ESCAPE MANAGEMENT, RECLAIM LIFE

Forewarning

This book is not a survival book. This book is about escape. Any escape implies an entry with a hope of something different, if not something broader and fresher. Like a prisoner tends to escape jail, a married man tends to escape marriage, a student escapes a school or college and a dead man escapes the world of the living. It is not guaranteed that simple escape will ensure your survival. But in escaping from the clutches of management, you can re-claim something. Those who condemn the escape-artists as chicken-hearted or lacking the machismo, escape artists of classical perfection pity those unfortunate souls for their lack of proper education and being con-fused. My friend Pratnadeep, a researcher of human origin informed me that the primal art that made human beings possible was the instinctive art of escape. Since management was not discovered by then, the unmanaged hominid knew instinctively that it is simple running into some safe place is best to avoid being the dinner of a wild beast. It stands to reason to conclude that there would have been no SWOT analysts or strategy-guru available by now, if the hominid had to accomplish this primal art after going through a rigorous management training for which our age has become famous.

Some two hundred years back, young man and woman had to fear infections because there were no antibiotics or the concept of germs as the cause of disease was not yet developed. Most often, an infection used to turn fatal and mortality rate was high. Today, young men face a far serious threat of life from something completely man-made – management. Birth, career, sex, entertainment, reputation, fortune, war, death and after-death, health – all can be managed now and are routinely managed. Management pervades all walks of life and it is not right to say that we are living our lives but we are participating in the managed lives.

What were antibiotics for microbes, escape is for management. Just like antibiotics do not ensure complete safeguard for the entire life-cycle, escape is not a complete safeguard. Like microbes, management is benign, neutral or harmful, so is management matrix on which we are gliding like a fly on a spider-net. Escape is a time and space-bound remedy. Escape artists perfect the maneuvers on these time-space continuum. So escape is not an altogether simple and straightforward matter.

In the next pages, you will hear real-life experiences of management victims. Parental guidance is recommended as sometimes the experiences are quite rough and little tough for managed intelligence. The response of the victims will be narrated and through these experiences, you can cross-check your own. It can be safely argued that if you have read upto this, you have been managed. It is entirely left to your discretion to find out whether you are a victim, survivor or an escapist.

Let me remind you – this is a serious book. The seriousness of the book cannot be realized by reading it. It may deceive you. If it has deceived you completely, as an author I would consider my labour a fruitful one as it confirms that you are either a victim or a survivor. Surely, not an escapist. Because a true escapist will not waste his time by reading this. He has, either escaped silently or has written, out of his compassion for fellow men – a call to re-claim life.

Chapter I: God and TL9000

After the creation was over, God rested. Then came TL9000 – this thought was voiced by an atheist colleague of mine in a company where TL9000 roll-out was going on. What is TL9000? This is not an Indian beer. This is not about a vision or a movie of AD 9000. TL9000, in its simple terms is a quality certificate which corporates hang in their corridors, boardroom or in places where they will impress employees, customers, partners and investors. This piece of paper does not convey any information nor is it designed to inform. The purpose of this paper is to impress all of those who can be impressed. Like a magnet attracts bits of iron, this paper has its own charm. It is generally printed on a very nice paper with fine writing and signed by few people at the bottom right and at the left, esoteric figures of organizational logos are printed. It can be clearly seen that the DTP of the page has been really great. Another great thing about TL9000 or any such term related to quality is that they never come from an employee‘s mind. It is always from management. It is, one of the highly effective, tested management tools to improve quality and increase productivity. Now, how these highly noble exercises are actually conducted?

Considerable number of people who have investigated about God has reported that God can be formless as well as capable of taking a form a devotee wishes to see. TL9000 is also part of a grander version, shortened by shorthand fondly called VMV or Vision-Mission-Values. In case you need to know in more detail about VMV, ask your senior colleagues who have undergone this highly important management function. To an employee like you and me, without being enlightened by management, VMV seems to be a piece of paper where quite nice-sounding, good intentioned words are written. TL9000 or its different variants or strains come embedded as for the implementation of VMV. VMV also claims to be an attempt to chart the horoscope of the organization for a long-term future. Professor Keynes has informed us about what he meant by long term – In the long term, we are all dead.

