Sab Changa Si!

 

Do we mindlessly pursue idea/habit/decision/comment which has a large following? The simple answer to that question is a straightforward NO, we pick things which make sense to us or which serve a purpose that we hold dear. A concept can not be deemed right or wrong basis who or how many second it. Every choice must be weighed against every piece of wisdom known, before qualifying it legit. When democracy is reduced to a tug-of-war it becomes 'mobocracy', in which numbers alone count for everything! Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the grave challenges this great nation of ours faces today from suffocating economy to soaring unemployment and food inflation, growing social injustice, a crime against women the most heinous of all 'rape' is on the rise - yet what do we hear the current political dispensation talk about, often if not always? ‘Hindu Vs Muslim, India Vs Pakistan’, they have managed to wickedly destroy our collective intelligence. Don't we live in times when media houses shamelessly shout ‘मंदी को नहीं मोदी को देखो"? What are we doing to ourselves?

Given the feeble global standing of academic structures of our great motherland in the world, a government that should work towards improving the state of education is today too busy destroying whatever is left of the leading learning institutions. It has gone ahead and astronomically increased not just tuition fees but also tariffs of other ancillary services like hostels, canteen, etc. What would such a disastrous move cost us in the long term? Economically weak but deserving students won’t get the education that could have successfully lifted them from the rut of poverty and when you see it in knowledge that India is a poor country where more than 250 million people are forced to survive below the poverty line defined to give rulers (It was done by Congress) a face-saver; so it will not be wrong to deduce that current government is for ignorance and poverty. Education is not BJP’s top priority why else would a democratic country not get to see or know where its head of state went to get educated, his academic achievements are as fictitious as his slogans “सबका साथ सबका विकास और सबका विश्वास' whereas what he seems to be doing is 'सबका विनाश'. We have got a minister who was a graduate in her affidavit in 2014, 2019 faced up she regressed to being the 12th pass, 'क्यूँकि स्नातक भी कभी बारहवीं पास थी'. No less than the HRD minister could not defend the questions that got raised on his Ph.D. - So we, the people, or as Telegraph puts it, we the Idiots, should not expect his lordship government to work for the betterment of education.  

Socialist, sovereign & secular republic is how our founding fathers chose to define us; this idea was not only apt but also progressive, liberal and thoughtful at the same time. India is required to be a welfare state because the majority of its citizens struggle to make ends meet even after 72 years of self-rule. Things like decent education, timely and able medical care are still seen as a luxury in our country, even among those who live in high rise buildings, drive German motorcars and use the best of the computing resources available on the planet today. It is rather unfortunate that our government is working actively and decidedly against each of those founding values, it is particularly opposed to the plurality of our republic. It is hell-bent on destroying it bit after bit before we get to the war BJP has wedged against secularism. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the hypocrisy that they champion, in some detail.

Dynasty in politics : 

Since 1999, the Congress has had 36 dynastic MPs elected to the Lok Sabha, with the BJP not far behind with 31. In 1999, the beginning of the 13th Lok Sabha, 8% of Congress members of parliament were either descended from or married to former MPs, only slightly ahead of the 6% among the BJP.

The most similar density of dynastic politicians was in 2009 when the Congress and BJP had 11% and 12% dynasts elected, respectively.



Read more on : https://scroll.in/article/918234/is-the-bjp-less-dynastic-than-the-congress-not-so-lok-sabha-data-shows

Corruption & Criminal Record:

Across parties, of the 521 Lok Sabha members of parliament (MPs), 106 (20%) are charged with serious offenses such as murder, inciting communal disharmony, kidnapping and crimes against women.

As many as 55% of these are from the BJP (92), compared with 2% from the Congress (7), 3% from the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) (6), 17% from the Shiv Sena (15) and 7% from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) (7), an analysis by National Election Watch (NEW), a campaign run by the advocacy group Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), shows.

