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!