My colleague Ganesh, while being sincerely part of the TL9000 team started to read history in case he could detect any historical legacy of the movement. He did not find any. Over coffee, I suggested that the infamous Roman emperor Nero may be sharing some of the VMV and TL9000 values. I reasoned like this: It is quite known that while Rome was burning, Nero was fiddling. Why was he fiddling, why not doing something else? He was fiddling because power-point and excel were not available. If they were available to him, he would have given and listened to more detailed and animated presentation about the damages and in excel would have been provided excellent data figures of the extent of damage. He and his court would have closed themselves inside the safest place of the burning city, analyzing the situation in the most analytical fashion, may be with the added assistance of some people who have home elsewhere. He would have called them as consultants. The proof that he was actually thinking of some Roman version of VMV was his idea of restructuring the city which he successfully did. The flip side of these grand achievements was permanent damage to something of Rome that within hundred years from him, Rome lost her pre-eminence.

Ganesh was quite excited by this line of reasoning. Although I did not recommend this to be told to his mentors, he infact told his mentors in some session. The first torpedo came from the consultants who were furious. They gave Ganesh 750 printed page, printed in ms-word in font size 10 and 11 and a 120 page power-point to convince him about the usefulness of these exercises. His mentors asked him to come back with his report next morning as the timeline was quite strict and he needs to prioritize issues. I was in my desk when Ganesh came somewhere in the evening and sought my advice, if any. Looking at the documents and colour-printed presentations resembling a book, my heart sank. I looked at Ganesh and he also saw my total resignation. Ganesh left my cubicle and I could see his flat back, shirt wrinkled as he must have rubbed it in the chair. I had an irrational sense of guilt.

After two weeks, on an otherwise placid Friday afternoon while I was searching in Google – What is that which Google cannot find?, we were hastily assembled in the conference room. After few minutes, a dark, short and bespectacled man appeared, greeted and announced – We are going to announce our VMV – first draft. There was a murmur within the audience. The speaker took this as expectation and read out from a printed page with calculated pauses and modulation. Among various long terms goals and other most-effective words, I could hear that there was some good promises made for customers. After he read the document, he folded this with great care and put it inside a file folder which a nice looking young secretary put inside another manila envelope marked – VMV Document-First Draft - Confidential. As I was secretly thinking as to the time of escaping from this grand assembly, the VMV evangelist mentioned about Mr. Ganesh‘s contribution in the first draft and urged others to contribute in similar intensity. I sat straight and found Ganesh sitting at a corner and his eyes told me that I would be told what transpired.

After the speaker left along with his secretary, a group of colleagues encircled Ganesh and I left to smoke a cigarette. I could hear a few remarks which betrayed their disappointment. After some half an hour, Ganesh came to my cubicle and informed what had transpired – Having left me; he was quite dejected and thought of going on unexplained leave. He went to the railways station to book a ticket and happened to see the precept of Gandhi on Customer Service, which in India generally hangs in all kind of odd places. He noted it in his notebook, typed it neatly in a page, spellchecked it, justified it, gave a standard margin by page-set up and at the bottom wrote - M.K.G. Next morning, he ceremoniously handed it over to the Chairman, presiding the meeting. The Chairman kept this aside to read it later. It is highly likely that all feedback, report, road-map, MoM that got generated in the meeting must have gone into the dark recess of the secretary‘s box and some manager at the top must have read Ganesh‘s report and quite brilliantly guessed that M.K.G has to be the initial of Muttapa Kovil Ganesh, a matter quite clear as the envelope containing the report was marked Report from Mr. Muttapa Kovil Ganesh on the Consultation Material, White Papers, Blue Book, Green, Black, Blue, Red, Drafts prepared by HAJABOROLO Consultants in pursuant to our input on Customer Service, Service Delivery, QoS, Benchmarks.

Ganesh was extremely popular with customers. He had an uncanny ability to convince customers about the real nature of problems and worked hard to solve them. He was not very good with writing reports and his co-worker Kushal used to do them pretty well. They made together a very good working combination. However, after Ganesh was quite involved in preparing strategy of providing customer delight and cutting-edge solutions for Customers, the customers who used to call Ganesh started to miss him quite often as they were told that he is busy in meeting, Customer Awareness Campaign or VMV sessions. Soon, they stopped calling. Ganesh was getting busier with Reports and Presentations to take up service delivery to the next generation level. One fatal morning, an old and loyal customer called him up. Ganesh, now fortified with all cutting edge techniques to solve customer problem excused himself by telling that he was getting late for a meeting. The customer asked as what was the objective of that meeting. Ganesh was going for a meeting on Customer Communication. He told the customer. The customer snapped: Here am I talking with you. Where are you going for the f**** customer communication? This was a Voice of God.