Read more on : https://www.indiaspend.com/55-of-lok-sabha-mps-facing-criminal-charges-are-from-bjp/

Transparency : 

The essential problem with electoral bonds is that it removes transparency and accountability in political funding. Voters have the right to know which fat cats fund their political parties and if such funding has an influence on policies framed by governments formed by these parties. 80%+ of these donations have been received by the BJP, this very tool has made them the richest political party! Let’s not forget that they misled the nation by stating that these bonds were anonymous, recent findings have revealed that they can be easily tracked following the Bond number and details of the buyer!  

Read more at:

//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/72187122.cms?from=mdr&utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Gandhi Vs Godse : 

It is not a secret that the brand Gandhi is powerful and relevant, embracing him at international gatherings gives one a certain kind of immediate acceptance and respect; therefore the 56’ chested man leaves no opportunity to go by without making the most of it. But when it comes to actions, he favors those who worship his killers with ticket, ensures their victory and even places them in high offices.  

Terrorism & National Security :

Modi supporters often invoke “देश बचेगा तब तो अर्थव्यवस्था काम आएगी” to shield the supreme leader from the criticism that has been coming his way for his abysmal performance on the economy. He makes moving speeches to drill a fear deep among ordinary Indians from Pakistan and from Muslims at large, to the enticed public he then presents himself as the only savior. You’d often hear his followers saying “ If not Modi then who? “. The fact is that there has been a rise in not just the number of incidents of infiltration but also fatalities under his incompetent and careless watch. When it comes to security and terror; Modi has failed not only on the administrative ground but has also lost miserably on the moral standards by letting Pragya Singh Thakur who is a prime accused in the Malegaon terror attack became an MP on BJP ticket. He did not stop there, he even elevated her to a parliamentary committee. Only when nationwide protest grew strong, his party reacted superficially, to give people the false perception of his being serious, she was stripped of that committee but she continues to be a BJP MP.   

Frugality & Hard Work : 

In the last 8 months alone our man has addressed 142 political rallies if you add all the foreign trips just the traveling time and other speeches at GOI events- you’ll see that our man is practically working for furthering the BJP political agenda 85%+ of his time in office. He is either busy in some state election or a foreign trip. His attendance in the Parliament is lowest among all PMs that India has had! I will say nothing about frugality because we know that he has spent more exorbitantly than any other Indian PM on his PR. Practically all of the media houses have been bought over by advertisements. 

Hinduism and Beef: 

His silent approval has been motivating those who see it legitimate to kill provocative by mere suspicion of beef and his Bhakts carry out these punitive Lynching in the name of the Hindu religion as they consider the cow to be Holy if not a Goddess herself than nothing less than a deity. Even on the question of Cow BJP is inconsistent, in the NE and in Goa where people enjoy their steak, our man is ok, allowing Beef to be served hot on a platter everywhere else his men kill for it, while he chooses to conveniently look the other way.

These facts point to the conclusion that BJP under Modi  is as hypocritical as one can get and all that they care about is fooling voters into casting in their favour.

Let’s come back to the Tug-of-war that we spoke about in the first part of this article. The country has witnessed how they bulldozed CAB through both houses of the parliament. CAB is a prelude to the sinister NRC that will be pushed upon us, as a result of which if a Ram is not able to produce documents he will still retain his citizenship but on the other hand same failure will render Rahim stateless. This is not only unconstitutional, discriminatory but also immoral and is incumbent upon every Indian to fight against it in tooth and nails. This disaster in the making will render Muslims the largest minority sidelined, reduced and disenfranchised: All Indians must oppose it.

There I say on my twitter handle 

@LKstates

#1 Discrimination against ’one’ is discrimination against all!

#2 Diversity that all of us have been proudly giving away as a way of introduction of our motherland comes from various minorities that inhabit this country,with #CAB coming into effect we will be stripped of this advantage as #BJP moves its brute majority to alienate the largest minority.

