfair, right or wrong, by hook or crook, by shining the ball or by roughening its surface.
Like in sports, the leaders in corporate world too want to emerge as winners all the time. They typically have a more formal education in the management of winning. The purpose of their engagement at a corporate is solely for winning. Winning for the organization and thereby winning for themselves. With the ‘winner takes all’ policies of HR /Compensation managers, the young minds get attuned to focus only on winning. The process takes a back-seat.

All the leadership programs that the young managers attend during the course of their early career are all focussed on ‘winning’. And most of them also bring out ‘networking skills’ as one of the key skill to ‘winning’. All through my professional career, I have had an overdose of such tutelage on ‘networking skills’ in all forms of pedagogy. Nothing wrong with that – just that they fail to alert the young minds on the risks and the perils of crossing the ethical line. Using reference of the personal connects of one’s spouse to expand one’s own business line is one aspect. It may indeed be considered as a good, neat, harmless ethical networking. But when it involves one’s business connects – and particularly in an enterprise where public money is involved – it surely is not the best example of professional ethics.

In the corporate world, motivating, enticing and threatening individuals to stretch their goals to elasticity-defying levels is not a very uncommon scenario. And the high stakes attached with these goals – be it a business target or a sporting milestone – infuses the individuals with such an intoxicating urge to succeed that they tend to believe that achieving such a result is the only raison d’etre of their existence on this earth. The results become most important and any questions on the probity of its means become meaningless.

Somewhere along my mid-career crisis, I once had an outburst with my Manager on various seemingly ‘unethical’ practices. My otherwise upright Manager, in a resigned tone, just said – ‘they are smart people’. So, the smart corporate leader has learnt to keep the ethical line hazy. He has learnt to be ‘legally right’ and be ‘politically correct’, while staying on top of that hazy line so he can reach on both sides of the ethical divide, without seemingly crossing the line. Just that, sometimes, the sun shines brighter and people catch him on the wrong foot. And that is the only solace the upright, conscientious few can get – that some sunny morning, the rough side will get exposed on its own to check the illegitimate reverse swing.

VVIP Racism – from Politics to the Corporate World

I was watching a television show running stories on ‘VVIP racism’ – one case where a lawmaker was instructing a railway official to stop all trains and allow the one his boss was traveling on. The other story covered another lawmaker forcing his entry, with a bunch of his supporters, into a cricketing venue, albeit without a ticket. There is no dearth of such stories in the national polity. The sense of entitlement is quite deep rooted in this society.

When you think about a sensitive political scenario, where the leaders would not want any bad publicity, the cadre of lawmakers could still get away with such adventurism. But why can’t the boss show them the door? Because, in a democratic political canvas, the cadre lawmakers hold the key to success. The grass-root level support is critical as that forms the bottom of the political pyramid. And, therefore, the boss may not want to risk his support base by taking a harsh view, howsoever upright he might be. The unscrupulous, rogue lawmaker, most often, will get away with any such delinquency.

The corporate world too has its own version of such ‘VVIP racism’. An ex-colleague of mine summed it up well when he told my boss during his farewell drink – the Line Managers in your team work like a mafia. If and when they wish, they can inflict failure on you and if and only if they wish, you succeed.  Those were the golden words that my boss reminisced on multiple occasions, all through her tenure.

Sometimes we wonder, as to why a certain loudmouth, or a certain lawmaker with dubious records is given a long enough rope to tarnish and destroy the positive image of an authority. To an extent that such a tolerance often alienates many a straight thinking follower. Unfortunately, in the business of politics, the strength of mass appeal, enjoyed by an individual, dwarfs any other shortcomings accompanying his association. And unfortunately, such a mass followership often admires the power wielded on a railway employee or on the gatekeeper of a stadium.

In the corporate setup as described above, the boss is overly dependent on a few high performing Managers. The Managers are well aware of this and hence they set their own rules of governance.  This assertion of one’s own viewpoint in contravention of the boss’s operational plan, starting on the sideline activities and then veering into the mainline events, establishes the egoistical independence of such Managers. The boss’s dependence on the Manager, for the mainline, forces him to ignore the fringes. But when, where and how the sidelines merge with the mainline of governance is completely lost on the boss. And from then on, the governance runs on crutches.

Be it politics or the corporate world, if the leader does not identify and check the subtle recalcitrance in time, it leads up to a sense of entitlement and to the VVIP racism. Imagine a scenario where a certain top police official shows the audacity of behaving with another top bureaucrat colleague in a manner that would have put a common man behind the bars. And yet, this policeman, who was credited with efficient tackling of terrorism, was not only allowed to get away with his acts of eroticism, he was also awarded the highest civilian honors.

This hero-worshipping country needs to learn to be more professional in handling individuals. When we place an individual on a high pedestal, be it polity or the corporate world, we must also not hesitate to put a check on any unacceptable behavior. Whatever be the achievements of an individual, the respect for rulebooks and the basics of behavioral decency should not be allowed to be compromised. The behavioral span of an individual is not a zero-sum game.