Ganesh escaped the meeting. He switched off the mobile, kept the phone off-hook, sat in front of the computer and typed a letter which had a single line. It read – I resign because I miss my customers.

Three weeks later, the star awards for VMV was announced and as Ganesh‘s name was called, there was none to collect the coveted award. The old gentleman who was distributing the award tended to drop it to the easily available man in front and the man explained – I am not Ganesh. He has resigned three weeks back. I am Kushal. With your blessings Sir, I am here on my own – to collect an award for ‘Best Reportage - Customer Problems‘.

Chapter II: First and Second Law of Management – Contemporary India.

This Chapter owes its existence to a manager of Indian birth and working in the Indian situation. This manager whom we will call as Gobinda was having an engineering background and with passage of time, he was working as a Manager managing huge telecom networks for an Indian telecom company. You may not know but he has discovered two significant laws of management. The observational area in formulating the laws of management was Contemporary Indian condition but he is working hard to extend it for all managers of all conditions. Like Einstein was busy in his later period of life in pursuit of a grand generalization of physical laws, Govinda‘s remaining life will be dedicated to extend the scope of his laws. When I last met him in his Calcutta home, he was unemployed and was working very seriously on a thesis entitled – The secret of success of Indian Managers. I hope that one day, when India will be a very significant power in the world, either in long or short term, management students will read Gobinda‘s law of management just as today we read Porter, Mintzberg or Levitt.

Unlike you, since Gobinda was a friend of mine, I could get a direct tutorial from him on these laws. Since you are not that fortunate, you would need to spend a fortune buying his books while it gets published under a very prestigious publication. But, since I have deep compassion for you, I will explain the essence of the grand labour of Govinda, the unemployed telecom manager turned discoverer of laws.

Both the laws are actually creative synthesis of two famous laws from the domain of physics. The first law is intimately related to Shannon‘s law of Information and the second law is restatement of the second law of thermodynamics. Since both these laws in their respective domain are quite fundamental in nature, Gobinda claims that his laws are also fundamental in terms of their scope and applicability. The law of Shannon on information tells us to the information capacity of any information carrying system, whether it is a piece of wire, a fibre optic, wireless or more complex systems. The second law of thermodynamics is the law of ultimate doom. It predicts that a physical process will tend to proceed towards that direction where overall disorder or entropy of the system increases. Gobinda‘s genius lies in connecting them to present condition of Indian management and even though his immortal fame is still debated hotly by managers and management gurus of all climes, his unemployment status will be changed soon.

Gobinda‘s first law of management, in simple mathematical representation is as follows

Capacity to Manage = k * experience * Log (1 + I / S)

Where k = management training whose value can be positive, negative and even zero.

Experience = number of years in professional career.

I/S = Intelligence-Stupidity Ratio.

But the interpretation of the law is not that simple. Through his researches and taking actual interviews and psychometric tests, Govinda argues that I/S ratio is always finite, meaning even the greatest intelligence does not mean zero-stupidity. In analyzing the relationship between k and I/S, he found that contrary to previous assumptions held by certain reputed scholars and those who write about B-schools in newspapers, there is very little correlation between k and I/S. The greatest message that Gobinda‘s first law gives is the fact that stupidity increases along with intelligence. The most welcome event of a zero-stupid management situation is impossible. For certain cases, his researches brought the disturbing fact that value of k in certain instances are found to be close to zero, sometimes negative and in that way actually depresses the good effect of a high I/S ratio.

Frankly speaking, I think Gobinda‘s first law is a biased one. It has a very dark connotation indeed. Considering a dynamic situation, his first law raises the more interesting question regarding the relationship between experience and I/S ratio. Let us consider the fact that as experience increases, I/S decreases. If that were so, the management decision of providing VRS schemes to older managers is a theoretical imperative. If the case is reverse, then this anti-theoretical stand is due to the depressing effect of k, i.e. management training. If they are not related at all, then the first law predicts that capacity to manage is intrinsic in nature, which is again a trivial conclusion.