#3 Dear India, 

When you graciously hand brute majority to fascist forces this is how they cast assault on the character of the constitution, fundamentals of this nation & tenets of social fabric of India. Secularism is not an idea to be tempered with, it is central to our identity!

#4 #CitizenshipAmendmentBill2019 the most ghastly form of an onslaught that #BJP is forcing upon the composite nature of our society & nation at large! All but #Muslims is most bizarre, undemocratic, and plain evil of all things that #Modi has unleashed on our nation. Egregious & sad!

#5 A majority that doesn’t protect the rights of its minorities crumbles under the weight of its own doing! History is littered with examples that suggest that collective oppression & exclusionary actions lead to less than ideal results. India must in one voice reject #CAB & #BJP

#6 Illiterate of the 21st century is not someone who can’t read and write, we have moved past that, current day knowledge disability is not knowing to reject discrimination, it is to consider fundamentals of natural justice unnecessary! Know someone with that ailment? Do help them!

#7 Dear #Modi, 

Do you know how bad your #CitizenshipAmendmentBill2019 decision is? Well, let me break it to you, even #ArnabGoswami from your PR rig @republic finds it repulsive, retrograde & regressive. He termed it worst form of majority appeasement - drop it, and say sorry!

#8 If you’re a student of political history (like me)you’d know every political movement that gets vehement support of students of the day becomes successful. Don’t take my word for it, read abt #JP movement or how students made a difference in civil rights movement! #CAB must go!

#9 If a billion people were to come out on the streets, all at once, demanding #CAB to be thrown out of the window with its creators would it happen? Yes it will. The administration doesn’t have the wherewithal all to use force against a gathering of a billion, they cannot! So get together!    

Gandhi, as modern-day CEO!

Founding father of world’s largest democracy was tried for treason in the modern-day capital city of the very state he was born in, nearly two and a half-decade before his life long efforts bore fruits - yes, such is the veracity of time, what is a known truth today, may in the days to come, fade into a mere build-up to the greater reality. Before we go any further, I’m duty-bound to inform you that I’m a fan of Bapu ( can’t say the greatest but yes one of significance ), every line, every word that you’ll read here on will drip my admiration for the greatest Indian ever, the Mahatma, so if you happen to be someone who doesn’t like him as much, you may leave this article right here, enjoy the holiday that his birthday grantees to every Indian! Coming back to the historic trial, our beloved barrister did not particularly win cases, in fact if we judge him, on the ratio of victories in the courtroom, he might well come out as the most unaccomplished lawyers of all times, but this man was not meant to be just an advocate, he carried in this heart and soul letters that bore meaning which far exceeded usefulness of any rule book. In his argument, Bapu said and I quote.

“Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite to violence.”  

Justice Broomfield, who was in awe of the short, skinny & funnily dressed Indian man went on to sentence him but how he pronounced the judgment celebrated Gandhi, the man in no uncertain terms. Historians write that he frequently visited Bapu in the jail with the stated intention of forging friendship with the jewel of India. He even titled Mohandas as his spiritual friend in the book that he wrote after his retirement. Think of the audacity of the situation here, a British judge that finds a man guilty of treason against the British empire, goes out of the way, denouncing tradition to celebrate him in every way possible. Our Bapu was such a man!! He was less of a man and more of a living miracle, it is a pity that most Indians (87% according to a survey done by Sriram publication house) have not read even one full book on father of the nation. if you happen to be one such person, go grab ‘my experiment with truth’ today, you would not regret it. Before I get to the title of this article, let me underscore the degree to which circumstances now have changed. How the societal fabric that held values dear and regarded it above all else has found greater love in material manifestations; therefore, natural love for such powerful principles may not be as evident in the present times as it used to be then. We’re a society that values sensationalism over sense, chaos over clarity, histrionics over history; great moments do not get created over ‘viral’ semantics, history is created slowly, one moment at a time and it almost always is without frills. 