A Record Not Worth Celebrating

As I turned back to understand the reason for some commotion at the airport, I found a few flyers confronting the two ground duty staff, manning the boarding gate.  The display screen at the gate continued to show the same ETD for a Mumbai – Bangalore flight, though it was well past that time and there were no signs of the incoming aircraft yet.   I too was supposed to take the same flight and could see many flyers getting impatient as it was already 2 hours past the scheduled boarding time. And that meant the flight would reach Bangalore well past midnight.

While the phenomenon of delayed flights was nothing new, it was the lack of correct information that caused more anxiety to the flyers. I have been witness to the chaos at Mumbai airport, on those heavy rainy days of September, when not only the flights were abnormally delayed but were also cancelled. On those occasions, despite all the inconvenience, the flyers never took their ire on the ground staff. But here was a situation where they did not see any weather related constraints – neither in Mumbai nor in Udaipur, where the flight was supposed to have originated from.

It was indeed sheer apathy on part of the airline. On their part, they said that the aircraft had reached Mumbai and was hovering around the city for almost one hour, waiting for clearance to land. And then something stuck me. I had read a newspaper report a couple of days ago that the Mumbai airport had set a new record of air traffic – managing 980 flights in a span of 24 hours. Improving efficiency is good but not at the risk of paying a heavy price. This is not a typical corporate world where if you don’t meet your stretch goal, it just costs you a certain variable pay component or at the most an elevation. Here the precious lives are at risk and hence these records are required to be seen from a different perspective. Passenger safety is the key and there cannot be a trade-off on that.

Coming back to the incident, I have faced a situation when I boarded the flight but the pushback happened after 2 hours. The pilot had informed well in advance that we were in the queue behind other 37 aircrafts. There was a very heavy fog earlier in the morning and the airport was shut down for about 2 hours. The cascading delay, therefore, was explainable and the flyers could appreciate the situation. In the current scenario, however, there were no explicable reasons. The weather was perfect across the country all through the day. And hence the backlash.

The challenge of celebrating record breaking numbers is that they become the new baseline. The air traffic control is then expected to handle those numbers in the normal circumstances. The new schedules are drawn without considering breathing spaces. The crunched schedules are expected to work with precision – barring the weather induced disruptions as exceptions.

The job of an air traffic controller is a high pressure job. My worry is that when I fly next time, I am not sure if my aircraft is guided by an overworked controller. Or when my flight gets delayed next time, I am not sure if it is a genuine delay or a mess up of the controllers’ duty roster that had not considered a lower than full attendance. Or, if my pilot has just been asked to do a short merry-go-round the city just because an overworked controller had to take an urgent, long-suppressed bio-break.  

Crowd-Source Your Safety

On a flight from Mumbai to Bangalore last evening, I was flipping through a local newspaper that covered the various happy and sad moments of the year just gone by.  My eyes were stuck at the horrific pictures of two of the most bizarre accidents of the recent months that were caused due to sheer apathy on part of the authorities.  One was the Elphinstone railway bridge stampede that took away 23 innocent lives and the other one was the very recent 1Above pub fire that killed 14 innocent merry makers.

And these are not the only isolated incidents where we came across complete apathy on part of the authorities. Year after year, we have seen similar accidents involving hospitals, places of worship, festival gatherings etc. Governments will come and go; Ministers will inspect the sites only after an accident; a few upright bureaucrats might bring in cheer here and there but the situation will not improve drastically. It needs mobilization of public opinion and public consciousness. It is like the ‘Swachchha Bharat’ campaign which banks upon the common man to participate and make it a success.

Life is precious and a negligence of even a fraction of a second can take away a kicking and bubbling life as we saw in the case of that birthday girl in the 1Above fire accident. She just blew her birthday candles to the cheer of her friends and just a few moments later death blew her away – for none of her fault.

While places of public utility and services will still need the authorities to wake up from their slumber, with the high reach and impact of the social media, we can influence the opinion makers and the lawmakers to get into action.  However, on the other commercial establishments like Restaurants, Malls, theatres etc. who depend heavily on our patronage, we have the collective ability to twist their arms and make them follow best practices in order to provide safe and secure spaces.

And that is where crowd-sourcing will help us. Since most of these establishments are either owned by politicians or people with political patronage, it is not easy for a common man to take them head-on. The backlash would be too deadly for an individual to withstand. However, we can collectively air our negative opinions on these matters and avoid patronizing such places. The best way to counter these unscrupulous elements would be to hit them where it hurts most – their business investments.

Can the popular portals like Zomato and others introduce a Safety Rating other than the usual quality related rating that gives a collective opinion to a prospect. And the 5-Star Safety Rating would depend on whether the place has firefighting equipments? Whether the Fire exits are marked clearly? Whether they have multiple exit points? Whether the entry /exit staircase /gallery has enough space to provide safe passage to the entire capacity?

Someday, people will realize that it is safer to go to an eatery with 5-star rating on Safety-meter and 4-star on taste of the food than the other way round. Someday, the greedy, callous owners of such joints will start focussing on these important aspects as well. Someday, they will value our lives more than their profit margins. And someday, we will realize our own worth and will learn to place our safety and security above all other considerations. Let us start the New Year with that resolve.