The second law is by far the most objective statement about management as claimed by Gobinda. He argues that since managers, managed and the managerial arena are getting more and more complex, a more randomized model is necessary to predict the system behaviour. Beyond a level of critical randomness, the system efficiency is independent of all k, I/S and experience. Such a system in Indian parlance is called a Tughlaqi-System. The symptoms of such an approaching T-system is Indian condition are managed by management by the following basic management tools

1. Speaking incessantly about the need to work hard and to remain motivated. The communication essentially becomes jargonized which provide objectivity, distance and devised incomprehensibility.

2. Importing Quality assurance concepts, tools and consultants to demonstrate activities and discovering truths which were quite obvious.

3. Pressing the button on Smart Talk Syndrome. A Harvard Business Review Article talks elaborately on this. In all professions, the primary rule for a learner is: Hear one, See one, Do one. Individuals infected by the syndrome, in management goes by the maxim – Hear one, Talk one, Talk some more.

4. Increasing talking-doing gap. This is a corollary of the Smart Talking Syndrome. In case of a company‘s overall downslide has ensued, management goes inside a darkened room, studies more and more about the reports from the front, talks elegantly about the findings and what to be done and ultimately doing nothing. In some more clinical cases, anyone venturing to do something as dictated by common-sense is submerged with jargons, consultant report and exclaiming at the naiveté of such an uneducated mind.

The second law is fatalistic to the extent that it argues that all these actions while acting on a random system might fail altogether or might succeed in unison. Hence the excellence or failure in such a situation may not have any relationship with management or managed qualities at all. Gobinda explained this by a metaphor which is not included in the published book:

Let us imagine a sufficiently large pool – the equivalent of the corporate ecology and there are fishes of diverse size, shape and predilections. These fishes are organizations or companies. Now, let us consider that the external environment is like a net having rectangular holes or survival windows which make passes through this pond at a certain interval of time. This net symbolizes the external environment. Let us also imagine that these fishes have also developed an ability of changing shapes so as to evade capture through the net. These abilities are leadership abilities. In this simple, uni-dimensional metaphor, let us examine certain cases:

1. In case of the size of then holes within the net remains constant and the passes are quite predictable, fishes of certain size will always survive, irrespective of what the management does or does not.

2. In case a fish finds that its capabilities can be increased by either eating up resources from other fishes or eliminating them, those fishes will survive longer. However, in an attempt to ensure that considerable resources will be spent and if the size is not managed properly, the survival chance will decrease.

3. In case of the net-size changing randomly (nature of change) and interval of passes also becomes random (rate of change), the whole issue of survival has little to do with management capabilities. In such a completely random situation, survival, growth is all a matter of destiny – luck or happenstance.

Contemporary corporate ecology of India is making a transition from the Case I to a more rapidly changing environment. Managing Change is becoming a new mantra for all the participants in the management – the manager, the managed and the field where these performers perform. Fishes of ancient renown and credentials are finding that more passes are likely within the next five year plan and the net-size needs to be monitored all the time. Younger fishes are eyeing appetizingly towards slow-maneuvering behemoths but the very momentum of the latter variant is a cause of concern. The care-taker of the pond itself, i.e. the Government is also governed by a quite unpredictable macro process called election. Earlier, bigger fishes had the requisite resources to influence the caretaker to a considerable degree, to their advantage and thus decreasing the survival chance of less-resourceful competitors. But considering the fact that historically caretaker has more experience in managing people compared to the fishes, they anticipated the randomness implied in the unfolding situation. So the caretaker has decided to play less and less role in terms of the net-size and interval of pass and this decision has made the situation more hectic and filled with high activity.

Gobinda‘s both the laws are derived from the contemporary situation of India. So, it will not be justified to universalize them at this stage. However, he has provided a framework where these changes can be understood by the behavioural pattern. From his notes which are most likely to be excluded from the published book, I could re-produce certain snippets, radical enough to excite your imagination.