In keeping with crazy times, I want to imagine Bapu as a modern-day figure, someone with responsibilities of pleasing not just principles but also materials and targets. So, I imagine him as a CEO, and in doing so, I try to explore which among the values that he demonstrated superbly in the Indian freedom struggle would he practice in the 2019 avatar. Here is my pick. 

Truth: Gandhi can’t be imagined without truth, in an organizational setup, therefore, I presume that he would have created a culture of candor, one in which people spoke their minds freely and fearlessly. Political correctness, sugar coating & diplomatic recitals must have been things that he would have disliked the most and should situation demanded even acted against. He would have professed Satyagraha, (Sanskrit and Hindi: “holding onto truth”) and that would have meant pure ethical business conduct. Shortsighted, penny wise pound foolish practices like mindless misreporting, treacherous misrepresenting, wilful misguiding; putting things under the rug, creating a smokescreen, stealing information would not have existed under his watch uncontested. He was a compassionate man but not in situations that demanded action, the way he called off non-cooperation movement when it turned violent teaches us that he would have been extremely heartless and curt in curbing things which he did not find righteous. In his world, it was not about taking the most profitable however unethical but the right decision, always. He knew to march ahead and lead just as well as he knew to stop and retreat.

Democratic dissent: Mahatma neither lacked confidence nor will, he was, in fact, the very opposite of weak; so he would not have surrounded himself with spineless ‘yes men’. He in his role as a CEO would have encouraged diversity of views, he would have welcomed intellectual challenges, even the most difficult & daunting ones. Bapu believed in merit and originality; he was dead against lifting information from open sources without quoting creator. Historian Ramchandra Guha writes that he fired his temporary assistant (not naming him because he was a timid man and has earned nothing more than anonymity for the character that he showed) on a visit to England, when he found that the assistant  cleverly stole Franklin’s line from one of his journals and produced it to Bapu as his own, on the matter of civil liberty. Bapu was a well-read man, he found out in an instance and showed the man the door. He knew to dissent like nobody I have read about or know did. Bapu knew that to encourage people to come with their original ideas he would need to create a culture of acceptance and respect and I sense that he would have done exactly that, even a CEO.

Love and Compassion: Hate the crime and not the criminal, he exuded love and compassion even for his opponents in measures equal to what he bestowed upon his supporters and followers. He would have made sure that ills of favoritism, nepotism, red-tapism, did not exist in the org that he led. He believed in reformative actions which essentially is about understanding the depth of the problem, from that we can conclude that he would have disallowed superficiality and hollow problem-solving. He was an ardent egalitarian, therefore, he would not have rendered deferential treatment to people basis tenure, caste, affluence, color, regionality, etc. As a CEO, he would have respected his competition and not bad-mouthed them. He would have shown no malice for those who chose a path different from his, he would have done everything possible to create a framework that encouraged people to understand before they concluded matters. He would have built an organization with bricks of empathy and care. 

Sardar Patel, Deputy PM and Home Minister of Independent India, reached Bapu in the week that Godse took him away from us forever to pursue him to allow security personal guard him and to let for thorough frisking of all who got near him or the premise that housed him, as he started building his argument on the threat that the agencies had picked up. Bapu told Sardar, could you come to the point quickly Patel, I’m getting late for the evening prayers. 

So, I’m concluding it here in the shortest possible way that for Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, CEO, India incorporation; ends would have never justified the means!

On that note, Happy Birthday Bapu and thank you for all that you did, spoke and wrote about. You continue to be my superhero!

Civility pays!

