Leadership vacuum

The "vision vacuum" that we witness in the upper echelons of the bureaucratic setup in the great organization that I work for amazes and also saddens me no end. Even a petty businessman has a vision, and yet this largest single commercial organization of the nation drifts along without a vision or a sense of direction. Lack of vision and direction has now emerged as the unique trait of this organization that once was referred to by prefixing "great" to its name. The mediocre management at all levels of this monolith has also distinguished itself almost always by its penchant for the routine and jarring reaction to symptoms. Blaming the organization and its constituents for one's own failures or frustrations has also become a common trait of all those who occupy the hot seats, generally undeservingly.

It was almost always like that with very few exceptions of course. Yet only one exception stands out even decades later and that is Ravindra who is revered and missed even today by many of those who yearn to pull the organization out of the abyss it finds itself in. He is perhaps the only top guy I have ever known whose inner radiance glowed on his exterior self. A top guy whom one looked forward to interacting with and who alone could provide the leadership and vision that one misses badly in the railways of today.

Times change and with that the quality of men also change. The materialistic world of today where occupying a chair has become a goal, not for doing something for the organization or the nation, but for the power, perks, glamour and glory that goes with it has revolutionized, not for better but for worse the way we bureaucrats of India work.

And that leads me to wonder, when shall we hit the bottom?

The learned man on the street!

Ask the man on the street, what ails the country, and he would know. Having been wedded to the tourism sector for a long time, almost everyone, I knew or met had a word of advice for me. How tourism can be made to prosper in the beautiful state of Madhya Pradesh, or in "Incredible India", everyone knew the answers. And now on the hot seat of DRM/Delhi, I am again swamped with intelligent people, people who know what is wrong and how to set it right, except that they do not have even the foggiest idea of what putting your backside on the hot seat entails.

The tragedy is that the credibility of the sarkari tantra in our motherland is abysmally low. And therefore the entire populace, who also have contributed to the chaos in no small measure, chose to bash the tantra at the slightest provocation.

What however really hurts is the feigned ignorance, not of the man on the street, but of the men who matter, with exceptions of course. It is really sad that we often confuse symptom with the disease, and the attempts therefore of trying to cure the symptom, not the disease are bound to fail resulting in repeated cycles of inventing the wheel ad infinitum.

There is no doubt that the sarkari tantra, across the country is a classic example of how tantra's should not be. Procedure orientation, knee jerk responses to symptoms, rampant corruption and sycophancy are its hallmarks. But for a change it was a nice feeling to witness the Government support to the chief executive of Air India in recent moments of crisis and when the gentleman who is trying to do his best needed the support. But such occasions are rare. Rather than supporting the chief executives, they are often made a scapegoat for pleasing the man on the street, who is amused no doubt, but rarely pleased.