1. It is often seen that corporate leaders play golf, attend brainstorming sessions at select resorts, earn bonuses and perks which look like GDPs compared to salaries of employees. Individual employees, otherwise quite intelligent have very little idea as to the work these leaders do except for the fact that these are beyond comprehension. Gobinda‘s laws can explain this behaviour. From first law, we could see that management capacity has little to do with work and the second law says that in an increasingly random environment, it does not matter little whether a leader leads from the front or plays golf. QED.

2. Our scientist calls these as the sub-law of association. Francis Bacon, in his celebrated essays has provided posterity with a list which says which subject of study provides which attribute of character. The list says – Literature: witty, History – wise, Law: prudent, Sciences: critical. Since there was no formal art and science of management then, it remains a duty for us to figure out what attribute it would provide. By laws of association, Gobinda concludes that the best management environment is a management arena filled with robots. This robotic environment will make all quality and process compliances extremely easier. This environment also eliminates all anomalies arising out of imperfect human beings. Finally, this environment will have no issue like leaving office and coming to office.

For reasons for being too tentative and too radical, I consider it not prudent to reproduce further notes from the scientist‘s note-book. However, I remembered a quote from Erich Fromm about the next threat to humanity – Earlier the danger was that men were slaves. Now the danger is that men are going to be robots.

I secretly wish that Gobinda may fail to extend the scope of his laws. Behind this wish, there is a lurking confidence. India, time and again has defied lots of predictions formulated by Indians and outsiders. With due respect to the capabilities of my friend, If I am denouncing him, it is not that I love my friend less but I love my country more. Wishing Gobinda well for his researches, the time has now come to discuss some homely affair. This is about India‘s trajectory in future world order – The Indian Century.

Chapter III: The Great Indian Family.

Family is everything – Marlon Brando in The Godfather

A matter of great rejoice is round the corner for India. Until quite recently, image of India abroad was a place where cows roam in the streets, to be worshipped; parents choose who will marry whom and similar curious information. Not a day passes when we don’t hear some more discovery about India‘s great future in Western media nowadays. Indian companies are going global. Indian professionals are becoming global managers. Many Indian managers have started complaining of too much overseas travel, ruining their weekends. A decade or so back, many would have ruined the family weekend for being overlooked by the management for the last overseas meeting or inspection. Salaries offered to twenty something Management Graduates making a part of alumni gasp in wonder and disbelief. The ugly and unbecoming discussion in media about these salaries is also a rotten sauce in the table. The rotten sauce turned sour and mood-threatening when one of the recruits requested the Placement cell not to publicize those figures for fear of extortion calls or kidnapping attempts. This phenomenon, otherwise innocuous points to the co-habiting India‘s – India as a export-factory of talent, India as a huge market, India as an emerging power, India as an insecure place for life and property, India as a confused and confident nation and India as a just-solved-but-unknown problem.

I met Gobinda in Calcutta. I was roaming in the streets of the great city whose contribution to another India of another time was most significant. In Calcutta, I went to Rajabazar, one of the most impoverished and squalid quarters of the city to pay tribute to a house at 91/A, Baithakkhana. From there, I took a bus to Howrah to take a train towards south. In the train towards Madras, I met a Calcutta citizen whose first name I have forgotten. He was a Mukherjee. Mr. Mukherjee was a manger of sorts in another leading Indian corporate house having lived in the city for last twenty-nine years, since his birth. He had been kind to offer me home-made luchi and jinge-posto during dinner and educated me about the Rise and Fall of Calcutta. Being little confident, I opened up a little about my recent experiences with Gobinda‘s law. He listened attentively and then as the Coromondal raced, so raced his speech and pulse while expounding the great model of future – The Great Indian Family being the only shorthand I could think of as the kernel of the great system.

‘The next globalized world order can be best approximated by a typical Indian Joint Family and its natural and not-natural evolution. Imagine for a moment that the world as we know reside in a Great House in a land which is the flat earth. For sake of argument, let us consider that the family has six brothers and their families. The professions of the brothers are as follows: VP in a multinational asset management corporation, a cabinet minister, an executive in a middle-size company, a primary school teacher, a roadside fruit vendor, an auto-rickshaw puller. The house has been an inherited one and hence everyone has property rights over the house. Selling and buying is permitted. Only one condition remains: none, at least for a few generations can leave the house to live elsewhere.

