Sunday Posts

The Indian economy is at a crossroad. Its internal markets have sustained the economy through the global recession of 2008/9, but as it looks beyond the pandemic, that would clearly not be enough. Its own version of 'Great Leap Forward', hastily imposed neo-liberal reforms of the economic life, has stunted the domestic demand and ravaged the banking sector - and it must find new sources of growth. The government's hopes lie in the exports - the aspiration that India could be the new China, workshop of the world. Labelled somewhat misleadingly as Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India), a new set of initiatives has been rolled out in search of this illusive export success. In this quest, India's key strength - perhaps its only one - is its people: A large working-age population ready to work for relatively cheap wage! How we view India's demographic opportunity has undergone a subtle shift - its young population was earlier seen as an exciting market and only now, as...

That India opted to be democratic, and remained so, goes to the credit of Pandit Nehru, India's first Prime Minister. Nehru was a democratic man, in rhetoric and in practise, and despite his enormous popularity and stature inside and outside the country, he successfully avoided the entrapment of 'Big Man' syndrome, which afflicted so many of his contemporary leaders of new nations. It was a great exercise of imagination, and logistics (Ramchandra Guha talks about this in his masterly India After Gandhi) to get an enormous, diverse, largely poor and mostly illiterate country on the democratic path. It defied most theories about democracy that political scientists propound - that democracy is mostly a rich country thing - and became the crowing glory for India, and indeed a very convenient excuse for all its failings. At a time when Indian democracy, along with democracies all around the world, is facing existential dangers from the forces of globalisation and the after...

Having worked in International Setting most of career, and having lived in four different countries and engaging in business in at least half a dozen others, one of most attractive conversation topic for me is - what makes an organisation effective globally? In my work, I come across educational institutions which want to recruit students from all over the world, or businesses which want to trade, and indeed do, globally. I hear conference speeches and business presentations proclaiming global ambitions. I meet people dreaming of scale, globally. Yet, at the same time, I see the track record of global engagement to be one full of failures and disappointments, over-expectations and under-achievements.  I believe the essential problem of constructing a really global organisation comes from the essential tension between trust versus difference. Any organisation wants to impose an uniform culture - and indeed, doing so is essential. Only by promoting an uniform culture can an...

A kind commentator dropped by and left a comment in one of the older posts, pointing out that the approach I wanted to promote - a practical education built around the humanities - is what he calls building of character. In the work he does, he focuses on Character and Competence, side by side, which makes abundant sense.  Indeed, character is a high sounding word with a lot of legacy, most of it going back to colonial times. So, talking about character in my work, which is mostly done in developing countries, is not going to be straightforward, without explaining what it is going to be about. But, such explanation is needed and timely, because one could perhaps claim with justification that the technocratic nature of education is the reason why we have the social problems we have. But even before we go into the discussion about character, it is important to state, perhaps re-state, the case why we need to look at humanities seriously. Those who believe that humanities ed...

I sometimes catch up with ideas and concepts long after they were needed. Call it slowness if you like, but this is not about slowness of wit but the lingering of love that I am talking here. This is not about missing out on something while I am at it, but rather indulging in an ongoing engagement even when the immediate need has been fulfilled. So, I really discovered the fascinating world of economic history - so much so that I may end up reading those books while on holiday - only after my formal education in economics was over. My obsession with John Dewey came only after I have completed my Masters in Adult Education, and I believe I understand him better now as I have completed the course earlier.  My current reading concerns leadership. I have got to it in a roundabout way. It all started with Vienna, where I am planning a short holiday around Easter, and Freud, upon whom I stumbled upon in course of my engagement with Modernity, itself a hangover from the Coursera cou...

I taught a course called Leadership Journey for a few years in a college in London. This was part of their post-graduate programme for practising managers. It was a great little course embedded in an MBA type programme, the difference being the emphasis on practice. The participants were to plan for their own development of leadership capabilities and compile a portfolio of reflections backed by evidence, which made it very different from most MBAs. This was part of a management course, and the rest of the programme dealt with the usual HR, Marketing, Finance, Strategy stuff. However, this one constituent course stood out, because this was more about the learners and less about any one subject, and everyone could choose their own paths to write their portfolio. I did indeed try to encourage a diversity of approaches, though not many of the learners eventually tried to be creative. Indeed, they saw this course without any fixed content as an invitation to do whatever, which means ...

