Leadership - The Monkey Way

There was a family of 4, a couple and two children, living in America. There was also another important member of the family. It was a monkey. The monkey was so much involved with the family that it used to share the same living place with the family and also traveled with the family everywhere.

Once the family went to a cocktail party. The monkey too joined them. The couple were enjoying the drinks and the children the cakes and chocolates. The monkey too had a good time with cakes and fruits. The party ended and family started traveling back home. All of a sudden, there was something happening in the car and the car soon stopped after hitting a huge tree.

Soon, all the members of the family were in the ICU. The investigating office wanted to find the reason for the accident. But the officer couldn't get any information as all the members of the family was unconscious. The only traveler who was in a position to provide some info was the monkey. So, the officer went to the monkey and gestured to mean "what was the head of the family doing when the accident happened". The monkey gestures to mean that "the gentle man was kissing". The officer gestured to ask "what the lady was doing". The monkey replied back with the same act. Now the officer gestured to find what the children were doing. The monkey replied back with a pose of a sleeping child. The officer got curious and wanted to know what the monkey was doing. The monkey replied back with the posture of a driver. The officer understood that monkey was left to handle the wheels while the couple had a nice time kissing. All these years, we know this as a very good joke.

The joke apart, there is a good learning in this with regard to leadership and management. If the correct person, doesn't take the leadership when neeeded or if the team trusts the leadership position with some one unequiped for the position, it will be a disaster for the entire team.

In the above scenario, the head of the family is the one who has the management capability (the skill to drive the car). He, in an inebriated state, neglects his duty and trusted the monkey to do his job. This in turn lead to the accident which hurts even the passive members in the team, the children.

Also, it is the responsibility of a true leader to snatch the leadership position when needed. If the correct person doesn't take the leadership position, the wrong person would chip in and will lead to a disaster for the entire team. So, it is important that the true leader takes the leadership position in the greater interest of himself and also the team as whole.

Applying the same paradigm to our political, social and economic scenarios, Are we not playing the role of either the children or the couple and our leaders that of the monkey ?. Yes of couse. We in many a ways are not happy about our social and economic environment. But how many of us dare to take the leadership position to drive the change we need. When we are complain how those things affect us in innumorous ways, most of us have just been mute spectators to what is happending around us. So, not just the leaders (monkey), but also us (the couple and children) are to be blamed for the way our country is now. So, the next time you complain about anything, think about how you can change it. For sure, you will either find a solution or atleast you would stop complaining.

A trip to meet your forefathers

How it is like to go to the places your fore fathers have lived it. Will not it be very interesting ?. This is what happened to me, my dad and some of my chitappas went to Virupatchipuram on 27th and 28th of Nov. Virupatchipuram is a village about 2 Kms from Valangaiman and Valangaiman is about 20 Kms from Kumbakonam on the route to Rajamannarkudi.

By word of mouth thru some generations, this is where my Great grand father (Shri Maha Ganapathi Sharma) was born and lived in. Shri Maha Ganapathi Sharma is also my upanayanam name. My grandpa Shri V.G. Venkatrama Sharma was born in 1913 and his elder brother Guruji in 1910. Considering that, Shri Maha Ganapathy Sharma should have been born around 1890.

His father Mr. Maha Linga Sharma seems to have lived in this village and he was not blessed with a child. After a boy was born to him, he named him after lord Ganesa("Maha Ganapathi") and also constructed a small temple for lord Ganesa inside the Shiva temple there.

We went to the temple and also the houses they lived. There is a brahmin family living there. In those days, with not much of transportation facilities, I hope many of the previous generations also would have lived in those village. It was infact a very energising experience for me.

'Occasion'al Bakthi

I use to go to a Kabaleeswar temple atleast once in a week. Today being a Saturday, I went to the temple. I know it would be crowded by peek hours(6.00-8.30 PM). So, I reached the temple around 9.00. Believe me, in spite of spending only 5 min in front of the deity, it took me 1 Hour for me to come out of the temple. The queue was not less than 100 Mts long and most of the time, I was just standing in the queue. Later, I found that today is "Maha Prodosham" that comes once in a year. That too this is falling on a Saturday is more auspicious. This is how it is with any other auspicious day like Diwali or Pongal.