See, all things remaining same, the land area of earth is fixed. So land and its allied resources like air, water, rain, ultra-violet free sunlight, biologically tolerable level of heat and cold will be the most valued resources of the future. If you look at our family, the richest brothers don‘t necessarily command maximum amount of land, either individually or collectively. Through generations, richer brothers have deployed methods to become wealthy and in this way, most often the environment of the house and land has become polluted which is affecting all. Some of the less resourceful ones learnt some of these methods, either through stealth or through legitimate transfer of knowledge and deployed them. The more experienced brothers are now advising the pitfalls in such exercises but wives of those brothers are telling: Where were those concerns when they had the nice life? It is our time now and we will do it. It is not good advice but envy that is speaking up.

In case it is found that some children of the poorer brothers are quite talented, rich brothers will be providing many incentives so that the talented young man or woman may come over to the richer quarter of the house and work for that part. The poorer brother would try to restrain this move by devising various irrational techniques and restrictions but everybody knows what happens finally.

Occasionally, some rich brother would align with a poor brother, not because of filial love but to maintain balance of power. In this balancing act, poor brother would have enough opportunities to negotiate a very lucrative deal. If the negotiation fails, richer brothers would always command an overwhelming force to silence the poorer ones. This will be told to be an action to establish family peace for future growth and prosperity. ‘

The most important question is as to how this Family will be managed? This is no longer a petty family issue but if we remember our metaphor, we find that this is the issue that is haunting almost all managers of India and abroad. Playing with our metaphor a little, we may codify certain possible models to manage this Family:

1. The Seniority-status model: In this model, parents, tau-ji, or some elder brother becomes the legislator-regulator-manager. This model depends on the influence of the seniors and acceptance of the juniors, based on a common, shared physical and emotional history. This model is now attacked heavily and has lots its pre-eminence, however in certain pockets, it retains its influence. Most of PSUs and state-owned departments belong to this model.

2. The No Ask, No Tell Management Model: This is the model of maintaining the status quo. In this model, any legacy of the past is continued, although people are aware of its strength and weakness. But none ventures to ask and none ventures to tell. This model has one remarkable benefit: it solves or rather appears to have solved all problems. The weakness of this model is its implied assumption that system would be self-correcting and information will be widely distributed. In reality, this seldom happens and such systems generally crash suddenly. Many family-owned conglomerates, small businesses fall into this category.

3. The Power-Import Management Model: This is the most popular and widely used model in Indian scenario. This model selects the most-powerful models from other countries (read of the West) and uses the logic that if such system has been successful elsewhere, this must be successful here. This is quite successful but suffers from the following major problems - a) Certain historians and observers of antiquity have found India as a continent of Circe which has bewitched many a foreign ideas and explorers b) Indian mass, in spite of massive abuse heaped on it for its various characteristics have displayed remarkable and mysterious signs of judgment and logic of its own. c) The importers, in most cases have little idea about the complex Indian reality and for reasons dating back to colonial era have little chance to have it so. All blue-chips, all great Houses and certain section of MNC subsidiaries are representative of this category.

4. The Bania Management model: This is a counter-point to the power-import management model and is a kind of ant-thesis of the previous model. Having lived under the panoply of a socialist economy, the Indian situation is evolving into a market-centric economy and hence this model has great promise. This model is fundamentally concerned with cash and its reproduction, i.e. through interest. This model is extremely focused and has little interest for anything else and hence it is extremely successful in Indian conditions. A typical manager in such a system, in due course transforms human reality into a Platonic idea of cost and cash. It‘s extreme focus on tangibility makes it immune to cultural shocks and in such a system, extremely sophisticated ideas seem to co-habit with extremely retrograde and contradictory ideologies. However, of all the models, this is the most loyal to family and talent or merit is subjugated for bloodline. Power, in such a model is always concentrated and cash or power of cash is the currency of power in this model. Almost all trading companies are of this category.

Having made this un-scientific categorization, it is to be added that such systems are not water-tight compartments but is an eco-system of co-habitation, transformation and metamorphosis. I took this problem to my friend Mohan in Chennai, who claims to have worked in some thirty odd companies in India in these ten years of professional live. My meeting with Mohan in Chennai provided me with insights as regards to the Great Indian Family and I am going to share this now. The categorization above is a background to understand the Mohan-ian discourse better.

