Whither India

WHITHER INDIA “ The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum held last week in Davos, was to my mind , the most significant recognition and acceptance of India : both as an economic powerhouse and as a country that people have come to love and admire. Brand India is finally out of the closet and into the minds of those who matter.” Says Suhel Seth on Jan 31, 2006 in the Hindustan Times. [63]. So that is where we are going. This is very heartening and pleasing to the ear. India is indeed on the move. Let us savour some more evidence. “ The growth rate has risen significantly from earlier average of 5% to nearly 8% today . The savings rate has registered impressive growth from 23.5% in 2001to 28.1% in 2003-04. The capital market is buoyant…….On the external front exports are rising fast. Contribution of trade has increased from 15% of GDP in 1991 to 30%. Forex reserves…..from $1.1 billion to in 1991 to $137 billion.” [64] So the euphoria does seem to be justified.

Is it really?

To examine the other side of the picture now. “ The growth achieved so far has mostly been confined to industrial & urban sectors, including services. Infrastructure, agriculture and the rural economy have been left behind……existing power generation of 125,000 MW is inadequate and falls short by as much as 47%. Shortage

of

roads

is

now

a

major

bottleneck.

Port

facilities

too

are

inadequate…….Growth in agriculture has declined to an average of 2%, ending with only 1.1% in 2004-05……Living conditions in rural India continue to be pathetic with 220 million Indians still living below the poverty line and half of India’s children under-nourished….Half of our cultivable land is still un-irrigated, 30-40% of the production of our fruits and vegetables is destroyed for want of adequate transport and storage.” [64] Or savour this from Ajit Dayal, CEO-Quantum

Advisors in the Hindustan

Times of Feb 12, 2006 – “ We need to worry much more about India being 127 th in the Human Development Index, than bandy around the 10000 figure that the Sensex hit.” What follows may sound like cynicism. Far from it. It is a call to wake up.

Our hypothesis is that unless we as a society learn and take care of some of our weaknesses that have retarded us for centuries, our full potential would not be realized. In the previous two chapters, we have focussed primarily on the need for an enabling culture, an enabling climate in our work organizations to facilitate unleashing of our inherent potential as a creative people. However, it must be conceded that that is not the entire story. There are certain failings among us as individuals that unless taken care of would seriously jeopardize our chances of success. Let us dwell on this aspect for a while. You must have wondered sometime or the other as to why this nation of ours with 100 crores plus inhabitants could not win a single gold medal in the last Olympics or for that matter for decades now? Is this fully explained by below par nutrition levels among some of us or inadequate sports facilities? The incidence of public sector telephone linesmen or the ones from the state electricity boards stringing wires helter-skelter and doing slip shod unsafe jobs, or our roads getting flooded with even a mild downpour are too common phenomena, too well known to bear repetition. However, do the above reflect a tinge of reality ? Why tabulate all these mundane things , when we are talking of being on the threshold of becoming a super power in the 21st century? Is there a common link in these widely prevalent examples of under-performance? Don’t all our problems emanate from the kind of politicians that have ruled our country for the last 50 years? Do we pause to think whether this is a well considered allegation? Do we realize that politicians of all hues over these years have come from families like mine and yours? Which one among us has reflected / hesitated for a few seconds ,about the right or wrong of requesting / pressurizing a known person in a position of authority – political or otherwise , for putting in a word at the right place so that I can get an out of turn admission for my son or a nephew , or an out of turn allocation of a gas connection?