This is not the case just with the Kabaleeswar temple. There are 9 Siva temples in and around Mylapore and all these temples are equally crowded. So are the temples in Triplicane, Adambakkam or even with temples in far south like Thirunallar or Thirukadayur. Go to these same temples on some other ordinary day, you might not even get to see the priests. From my childhood, I have known about "Prodosham". But the concepts of "Sani Prodosham" or "Maha Prodosham" are fairly new to me. I am not sure if these are new terms introduced to commercialise Gods more and more. But one thing for sure is we Hindus are running short of temples or auspicious days on which we can go to temples.

A trip to Bangalore

What do I do all of a sudden I had to travel to Bangalore for a day. I had to shell a sweet 1100 for my to and fro expenses apart from about Rs 400 as sundry expenses. This time, I did notice some differences during my travel.

First of all, in this era of Privatisation, the more you pay, the better service you will get. I started from Chennai on Sunday night by 11.00 from the Koyambedu private bus stand. It was a volva bus and it reached Bangalore private bus stand by 5.30 in the morning. In about six and half Hrs, it has taken us more than 350 Kms. As I reached there after a fairly good sleep in a semi-sleeper seat in a AC bus together with a woolen blanket, I didn't feel like having travelled 350 Kms. The opening of privatisation has given the Indian railways too a run for their money. Else, would they have any time thought of introducing a train like Sathabdi. I boarded the training by 6.00 in the morning and by 10.55 it was in Chennai. The train was amazingly punctual at te only stop in between Bangalore City Junction and Chennai Central. It reached there at 8.58 and started exactly at 9.00 from there. For someone who is used to seeing trains coming atleast half and hour to one and half an hours late, this is very unusaul. But these doesn't come cheap. The to and fro journey costed me 570 + 530 = a sweet 1100 Rs.

Apart from the difference in climate and the language, the other thing I could see was the obvious differences in bus fares. When it is fairly cheap in Chennai, it is pretty costly in Bangalore. If you are taking couple of buses to commute in Bangalore, the to and fro journey would easily cost 40 Rs. I think such a high cost mass transport and high petrol cost would effectively keep away lower middle class families out of Bangalore.

Whom do you expect to meet when you are travelling from Bangalore to Chennai in Sadhapthi. I was expecting a guy from the software indusry or someone working in a Bank or a grade I office in state or central Government. Strangely, I met a guy who is a creative writer working in an adverticement company. This guy was a chartered accountant by profession. But he told me that he is very passionate about advertising that he switched career and is now in advertising. His job is to write scripts for advertisements in visual media -print and TV commersials. I had nice time chatting with them for about 1 hr. He was telling me about the various activities they do and the processes they follow in their company.

Atlast thanks for the short notice. If not for that, I would have never travelled in a Volva or a Sadhabdhi.

Oil Price Hike and the Inevitable

It is official. The inevitable has happened at last. After increasing the price of petrol by Rs. 4 per liter and diesel by about Rs. 2 per liter, the Government has in principle agreed to allow the price of petroleum products to be decided by OMCs if the price crosses $75 per barrel. This will obviously have a cascading effect on the prices of essential commodities which in turn on the inflation. This is inevitable though as the Oil Marketing companies(OMCs) had been incurring a loss of Rs. 6.50 per liter of petrol and equally in diesel, LPG and Kerosene. Part of the high price can be attributed to Central and State taxes which account for about 55 per cent of the retail selling price of petrol and 34 per cent of diesel. The left have been demanding a cut on taxes instead of increasing the retail price of petroleum products. Looks like the government have struck a balance between the price hike, tax reduction and bonds. One thing I fail to understand is attitude of the government here. The government should in fact regulate the price of petroleum product when the price is high. But the Government is trying to do it other way around.

Need for an alternate source of energy
The international crude oil price which $25/barrel in September 2003 is now hovering around 73$/barrel and is soon expected to touch $100/barrel. Infact, it looks very much inevitable considering the phase in which the world community(especially India, US, China and European countries) are consuming the natural resource without giving much thought that we are depleting it very fast and the alternate means of producing oil proving to be atleast as costly. It invariably mean that the prices of petroleum products will keep raising. While the world community is already searching a way out either by might or by identifying alternate sources of energy, the top politicians and bureaucracy in India are quiet oblivious to this is quiet difficult to understand.

The short-sighted attitude of the governments and the bureaucracy is very well evident by the way they are trying to handle this long-term emergency. The Indian government should work on finding alternate source of energy instead of considering raisin the price, cutting taxes or issuing of bonds every time.