Mr. Mohan greeted me with a wry smile and asked me to wait as I went to his office where endless rows and columns of cubicles seem more like a poultry firm. Mohan works in a company providing financial services and that was the only information I could get from him. As I was waiting in the lobby which provided me a glimpse of the row-column matrix, I remembered the hallucination of Chaplin‘s mate in The Gold Rush while the hungry friend‘s vision alternates between a surprised Chaplin and an appetizing hen.

Up came Mohan and with a wave of his hand announced - ‘This is my army which I command. These armies defy the rotation of earth, eccentricity of the orbit of earth, light and darkness and search for value in all the recess of the known earth. ‘

‘What exactly this army does? ‘, I asked, quite aware of Mohan‘s love for drama and over-statement.

‘They observe all the stock-markets of the world, they know an opportunity when they see one, and they have been trained to do so. They defy this random universe and they promise me hope and certainty and I relay this to my clients. ‘, Mohan stopped, now very serious.

‘Mohan, I came to discuss something with you, regarding future of our country in the new century. ‘, I could finish before Mohan pointed his finger to the matrix in the ground - ‘This point in the universe belong to no country. This man belongs to no country. This function is country-independent. His mortal coil only remains in this space-time called Chennai. Very soon, his function can be done by his buddy – the machine in front. ‘

‘Oh! You mean that you will automatize more and more human functions‘; I thought I have made a smart discovery.

‘My friend, last century it was the century to automatize. This will be the century to anticipate. Internet, my friend is the rudimentary version of the Great Anticipation Machine. Every click on the mouse, every search, every transaction, every session is teaching the machine as what humans prefer and what not. Google knows what people see more and what less. It also knows when, where and how. It knows more and more about things which people buy and sell and how much and where and how. Two thousand years ago in India, Buddhist monk used to sit in thousands in a bihar and mediate. These are my monks who are mediating, connected and their objective is to give a better idea of the complex reality out there.‘, he stopped and very smartly wiped his lips by a blue cambric handkerchief.

‘But Mohan, this was religion and this is hard-core corporate business.. and how they can be compatible? ‘, ‘They are not, but they are convertible. ‘, said he.

In course of next two hours, Mohanian discourse elevated and surprised my consciousness. As I informed him of my categorization of management models, he smiled and said ominously - ‘My friend, I appreciate the labour of yours in systematizing the system. But in future, such models will be unnecessary in India. You know, the greatest problem of a management model is to manage creativity. A creative process is fundamentally beyond management. All your management models necessarily suck off creative impulse and that is the first step to manage. The process is equivalent of planning a township on a flat earth, by clearing everything before. The second objective of any management process is to make it a gospel truth that management is a universal facet of existence. The third objective is to prove, by all means that there exists some pre-ordained mandate on the manager and managed. This is same as the divine rights of kings. The fourth is what will be witnessed in India – synthesis of management and religion. This will be the pinnacle of realization of the essence and potential of management. ‘

‘But how? ‘, I asked, quite spell-bound by such expostulation.

‘Remember, I told you about the fact that we have progressed from the automatic age to anticipate age. This idea of anticipation first hit physics in 1930s with the publication of the uncertainty principle and by 1970s, we found Tao of Physics as a great bestseller. In 1890s, when electricity and magnetism were discovered, your predecessors in Bengal, the Brahmins started to find connection between tiki (a religious custom) and electro-magnetic-consciousness-energy-circle etc. In short, the more anticipatory a situation is, the system gets intimately related to religious disciplines. We are entering into an age of anticipation. Management thinking is finding too much change in too less a time. Calculation is useless in long term and what will sustain the business in the long term is to anticipate. A vision statement is the call for the day rather than organizational chart or flow-chart. But control does not leave man. Man is a controlled and controlling animal. So the strategy in the anticipation age, to continue control and wield power is to bring the concept of identity. ‘, he stopped and took a glass of water.

‘Pray explain‘, I was breathless.

‘Have you seen religious ferver among people? Have you ever seen such fervour and passion for an employee for his job? ‘, he asked.

‘To be frank, Mohan, I did never find so‘, I interjected.