“Civility in the context of business is, first-world-feel-good bullshit”, is what I maintained, in the early part of my career, in the years when I was new to tasting success (promotion meant success to me back then, nothing more and nothing less. It doesn’t anymore though). As I bagged my first few elevations, I became responsible for a team and not just my own output, things started to break a little. My razor sharp belief started cutting in the tranquility of my team and there came a point when I just did not know how to make do and proceed. It all seemed impossible, everyone in my team was elder to me and agreements were so seldom that I thought that my views and ideas weren’t made for collaboration. The library has been the place for finding answers, for me, for a majority of my life, so faced with this difficulty, I applied for leave and headed to British library to find a solution. There I got introduced to the legend Mr. Thomas hobs and his masterful work, in 1642, he argued that the mere act of disagreement is offensive. This simple sentence in that book came to my rescue. I understood, that I will have to prepare myself to like and even in cases that appear sensible love disagreements. I returned & resumed rejuvenated with that thought, things kept on becoming simpler and in about 8 months I nailed another success. Around the same time, another writer who I revere venerably, Dr. Shashi Tharoor, wrote in one of his academic papers that for democracies to succeed, disagreements and dissent is vital, that we must strive to be a society that is fair in encouraging its people to express their differences but at same time the discourse must remain civil and peaceful for it lead to meaningful consequences and therefore it is important that we agree on the ground rules of disagreement. Dr. Tharoor said it a lot more eloquently, I’m paraphrasing it in my own words. These two writers formed the basis of my tolerance at the workplace and gave me rationals to remain cautious and well behaved while at work, a place where I compete with others to succeed, earn both fame and wealth. My reading list from there on always had writers who have written on tolerance, respect, civility, dissent, and harmony of views, one such brilliant mind is Teresa bejan who has written extensively about the long history of civility and religious tolerance and lack of it, in society in the 17^thcentury England and the US. After Trump's victory, her work broke its record of sell, one can only imagine why.

My current view is that. 

There can’t be diversity without tolerance to disagreement and without opposing views real progress in our word is impossible.

Civility is no longer a vague and fuzzy virtue to me but a cornerstone to creating a high-performance culture, in my view. Continuing my quest to learn ways to succeed in professional career I read more as organizational behavior and its implication on the economy became an interesting area of research, psychologists are dedicating a lot of attention to this subject lately, with the Intent of measuring how a certain set behaviors result in productivity and therefore create profitable organizations and what are those traits that cause people to finish 2^nd sometimes without even realizing. Christine Porath is a known name in the circuit of behavioral science and behavioral economics, she after being humiliated at her first work chose to go back to the university and join a research program to understand the concern deeply and come up with her elucidation of impact. In her illustrious work she found the below striking facts: 

After an incivil encounter, it was absorbed that: 

Ø 60% of those directly impacted cut back on their efforts.

Ø 80% of them lost as much as 1.5 productive work day worrying/thinking about what had happened.

Ø 12% left the job    

It was also seen that those who witnessed disrespectful behavior but were not directly subjected to it were also affected in ballpark figures.

The comprehensive research also propounded that, when people are treated with respect and sensitivity, below things happen.

Ø 56% of employees are healthier ( fewer sick leaves)

Ø 92% of people are more focused on the Job at hand

Ø It improves retention by 1.1X

Ø And the workforce are 55% more engaged.

Cisco was among one of the first organizations to pay heed to her study and they estimated a loss of 12 million dollars annually to incivility in their organization, what followed in that organization is history. 12 million dollars is a fortune for most of humanity & that was the cost of being disrespectful. 

I wrote an article in July 2017 on how being “nice was going out of business”, will link it down below at the end of this article for you to read, should it interest you.

One of the gifts of education and upbringing is good etiquette, civil manners, and polished behavior. It is impractical to be Victorian in conduct when situations go south of the expectation but the whole point of being nice is not when things are warm and cozy, behaviors are tested in salty waters, if you stay cool when the heat is turned up, only then can you be called halcyon, isn’t it. The point is why do organizations misunderstand the value of civility? Why is disrespect used as a tool, sometimes even strategic one to keep the situation in check? Why do otherwise intellectual and wise people resort of hurling insensitive insults to make a point? Targeting is uncool, in all circumstances, whether you do it to gender, a cast, a creed, a culture, a set of people either above or below you in whatever scale that you measure things, situations and people on. Human history tells us that discrimination of all kinds has had a disastrous impact on peace, progress, and prosperity and yet despite the common knowledge things do go out of control, all the time.