Then we complain loudly about nepotism. Does it occur to us that this is precisely what is called hypocrisy? Do we need to change? If so , how? - 182 – Amitai Etzioni said decades ago that the key lies in a psychological quality of ,’ High tolerance to frustration and ability to defer gratification. ‘ “The building of a modern economy, pursuit of scientific research and efficient running of modern organizations calls for commitment to long term rather than the short run . “[17] But long run usually gets sacrificed by us at the altar of quick gratification, since we are in a hurry to get rich quick, to become famous quick. Who has the patience to wait? Talking of quick gratification, let us see what Milkha Singh the ace runner who broke the world record in 400 metres at the Rome Olympics has to say, ‘ There are many reasons why our players cannot repeat their best performance in the international meets. One, in the national level meets, the records are doctored. I mean measurements [of discus or hammer throw] are manipulated. Ditto for timings.’ [38] Short cuts are lionized. Short cuts are the order of the day. The task in hand has to be got rid of quickly somehow, perhaps for a gossip session. We are, by & large, a nation of sporadic workers. At a family marriage function, away from today’s metros where every thing can be contracted out, we would work night and day, but after the departure of the ‘barat’ [the groom’s relatives and friends] we sleep and take it easy for days together. In the sowing and harvesting season we would work fourteen-hours days and in the lean season spend hours together gossiping around. We, therefore, do have a problem in putting in disciplined work day after day and month after month. Let us grasp the meaning and importance of this term , ‘high tolerance to frustration’. It is nothing more than a higher degree of perseverance in search of a root cause of a problem , or an innovative design . “ Psychologists do motivation experiments with rats ( poor rats-do not know the short cuts) where the strength of drive is measured in terms of the amount of punishment (e.g electric shock) that an organism will endure in order to reach his goal or in terms of the number of times he will take constant punishment to reach the same goal.” [28]

V S Naipaul , says that Indians have lost the capability to be in touch with reality. [29] When one does not persevere to diagnose reality , does not dig deep enough to know the facts , the truth – and chooses to manage with preconceived notions , with biased perceptions , how can the solutions be correct? The facts do not always become known easily. One has to slog to get to the truth. To come back to the Olympic games we started with , Carl Lewis won more than half a dozen gold medals single handed in one of the recent Olympics. Don Scholander, the wonder swimmer of 1964 olympics who won four gold medals ( Mark Spitz came on the scene with seven in 1972) described in an article in great detail what tremendous amount of self-discipline , planning and practice – over a period not of months but years goes into peaking one’s performance at those few crucial minutes. [30] No wonder therefore that individuals / the nations with low tolerance frustration levels and are desirous of quick results have no place. 183 –

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Interestingly this psychological orientation / inclination among us of not persevering to achieve excellence is not of a very recent origin. Mr. Crocker, ex – High Commissioner of Australia to India -decades ago , says: “ Europeans living in India will have noticed how often Indians do not hang or keep a picture straight “.[32] Let us travel a few centuries backwards. Emperor Babur, the founder of the Moghul dynasty in the early 16th century has this to say in his memoirs about India – “ …..in handicraft and work there is no form or symmetry , method , or quality …...” [31] We have a right to disagree with his views, but the fact is that such were his perceptions. The purpose here for us is not to go on the defensive ; but to seriously introspect ; accept what we decide needs to be improved / decide what baggage needs to be discarded and move on. It is clear that the malady is deep-rooted and is doing us tremendous harm and that we cannot afford the status-quo.

The million – dollar question is , ‘ How do we change?’. With many strengths and achievements as a foundation and with the superstructure of one main psychological quality of being able to defer gratification and not run after quick miracles of success, can do wonders. All the rest is there. No miracles can replace the sustained, often inglorious, application of brain and brawn. It is again easier said than done. In a recent publication entitled, ‘ Being Indian ‘ Pawan Verma the author has given numerous convincing arguments to say some thing on the lines that an Indian would do any thing in pursuit of Wealth, Power & Status. Means are not important. Another major problem is a weak work ethic among us. “ Involvement in work in general is a normative belief about the value of work in one’s life, and is more a function of one’s past cultural conditioning. In this research the construct of work involvement represents the work ethic measures, because PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) is a multidimensional construct entailing the importance of work itself and also a rejection of leisure and excess money……People with a strong work ethic may be motivated to apply more effort, to continue to do so even when bored or tired and to take responsibility for their work. They may feel a moral obligation to perform the task to the best of their ability.’ [36] No doubt our work ethic has suffered at the altar of fatalism. ‘ Whatever is destined to happen, happens.’ 60

184 –

Our traffic accidents rate is dismal and we refuse to learn. While sitting on the front seat of a bus, soon after the bus had had a narrow escape after overtaking another bus at high speed – both the drivers being guilty of rash driving – when the author advised the driver to be more careful, he looked at me pityingly and imparted his profound wisdom, ‘ when I am destined to die, nothing will be able to prevent it ‘ and thus he granted a license to himself for continued rash driving. Our work ethic got further diluted with the unbridled expansion of the role of the government into manufacturing and other businesses during the last half a century under the socialistic pattern of society model. Readers have faced the ill-effects of the same for umpteen number of years and therefore needs no elaboration.