‘Rightly so. Now, just imagine an organization where employees work like religious fanatics. Or in a softer tone, where employees think that they are doing a religious duty. Can you just think of the efficiency and productivity? ‘, he looked at me, ‘But why management routinely fails to excite such fervour in so large a people?‘, I asked or rather words flew from my mouth.

‘Ah, here is the right enquiry. Why, why management has always failed to do so. Because, modern management has failed to learn from the art and science of religion. In the age of anticipation, modern management models, those you have categorized are helpless and only solution or rather reactions they have is to cut costs, sack people, impose a stricter and taxing schedule on those who remained, experiment with plenty of fashionable idiocies and hubris. In the long run, they will all fail. So the Great Indian Family will crumble. ‘. Mohan said with finality.

‘But, that’s fatalistic. ‘, ‘Yes, of course it is. But there is an escape. There has always been an escape and my namesake, Lord Krishna has uttered something which has kept the nation hypnotized in anticipation – Yada Yada hi dharmaysa...‘.

Until that time, I was thinking that we were rational. But after that, Mohanian discourse started to become more and more abstract and synthetic and an irrational sense prevailed. It will be, however worthwhile to conclude the dialogue by giving a summary of the remaining part of the discourse.

In the anticipation age, in India, management would adopt the system of barnashrama, i.e. a kind of caste system within the management framework. It is not a novel thing, but the difference is that it will be institutionalized with the aid of authority. In Indian context, the greatest authority over centuries is commanded by religious teachers. So, in such a framework, religious and spiritual leaders will be heading the top management. As a prelude, we can find great popularity of religious leaders like Ravi Shankar and corporate India‘s extreme interest in such movements.

In lesser levels of management, training will be anticipation-oriented rather than function oriented. People endowed with better anticipation power will be more and more prized and present education and training system would be inadequate. In distant future, management schools would resemble more and more like Zen monastery. At the transition, when the need for anticipation would be more and institutions not ready, genetically advantaged would come to the leadership position and they in turn, to safeguard their interest would be the staunchest supporter of the corporate barnashram system. Soon, institutions would be there to formalize these structures and they will have a markedly religious character at the core.

The beauty of such a system is that, in an increasingly global environment, this system can be globally applied. Hence, in future, present management systems would crumble and its crisis is quite near in sight. As the barnasharm system consolidates, here will be the corresponding classification:

Brahmins: This class will take care of all anticipatory activities, be it the next course of technology or political climate. They will decide about the evolution of the primitive version of the Anticipation Machine which we call Internet. They will be a minority and they will be working not for profit but as a duty. All future entrepreneurs belong to this class alone.

Kshytrias: This class will protect, prevent, cause and un-cause anticipatory materialization in the material plane. They will be marketers, salesmen, political organizers and so forth. They will be the physical force to protect the fabric of anticipation. However, in course of time, they would necessarily clash with the Brahmins. As an example : if we consider Google as Brahmin and Verizon as Khystria, then the latter can always complain that the Brahmin uses his resources to spread the fruits of anticipation but the former gets more social and economic value.

Vaihsya: This class will utilize the opportunities anticipated and protected by the previous two classes. They would be also global in character. Investment bankers, speculators, traders will go into this category. They will also be the fund providers to the other two classes.

Sudras: This class had its ascendance as long as there was lesser anticipation. With anticipation increasing, this class will find itself more and more in Call Centres, BPO companies, back-office operations, infrastructure development and so on.

The greatest change from the old version of the system (as in the earlier history of India) will be in three areas - a) mobility will be easier than previous time b) generational continuity will not be guaranteed in all classes c) a love for order for the time being would prevent any immediate clashes between classes.

The Great Indian Family would import this great idea outside. Inside, there will be an uneasy equilibrium. And if things go as predicted by Mohan, after two hundred years, when the anticipation age would mature, Mohan will be read with as much as interest as we read Adam Smith today. If influencing thought for two hundred years can be said to be an achievement of great magnitude, 21^st century can rightly be called as Indian century.

Editor's Note: [The Author can be contacted here at wordsmith_bengal@yahoo.co.in. He is presently busy in his researches and plans to release some new chapter soon. The last thing we heard about him was that he went to Chennai for his research and going to meet Mr. Chakra who has done some work on Privatization. Mr. Chakra, allegedly has been inspired in his great research after he has been fired by the management, when the state-run company was being sold to a private player by the state]