Business Sutra: A Very Indian Approach to Management (11 page)

It did not help that in the nineteenth century the British used Manu's treatise, choosing it from amongst all the dharma-shastras, to create the law of the land, perhaps because European scholars mistakenly equated Manu with the biblical Adam. With that, the Manu Smriti, once an obscure text known only to Sanskrit-speaking brahmins of North India, became the definitive Hindu law book in the eyes of the world.

The global order is drifting in the same direction. People are being valued not for who they are (varna) but for the lifestyle they lead (jati). A neo-caste system is being organized. The rich nation, like the rich man, is assumed to be smart. The literate nation, like the educated man, is assumed to be good.

The modern passport functions just like caste, granting people identity and resources, legitimizing the exclusion of 'polluted' economic migrants and political refugees from rich nation states. Everyone knows how difficult it is to change one's passport. Everyone is, however, convinced it needs to exist.

The rational arguments of the West do not seem to be making people ethical or moral. Greed is qualitatively similar in all nations, rich or poor, with the lion's share of every nation's income being enjoyed by less than 10 per cent of the population. Rules are being designed, and rights are being enforced, to establish diversity, eco-friendliness, and corporate social responsibility. But these are never at the cost of shareholder value, revealing the cosmetic nature of these changes meant to satisfy the auditors and charm buyers and voters. Outrage, consequently, seethes beneath the surface. With reward and reprimand failing, panic is setting in. Once again, in typical Western style, there is talk of revolution.

But the shift being proposed is once again behavioural. No attempt is made to expand the mind. Everyone is convinced personality is hardcoded, with room only for one truth. Everyone speaks of the truth, rarely your truth or my truth. Unable to get belief alignment, more and more leaders are convinced that people have to be led like sheep, forced to be good.

Determined to be fair and just, management science strives to make organizations more and more objective. Therefore, institutions are valued over individuals, data over opinions, rules over relationships, instruction over understanding, contracts over trust, and processes over people. Professionalism, which involves the removal of emotions in the pursuit of tasks and targets, is seen as a virtue. Incredibly, scholars and academicians actually expect corporations designed on dehumanization to be responsible for society!

Sameer who works in the corporate communications division has to make a report on corporate social responsibility. The lady who heads the department, Rita, who majored in social service at a reputed university says, "Here, it is not about helping people but about meeting a target so that the company can tell its shareholders and the media that they have changed the world and contributed to the well-being of society. They hope this will help improve their brand image. Nobody will say this as they are trained to be politically correct in public by their media team. There is no feeling, no empathy, just excel sheets. But at least something is happening at the ground level where the situation is rather dismal, that is why I am sticking around." Sameer also participated in a meeting where there was a discussion as to what would be more impactful: providing latrines in villages, or laptops? The majority voted in favour of laptops.

But before we judge humanity harshly, we must remind ourselves that humans are 99 per cent animals (technically it is 96 per cent, but 99 per cent sounds more dramatic). Only a tiny percentage of our genes are exclusively human. In the evolutionary scale, fear is thus a far more familiar emotion than ideas that spring from the imagination. Fear has enabled us to survive for three billion years; imagination has been around for less than a million. In doubt, we naturally regress towards older, more familiar emotions. Further, the body physiology resists thinking and introspecting and analyzing, as brain activity needs glucose, a precious fuel that the body would rather conserve in the muscles in anticipation of a crisis. That is why the human mind prefers the tangible to the intangible, behaviour to belief, simpler ideas to complex ones, predictable models to models that thrive on uncertainty, the jati construct to the varna construct. Even though every culture and every organization bases itself on lofty ideals, when crisis strikes, everyone regresses, relying on age-old fear-based animal instincts of aggression, territoriality and domination. Imagination is then used to rationalize one's choice, ex post facto.

Perhaps, the time has come to realize our evolutionary potential, open our eyes once again, and do darshan. Darshan means looking beyond the measurable: if imagination has the power to make us value profit over people, it also has the power to make business growth an outcome of people growth, not regardless of it.

Trusting human potential is not easy. Including other truths is not easy. But to rise in grace, we must outgrow gravity.

III

Business Sutra

A Very Indian Approach to Management

usiness is yagna, the ritual described in the oldest and most revered of Hindu scriptures, the Rig Veda.

The yajaman initiates this ritual, makes offerings into agni, fire burning in the altar, exclaiming, "svaha"—this of me I offer, hoping to please his chosen deity or devata who will then give him whatever he desires, exclaiming, "tathastu"—so it shall be.