Words of Wisdom

Rajesh Agarwal had the entire audience in a trance for almost two hours. Addressing over two hundred officers and supervisors at the motivational seminar organized by the IRSME association of the northern railway, the most important point that Rajesh emphasized was the need for a good character, the sheer absence of which is plaguing almost the entire sarkari sector cutting across states and services and the railways is no exception.

The uniqueness of such talks lies in their sheer absence as the focus of various service associations remains confined generally to organizing drink and dinner parties for their members. Welfare is never at the core or even in the fringes of the activities of such service associations. Yet my recent stress on giving a new dimension to the activities of the IRSME was overtly welcomed by almost everyone and that is ample evidence of a hidden desire for change and improvement even amongst the officer clan of the railways, of whom I have always been a silent critic all along. 

My biggest find in the over three decades of active service is that people are indeed waiting to be led to a land of milk and honey, even if it necessitates toil and sweat and also a need to be on the right side of perfect value systems. Rajesh also emphasized on the need for organizations and their constituents to lay stress on value systems that are indeed the building blocks of a good society as well as organizations. Yet in my long service, with the exception of perhaps two, I did not come across bosses who even once mentioned the need for organizations to lay stress on character and value systems. Sad the entire scenario is, yet the saving grace is the silent acceptance of the goodness that lies in being good, even by those who have crossed the fine line that defines the threshold of integrity of both the financial and professional kind.

Rajesh helped clear the cobwebs that had perhaps started forming inside my head since the last couple of weeks. He reinforced clarity on various fronts and laid at rest doubts that may have started surfacing about the need to be genuine almost always despite the entire environment being on the contrary. The sheer irrelevance of many issues that earlier kept the mind preoccupied silently dawned on me.