Dynasty Politics & Media Hype

The Indian society, particularly the politicians seem to have a hang-over of monarchial culture where a son of a king becomes a king, a son of a prohit becomes a prohit and a son of a vettiyan becomes a vettiyan. The obvious reason seems to be the ease of choice and lack of standards of merit of selection. Off late the print and electronic media in India seems to have joined such hypes. And the "party with a difference" doesn't seem to be any exception with it looking at Rahul Mahajan to fill-up the void created by Promodji. No doubt, Promod Mahajan was a great leader and I adore him. A great dad doesn't always mean a great son.

Rahul got the media glare when Promodji was hospitalized and all the great leaders like Atalji and Advaniji came calling. Proximity of his father with such leaders and a hug by them to Rahul was seen as enough reason for the second-rung BJP leaders to consider him the heir to Promodji. Not very late, the Maharashtra BJP sought the support of the congress for Rahul's RS membership a replacement for Promodji's. But as expected, it is promptly turned down by the congress. What else can you expect of a party which wants to rule even it is not the single largest party in the coalition.

Now after the hospoitalisation of Rahul Mahajan, after what looks like cosumption of drugs, the same media talks of embarrassment for the top-rung BJP leaders. I didn't expect the news of hospitalisation of Rahul to come as the headline in the front page in "The Hindu" or the headline news in "CNN IBN" or NDTV. But this happened and I don't find any reason other than for creating artificial hypes and there by increasing viewership. IMHO, the Indian media should learn to look at the professional and personal lives of the leaders differently. I am not sure if the media and indian political system is complementary or derogatory to each other. But I am sure journalists and media don't do justice to their profession by doing building such hypes.

The Political Justice

Many a times I am confronted by a nightmarish question. In a democratic country where majority counts, if a political party or alliance with a two-third majority can do anything by just enacting a legislation, I wonder what their limit is ?

If on one fine day I invent a gadget something like a legendary magical mirror which can tell me where one is and what the person is doing or acquire the ability to predict the same with a beetle leaf and kajal, can the politicians decide that I will be a nuisance and enact a legislation to exterminate me. Or to be more practical, can they one day say Reliance is a property of the nation and not of the two brothers or can they declare an emergency and say there are going to be no elections or election commission for the next 10 years.

In case such political parties decide to enact such a law the fate of those concerned will depend on The President of the nation, secondly The Judiciary and then the World community. But with a thumbing majority, it is very doubtful that the president will be in a position to oppose anything even if he feels it is not justified. Or what if the President himself favours the bill. Now the only other option would be be to take the case to the Supreme Court. With the recent stand-off between the parliament and judiciary, it is very unlikely that justice can be expected from the judiciary. Te final option will be for the ill-fated party to voice their protest in whatever way possible and mobilise support for their cause amoung the world community.

I think we are in fact living in such an era of political correctness, be it the emergency days or the US invasion of Iraq or the more current issue of reservation based on caste for the OBCs, SCs and STs.

The dictatorial attitude of the then prime minister was well personified in the days of emergency. Every Indian citizen including the press was deprived of the basic freedoms including freedom of speech, which was justified by the then political scenario including the then President of India. But the plight of the opposition and those who decided to oppose the emergency remains un-justified. Those days will remain to be a black days in our democratic system for centuries to come.

The US invasion of Iraq is more to do with military might than political correctness. But, the point to be noted here is that even the most powerful politician needed approval and backing from the congress for his live military adventures. Anyway, there is no justification for killing thousands of innocent people who were caught unaware and for those who fought the only super-power for the sake of defending their nation. But the hind-sight is that, in more than one way it is safe and good to have a super power like America. Can you or me live in a world where Afganistan or Iraq is mightier than the rest of world?

Coming to the current issue, the reservation based on caste or religion, the UPA with their number strength (or expecting the support of the so called OBCs who are considered to be the majority in this country) is trying to snatch the very right of equality from one section of the population. Again the politicians are trying to justify it politically. What justice can they give to a candidate belonging to general category who is economically backward while it is not his mistake to have born to his parents?

Every politician must understand that there are two types of justice, one is legal/political and the other being moral. The political system in a country may legalise what they ever to do. But they should look at their inner self to check if they are morally justified. In any case, one thing for sure is "Might is Right". So, it is more important that you are mighty than being morally right. If you are mighty you can survive even if you are morally unjustified where as there is no guarantee if you are morally right and not mighty enough.