For a few
years, I served in a government which went about trashing all the institutions
in the country The ruling coalition had a number of brash and rather brattish
personages that delighted in jeering at the rank and file in the government,
and glorifying the private sector. Indeed, they became the most strident
critics of their own institutions, and built up so much negativity and a lack
of confidence in the system that it got translated into a general depression of
the economy itself. Their party lost badly in the next elections to a leader
who presented a more optimistic and hopeful vision.
The lesson
I draw from this is that it is self-defeating to trash one’s own institutions.
Criticism, even if made with good intentions as a route to self-improvement,
tends to give a one-sided picture that fails to recognise or acknowledge the
enormous efforts and sacrifices made by the rank and file to keep the show
running, harping only on the points where the system is falling short. It
demoralises those who are slogging away silently, without really calling forth
any improvement. It amounts to a massive
self-goal in the world of management and governance. This, incidentally, is the
complaint against the fourth estate, the media and the intellectuals: by being
constantly critical, as in ‘theory’, they allow not a glimmer of hope to seep
through; like the naxalites, they have much to criticise in the existing world,
but no cogent picture of what system will replace it in such a way as to remove
all such deficiencies. Because different sections have their own sense of
grievance and their own agendas, the revolutionary is able to cobble together
sufficient force for the process of destruction, but the movement then flounders when the time comes to set up alternative working institutions.
How then
can we make critical analyses and statements, which are obviously required if
we are to make changes and improvements, without inducing this negativity and
sense of despair and alienation? The leader has to first take the trouble to
recount and publicly recognise the achievements in the existing set up. Then she
has to convey a sense that he has walked a few steps ‘in the boots’ of the rank
and file: she has to get into the trenches and make a stand shoulder to
shoulder with them, so to speak. There has to be some acknowledgement of the
bottlenecks and shortage of resources, and a recognition of some of the heroic
efforts made by them. There has to be a public demonstration of a reasonable
sense of proportion, for instance by drawing comparisons with other sectors and
organizations, perhaps even other countries. Having done all this, then perhaps
the leader will be justified in identifying areas that need improvement.
Chances are that the very exercise of recounting the achievements and obstacles
– what is known as the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats)
exercise – will itself impose this sense of proportion and perspective, and the suggestions for improvement will be
couched in terms of a sober appraisal of what is possible and how the required additional
resources can be garnered.
The other
way of going about this business of making suggestions is to approach the whole
thing from the outside, from the international consultant’s point of departure.
This approach makes a sweeping indictment, writes off the present actors as
hopeless and clueless, and throws out some broad, probably unimplementable and
impracticable, prescriptions, and depart the scene, leaving the people on the
ground with bruised egos and diminished sense of their own worth. The brattish
approach preaches from a pedestal, ignores the elephants in the room, and talks
in generalities and clichés (you can see how irritating these are in this very
sentence!). If this type of leader were in charge of the defence establishment,
for example, she had better not turn his back to the troops!
Since I was
at the receiving end of this type of leadership in the forest service, I have
done a SWOT of my sector here. An example of the high-falutin’ and absurd
advice thrown out by international consultants who talk down to the implementers
is this piece here about educational experts’ prescriptions for Indian education in
the 1960’s, which thankfully we did not follow.
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