Power of I

It's just one 'I' that makes the difference between 'run' and 'ruin'.

This is my take away from the story of 'Ravana' on this 'Vijay Dashmi'

One pointer for all those who run anything - a shop or a home or even an office or a country.

Unravelling the Indian MBA

In the late 19^th and early 20^th century, the purpose of MBA centered on liberal and moral education for business managers to enhance their status in public and private life. At the forefront of this world wide success of an MBA degree have been four countries – France, Germany, the UK and the USA. These countries had a simple and a single minded proposition for their MBA degrees – educate managers in the practical aspects of Management.

The proposition needs itemisation –

• MBA was a programme of education
• focussing on practical aspects of Management
• for people in managerial positions

So, an MBA was NOT –

• a training programme or a skills development programme
• a programme engaging in theoretical facets or research aspects

• for college going kids or for people in non-managerial positions

So, how was an MBA different from other Masters Programme–

• not expected to lead to any Mastery of a discipline
• not aimed at theorising and theory building
• not aimed at producing teachers and researchers for the field of Management

A new model of an MBA emerged in the US by late 1950s to counter the allegations of lack of research and legitimacy of business education. This model emphasised on discipline-led scholarship, analytical methods and scientific rigour.

Emergence of an Indian MBA

The Indian MBA began some 60 years back as a poor replica of the US model that was beginning to dominate the world at that time. The Indian MBA emerged as a programme of higher education for college leaving people with bachelor's degrees – without any prior education or experience in Management.

Directed towards liberal and free business in an era of command and control economy, the Indian MBA was quite successful at the following levels –

• Acquiring legitimacy due to Governmental patronage
• Being affordable due to public funding
• Attractive to best talent pool

The Supply of Indian MBA remained limited and because the quality of the student admitted was high, the quality of the MBA programme itself was of no consequence.

Stabilising of the Indian MBA

The early 80s had only 50 odd programmes producing around 2000 MBAs a year. Over the next 10-15 years, MBA degree became high on aspiration, and the delivery of the programme also improved due to availability of home grown academics with global mindset. Indian MBA came of age because –

• It was still a limited supply with improvements in teaching and learning processes
• Increased mobility of MBAs with changes in demography
• Diversification of employment opportunities with emergence of new businesses

Expansion of the Indian MBA

Jump start of the Indian Economy post 1992 saw an expansion in supervisory and white collared jobs which were not necessarily for managers, in a booming services sector.

Entrepreneurs smelled a business opportunity in delivery of MBA programmes as there was an opportunity to attract customers and make profits.

This expansion went wrong on failing in -

• Establishing any Parameters of Quality of design of an MBA programme
• Monitoring any quality of conformance to the design
• Scaling up due to lack of capability, capacity or credibility

Confused State of Affairs of Indian MBA

With the exception of some 200 out of over 5000 programmes, the Indian MBA is at cross roads today. The purpose of MBA degree in India, the process of delivery and the people in this game are all a matter of concern. There are clearly the following questions:

• Is it a business of education or education of business?
• Is it a liberal programme or a rigorous programme?
• Is it for managers or would be managers or could be managers?
• Is it a terminal educational degree for entry into the job-market?
• Which job-market does the Indian MBAs address?
• How Global or local should the Indian MBA be?

It is important that these questions are asked and an attempt to find the answers begins in right earnest now that the NITI Aayog has been tasked with strategising in this area of concern.

Ethos of Indian Millennials

(Previously titled as “Sprouting Post-Modern Indian Ethos”)

An Indian of the post-independence era has evolved into a person of beliefs, aspirations, attitudes and values contrary to those of an Indian from the pre-independence era. Self-denial for larger public good has been replaced by self-gratification for personal good. The old notion, going back to antiquity, that the public sphere derives its nobility from a separation between the service of public interests and the pursuit of private interests, has been replaced by its opposite. Today an individual is king, and ideologies that emphasise the collective dimension of human destiny have lost their potency.

