The Manesar incident has left most of us shell shocked. That it is an offshoot of managerial indifference and the great disconnect that generally exists between the senior management and the workers in almost all environments that have a concentration of workforce is not in doubt, yet what is surprising is that it has happened in an organization ranked amongst the finest in the country.
Sarkari setups are generally marked by an ivory tower approach, the inhabitants of which display total disdain for those below and therefore productivity generally suffers. On the other hand the private sector that thrives only on deliverance is generally constrained to follow the good tenets of successful managerial practices, at the core of which lies genuine concern for HR. And therefore the incident of lynching of a senior manager by their very own men is surprising as well as shocking. And what is more shocking is the dismal failure of the management to respond timely to symptoms that start surfacing much in advance of such catastrophies.
The sheer brutality of the incident and the grief of the affected families is saddening and brings tears, yet the failure of the management that leads to a chasm conducive for such incidents, topped by its lack of sensitivity to signals that invariably emanate much before the cup spills is neither understandable nor pardonable. A life has been extinguished and many more scarred, by an incident that should not have occurred in the first place.
There is definitely something wrong in the cultural fabric of the nation that leads to a wide chasm between what we regard as the upper crust and the hoi polloi. Why the hell do we create such differences between human beings in a nation that needs to exploit the full potential of its populace is what I am unable to fathom. Is “greatness’ a function merely of the seat one rests his backside upon? Is a senior bloke who merely deals in paper greater than one who earns his daily bread by manual labor? And why a guy sitting on a stool facing the elements is always regarded a lesser mortal than the bloke cocooned in comfort? After all the greatest of the greats of this planet “Gandhi” was devoid of rank and attired in a loincloth almost all his life. Yes it is true that life is much more than what mere rank, wealth and attire profess it to be.
The developed world is different. Peripheral differences triggered merely by differences in rank are generally non-existent. In developed societies even a worker on the shop floor is rendered the basic dignity that a human being deserves, by even the topmost layers of managerial hierarchy and this stark reality is easily visible across the society. I vividly recollect my first visit to the land of the “gori chamdi” in the early nineties when while walking on the shop floor of the mega diesel locomotive manufacturer “Krauss Maffie” I was pleasantly surprised to witness the bon-homie between the managing director and the machine operators. Quite a contrast with the prevalent scenario in our motherland where the top guy generally regards himself as a gift of god.
An unfortunate scenario no doubt and look where it has led us to, almost at the bottom of the list of nations in almost all indices including the human happiness index.
The higher a bloke rises in a hierarchial scenario, the better his vision is supposed to be. Moreover he is also expected to provide unstinted leadership to the organization and men under his command, yet the general scenario in almost all our organizations is in sharp contrast to what it should be. Yet the failure at manesar in an organization that has so far been regarded as the epitome of corporate governance in the nation is neither desirable nor acceptable. If only a lesson aimed at a better future is learnt from this unfortunate incident, it perhaps may be the only redeeming feature of this extremely sad incident.
Amen!
I am enclosing a link from website of Hindu newspaper which very nicely outline the fundamental error in policy framing.The link is http://www.thehindu.com/health/policy-and-issues/article3682928.ece
ReplyDeleteThe incident like Manesar are failure of policy that is adopted in running an organisation.Whether it is a capitalistic model of private enterprise or socialistic model of government enterprise , both have fundamental flaw in them.
A review of the article mentioned above will give you a hint that fundamental problem arises from pursuing wrong policy and rest of the event are a normal fallout of that.
The base problem is our flight mode to face or tackle the problems that we face. The root cause is the indian behaviour that lies inherently inside our social system which we imbibe & impose on ourselves. Deep down, if you search, you will observe that the segregation that we create in social system results in creation of differentiation amongst us. We are born Human Being however, we make ourselves Social Beings. The worst part of our social being is the cultural thoughts & beliefs that we carry along. Since the feed happens when we r innocent n raw after injection of those thoughts we trust them to the only sacred truth. We never ever allow the Being in us to give a second thought to it or even examine it. The moment you start examining it and put a question to the "cultural carriage" injected inside, you are branded rebel, fool & what not and subsequently, the social system considers you as a threat and makes you an outcaste and certifies & declares you as a misfit to the social system.
ReplyDeleteThe root cause of the problem as well as problem itself is nothing but the very indian way of life. The core of the issue is the injected "Cultural Carriage", which is ethically, socially, principally, legally, and all...lly totally wrong however, culturally pure & correct. Hence, we avoid every time we encounter the issue i.e, flight mode.
I can challenge, all issues can be on this earth can be tackled to reach desired result only if we again become what we actually are, human being. We let the being in us to go into a deep sleep and the human is left behind and is replaced by the Social which is nothing but the virus of cultural carriage. The malignancy is so silent that we know though there is something alien however, since it is sweet poison, we allow it to remain and then our awake social being feeds it to grow n grow further.
Now, the solution, which will be shown in resultant action, to the problem will be drawing heavily from the cultural carriage. The history will be rewritten to create a new chapter and dark will remain.
If we are serious to remove the problem forever, the bon homie that we all have inherently and are blessed & gifted by existence is to be reinstated in our being.
The lesson is to be taken, whether today, in this life or else is to be decided by our own self.
Whatever happened at Manesar is sad commentary on present state of affairs and is largely the result of nexus between self-serving politicians, bureaucrats and union leaders who exploit the gullible workers for their personal interests and force them to act as puppets. Despite intensive investigations, truth may never come out of the closet but one thing is certain – real culprits will always remain scot-free and only a handful ‘fatherless’ people will be framed to bear the brunt.
ReplyDeleteSuch incidents may not cease to happen as long as people in position of governance, power and deliverance choose to remain indifferent and oblivious of genuine grievances and voice of the people ‘beneath’ them. To make the things worse, this stoic attitude is being steadily replaced by belligerence by the authorities. The people who voice the concern are blamed to be obstructive, anti-administration or even anti-national and are branded Maoist, Naxalites etc. as has happened in Manesar itself. Such people are continuously demoralized, persecuted, hounded and victimized, ensuring their total elimination. We talk of vices but fail to detect intentionally or unintentionally, its prevalence in our vicinity!!!
The only solution to all these ills is change of attitude towards the problem and the people as has been elaborated in the comments above (28th July 2012) … We boast of 360° vision but choose to remain confined to narrow slits of inherent inhibitions, biases, prejudices, false…inflated egos...deriving ‘eternal bliss’… through onanistic hallucinations…