So top priority is needed in improving our work ethic. The change is going to be difficult, given its socio-economic-cultural roots. But change we must. We can do it, even though it is going to be a slow grind. Optimism of the author is based on personal experience of working with labour on attitude development. Even ill-educated workers have responded admirably to reason, when it is not mere preaching that you ought to become good boys, but when the consequences are explained with facts and figures and of course followed by ‘ walking the talk ‘. ‘Attitude to Productivity’ – a case study on page 123 was deliberately included in the chapter on competence. Some colleagues have reported significant improvement in quality when ISO-9000 was introduced seriously and not as a mere ritual of getting a paper certificate and workers were explained the different operational procedures with reasons ‘ why ‘ and in some cases involved in writing the first draft of such procedures. Yes,

people involvement will be a very potent tool in this massive change

endeavour. [ please refer to chapter on employee commitment on page 27] All managers, HR included, have this social and national responsibility to deliberately devote a chunk of their time to spread this awareness. Feature films are the opiate of the masses in our country and this powerful medium must be utilized, not in terms of showing some lukewarm documentary, but this being chosen one of the subtle themes. I saw recently an old movie ‘Paigham’ on Gold Star channel, where the hero Dilip Kumar, an engineer fresh from school, offers to manufacture a component instead of the available option of importing it and the mill remaining idle for weeks; which he did working day and night – casting, machining and commissioning with his own hands. I could recall the powerful impression it had made on my mind decades ago when I had seen it for the first time. Another major bottle-neck is our , ‘Victim Syndrome’. For every wrong that I get involved in , I see myself as a victim of the circumstances. -185 – I beat the traffic red-light in order to survive in the wild free-for-all on our roads. I would not reach any where if I followed the traffic rules. And then every body is doing it , so why shouldn’t I? This is the song that I sing endlessly.

There is an element of truth in some of the above scenarios – that we are faced with in our day-to-day life. However, If we analyze a little deeper , we can discern three different strands: •

A genuine element of coercion arising from circumstances.

•

My desire for an easy way out – Why learn the traffic rules & appear in the driving test ? Why make a few trips to a government office? I know that in this office if I submit the documents desired, the leadtime for getting a marriage certificate is two days, I still have to make two trips. Why wait in hot –weather at a red traffic signal? My desire to live beyond my means.

•

So sir, it is not a simple case of being a victim of circumstances always. Let us stop perceiving ourselves as helpless victims. Let us stop accepting social pressure as a good enough reason for someone to indulge in undesirable practices. Let us not allow ourselves to become conditioned like Pavlov’s dog who would start salivating at only the sound of footsteps , when there was no intention of the experimenter to give the animal any food. We have a choice between the stimulus and the action that we take. Let us stop confusing Performance with activities; worse with ritual or with symbolic gestures , as already discussed in the chapter on performance management. In summation , change we must. The stakes are very high. This change will have to be brought in by all of us, since we all are contributing to the present state of affairs – to varying degrees ,no doubt: by violating the traffic rules , by pressurizing people in positions of authority for out-of-turn favours, by being in an undue hurry to get my driving license because I did not plan well in advance to provide for the lead time . In most offices there is a lead time . One has to know the same. To think that since I can pay the bribe, so why should I wait is not the same thing as being forced by circumstances.

Let us stop blaming others. These others are our own kith and kin. Let us stop waiting for a saviour / a messiah. Each one of us needs to make a small beginning. Therefore the task is difficult and by the same token it is easy. A drop of contribution by each will make an ocean of improvement. * Extract from

*

*

, “Human Resource Management – Evolution and the Challenges Ahead” –

[chapter 12] , by V K Sharma, published in 2007 by Viva Books P Ltd, 4737 / 23, Ansari road, New Delhi.