A perfunctory analysis into the background of the incumbents in top public offices today would show that quite a few of them are not career politicians but persons considered to have been successful in their other careers. Private success is now the best qualification for public office. This may even be true for other countries. Trump (USA), Macron (France) and Duterte (Philippines) have little in common except for one characteristic- they are successful outsiders who were not professional politicians. This new emphasis reflects the triumph of individual agency.

The empowerment of individuals puts an enormous responsibility on every human being: not only does it ignore the importance of luck in success, but it neglects obvious social factors. Better is a lazy boy born into a rich family than a bright young girl born into abject poverty? Still better it is to be born in a social group that could benefit from affirmative action. Notwithstanding its rationale and benefits, affirmative action class driven and is not individual driven. Since opportunities are for individuals, affirmative action does create a flawed competition for the individuals belonging to the non-beneficiary classes. And to tell the losers of that flawed competition that they should try harder adds insult to injury. Hence the growing anger of all those who are left behind.

That anger manifests itself in different forms. At one extreme is the terrorism. Most people, however, will never become terrorists, and their reaction to the cult of individual success, especially when individual success is out of reach, goes in the opposite direction: they want to restore a collective dimension to human destiny. Some find the answer in religious fanaticism like the love-jihad, cow-vigilantism, Ram-temple or the Babri-mosque, while others seek their counter in nationalism with the issues like Vande-mataram to Yoga to Hindustan. Such mindsets expose the vulnerability of societies in which the individual is the be-all and end-all. Human beings cannot experience far away tragedies as a personal loss. However the angry individuals react to any crisis as a global issue, and yet they are unable to manage solidarity within increasingly diverse national communities.

Indian elections are being fought more on a Presidential style, i.e., individualistic and not ideology. Electoral outcomes don't throw up leaders, the leader throws up the electoral outcomes. Such leaders are being given the responsibility of governance, without the checks and balance of democratic institutions. Today leaders are expected to produce change against institutions rather than through them.

What Margaret Thatcher said in 1987 has come to define the current Indian ethos: "… there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."  

For the Millennial Indian – there is no ‘we’ or ‘us’ if there is no ‘I’ or ‘me’ in it.

 

Governance, Activism and Appeasement

Governance is the function of the state. The body of the State comprises of three distinct organ systems called the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. These organs systems are designed to be independent of each other, yet the three have to work in an interdependent fashion for the delivery of good governance.

Judiciary is a pure hierarchy based structure. Executive is a delegated decentralization. Legislature is a unitary federal structure. Each of these organ systems is fallible due to obstinacy and activism.

The Constitution provides the legitimate power to each of these systems as well as the guidance for their interplay. Legislature has the Reference power, a fabled power from the people, and can use it, but only sparingly, to alter the constitutional guidance on interplay between the three organ systems or the quantum of power with the Executive. However, it is the Executive that has the dominant powers of Information, Reward, Expertise and Coercion. Judiciary has the Referent power to define the constitutionality of actions of the Legislature and the Executive thereby providing some checks and balance.

The command of the Executive is with the leadership (elected, appointed or nominated) of the Legislature. In practice, therefore it is the command of the Executive that informs the direction of the functioning of the legislature.

The Executive at times intends to act in any arbitrary, partisan or unjust fashion. The command of the Executive does not find itself helpless in such instances, before the Legislature because it adopts the route of executive ordinances that bypass Legislature or manages the Legislature to endorse Executive Action. But the Executive does not have such comfort with the Judiciary. Judiciary usually strikes down arbitrary, partisan or unjust actions of the Executive using its legitimate and referent power. In such situations, more often than not, it is the command of the Executive that suffers from a perception of helplessness in spite of all the power bases on its side.

Executive reaction in such situations usually ranges from alleging Activism (in case of judicial correction) to Over-reach (in case of judicial prevention). In more extreme situations, the Executive partners with Legislature to alter the Constitution itself (on an average more than once a year).