If you are a leader of any stature, both “why” does it happen and “what” should be done about it, should be of interest to you. If you are someone who understands just money, all the more, because, hey, when a giant like Cisco can get bugged to the tune of 12 million, imagine, how much this luring bad behavior must cost you? On per person, per incident basis .. chances are that if you are an org smaller than Cisco with fewer heads to handle the proportionate impact will be higher, any day. Unless of course, one chooses to decidedly and foolishly look the other way.

“What” is straightforward, let’s pick up the “why” first.

Not all experience that one might claim to have essentially contribute to expertise, likewise not all beliefs are always knowledge. Our thinking gets shaped by our experiences, our learning, our surroundings, and our hopes and aspirations, plainly put. We tend to become what we experience .. for better or for worse. The ball boy learns the rules of the game without playing it similarly we unconsciously pick up patterns as they occur around us. Toxic environments do not cause healthy outcomes. And it impacts the collective organization more than any single employee or group of people because it is always easy for the employee to look for greener pastures but orgs can’t choose to change with so much of ease and as frequently for reasons you would imagine, I assume. The problem really is that of bias. Imminent psychologists for the sake of simplicity categorizes all biases in three categories. 

1)      Confirmation Bias 

a.    Finding evidence to confirm your existing beliefs – We are all victims of it. We create a perception and then see everything though pre-applied notion. Problem is that not always all perceptions are fact-based. If you have known something or someone for a long time it doesn’t always mean that information intimating from them are always correct. They can be just as incorrect or as incapable of presenting the whole picture as something or someone you might have known for a relatively shorter period of time or may be in the process of knowing. You need to listen more and judge less.

2)    Dunning – Kruger

a.    Thinking we know more than we do- This is a rather dangerous ailment I would say, mostly seen in accomplished people, they seem to disregard things easily that do not conform with their views. What they comfortably miss is that between they have experienced a certain situation in the past and now, a lot has changed. People are not what they used to be let's say 30 years ago. Old rules won’t make you win the new game.

3)    Cognitive dissonance  

a.    New information contracting our existing beliefs – Obstinacy, is a thing it makes us hate conflicting worldviews, so much so, that we get irritated really quickly often to the point where angry public outburst becomes our second character. You need to understand that in a world as diverse as our there will be more than one method of achieving a common goal. Letting oneself adventure a little is harmless. 

Literacy wrt the subject and misinformation on account of sourcing knowledge can cause us to gain intolerance too. To make real progress and real quick, we must enable ‘free thinking’ 

For “what” part of the equation: Below three steps can be a good beginning towards correcting biases and therefore getting rid of belief systems that legitimize incivility, intolerance, and disrespectfulness.

1)    Take inventory of your own biases 

2)    Evaluate your sources 

3)    Open yourself up to new ideas, thoughts, people and belief systems.

It is rather easy to lose control: shouting, insulting, targeting doesn’t require courage, decision, skill or even intellect, it just needs you to be in a place of control and authority, being civil and yet firm and decisive is something that really needs dedicated application of skill, mind, thoughtful reasoning and above all restraint. Making people feel bad won’t ever pay you back, neither in short nor in the long term, don’t believe me listen to this lovely song! 

Ek Din Bik Jaayega Mati Ke Mol | Dharam Karam Songs | Raj Kapoor | Evergreen Mukesh Song : https://youtu.be/pGYjHQbV1KE

I, in the sphere of my direct influence, consciously try to be civil so that I get to reap personal, societal, economic, emotional and organizational benefits of being respectful. Would you too?

The link as promised earlier for the article written and published in the month of July 2017.

Title: Is being nice beyond business?

Link: https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/07/is-being-nice-beyond-business.html

Bye bye, have a good day!