Just on the sidelines, an individual can be a part of the Legislature at 21 years of age without any formal education or experience provided one is so elected by an electorate half of which is illiterate and a quarter of which is economically a destitute. One could be the commander of the Executive if one is so accepted by the political party having a majority in the lower house of Parliament. Again 21 years of age without any formal education will suffice. However to be in the apex of Judiciary, one needs to be above 45 years of age with relevant law degree and professional experience. An individual continues in Legislature after a review every five years by the electorate. The continuation of Leadership of the Executive is determined by the political usefulness of the individual to the ruling political party and is therefore continuously under evaluation. An individual in the Apex Judicial system once there is quite sure of being there but has to necessarily quit at 65 year of age, something that is not applicable to legislature or command of Executive.

Could there be a reason here that the "Appeasement" is an allegation against the Legislature and the Executive but not against the Judiciary?

I Trust My India

People around the world are distrusting of their governments. Declining trust has deep roots and is being caused by many factors – “Capture by the Politicians”, “Capture by the Elite”, and “Hypocrisy of the Professionals”.

Today “Capture by the Politicians” is a reality. It is a myth that there are three organs of State – the legislature, the executive and the judiciary – and all three are equal and independent. Politicians wish to be elected as legislators and citizens elect them as legislators. But the legislators become the heads of Executive. Executive then shapes the course of legislature and keeps trying to control the judiciary.  Politicians as legislators and Executive are then able to forge a corrupt nexus with the business and the elite. They together control the law and its enforcement. There has been a litany of betrayals of people’s trust through such nexus. From corruption in government and in state-owned enterprises, financial controls and governance are compromised because many executive appointments to boards and committees are political and not based on competence, experience and integrity.

Businesses of the Elite have hidden the deepest corruption and injustice in our democracy since the 1990s. Globalization has been a double-edged sword. The world is richer because of it, but it has advanced an economic order that has resulted in growing inequality and striking division between the haves and have-nots. It leaves hundreds of millions behind, not least when inequality perpetuates the power of elites whilst hollowing out the hopes of many people for their children’s futures. Smoky cabins of such deprived people are not the porticoes of good moral, ethical and social conduct for they do not see any reward in such behaviour except further loss of opportunity and more injustice coming their way. The fate of the ordinary citizens has been “captured by the Elite.”

Professionals like the Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, Chartered Accountants, and journalists are the guardians of the citizens, who have sworn to uphold ethics in their profession. Unfortunately our own people, when they got a chance to build the nation as professionals, rather than being true to their professions, became servants of the Elite and the Politician. The professionals either became complete accomplices in the process of Capture by the politician and capture by the elite or just kept silent. Truth hurts but silence kills. That is one of the things that have really hurt the country. They did not pause for one moment and ask themselves how they could break the code of their professional ethics, their oath, and the responsibility they have to protect the people and not ally with the traitors who have captured our state and corporations. This is the height of hypocrisy; and now some of them want to come to lecture us about leadership and accountability. There are many politicians, elites and professionals who have carried the dagger of betrayal and plunged it deep into our backs.

Governments both at the national and the state level need to model change from the inside out to build trust with citizens. Some of the great change initiatives of the government designed as inside-out models include Aadhaar, OROP for the Defense Personnel, surgical strike, JanDhan, and the GST. Unfortunately however, the more visible change initiatives of the Government that have been outside-in and not inside-out models are Demonetization, Make-in-India, Skills-Development, Bullet-train and Action against the Black-money, all leading to skepticism and distrust among the citizens.

People have solutions – but too often they are not being heard. The dearth of informed public debate and collective action to solve challenges has perpetuated the sense of disenfranchisement. People’s space to respectfully debate and disagree is constrained by a lack of opportunity and meaningful arenas in which to do so. In many cases, dissenting voices are met with heightened crackdowns – at worst, violently.

The complex challenges our country faces call upon formidable leadership from our government. But government alone cannot solve them all. The government needs the ideas, wisdom and commitment of people. We know more is possible. It has to be more action than hanging a portrait of the Mahatma or Ambedkar or Upadhyay in the office or the boardroom.