I am re-reading Benjamin Franklin's biography. This is a habit that has grown on me: When I am making a transition, from one kind of life to another, I try to envisage the models to live by. By itself, this is a rather romantic exercise, building presuppositions about what would happen, but I have found this eminently handy, as this gives me a sense of purpose and allows me to plough through the difficulties that inevitably come along. But there is also something sobering with Ben Franklin's biography. My idea of creative life is perhaps not the bohemian ideal of Parisian poets and artists; instead, my assortment of heroes would include Ben Franklin, Charles Darwin, Rabindranath Tagore and some people I knew personally, like  my own grandfather. I would guess what appeals to me is the fact that in these personalities, hard work, patience and commitment were not antithetical to imagination and creativity. However much may I admire the humanism and the passions of Rousseau ...

While chronicling my experience of teaching leadership, I made the point that we explore three ideas of leadership: The first is that leadership is the behaviour that the leaders display; the second was that leadership is about a position and the activities that come with it; and finally, that leadership is a sort of personal ethic. I argued that I try to plod my students to explore all three ideas, and usually, once they discover the range, they settle for the third, as this is profoundly empowering. This is because leadership as a personal ethic could be achieved by anyone, at any point of their lives, as long as they could understand what that ethic is and are ready to commit to it.  This stands in contrast with the first idea, the leadership as a personal characteristic of a few people, because this grows out of the leaders-are-born-not-made view of the world. This theory indeed falls short against the argument whether all born leaders become recognised as leaders, which,...

We talk leadership all the time and everyone seems to know what it is, though everyone may have a slightly different idea. As a part of my teaching course, I do ask my students to define leadership, and get many definitions. In summary, the answer to my question is given in the lines of Justice Potter Stewart's "I know it when I see it", with a long list of names that stretch from Jesus Christ to Jose Mourinho. While this may sound intuitive, there are a few granular details in this definition we should be aware of. Indeed, Jesus Christ and Jose Mourinho are two very different kind of persons, but even the common strand that seemingly tie them together in my students' conception - the ability to move people - is actually two very different kind of things. Indeed, I exaggerate the difference by picking two extreme examples, and this would be much less emphatic if one picks another pair of names from the list, like Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi (or Abraham ...

I teach leadership. I am not sure leadership can be taught. Semantics aside - I know all that facilitating stuff as opposed to teaching - the question I am really interested in if one can really 'make' leaders through a series of classroom conversations. Some of my colleagues will argue that it should be a series of projects or activities rather than classroom conversations. I am no big fan of the kind of unambitious projects that people usually set up in context of business courses: Review your company's mission statement! I would tend to think those are worse devices than classroom conversations. And, in any case, whatever the method, how does one teach leadership? I am not taking the position that leadership can't be learnt, though! There are born leaders, but the leaders are only born and not made is a fallacious theory: We all know one or two people who were born to be leaders, but were never made. Whether or not leaders are born that way, they have t...

Let's be irrational: Friday the 13th. Four Death Sentences. An Announcement that can define India's future. Despite this being plucked from Hollywood lore, such connections always appeal to Hindu mind. However, even if one does not believe in omen and try to be rational, Friday the 13th of September would still appear to be a great day for the Indian Middle Classes - as they got what they wanted: Death sentence for the four people who brutally raped and killed one of their own, and a 'strong' leader who would drive India to its destiny. If one wondered what that destiny may look like, the signs are already there. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main opposition party in India, calls the inflation in India 'Jijiya Tax'. Inflation is corrosive, and it spiralled out of control under the callous economic management of the incumbent government, and has indeed hurt the salaried middle classes. Protesting against inflation, however, is not the point here: Likenin...

The Indian General Election of 2014 is quickly turning out to be a single agenda event - a referendum on corruption. The chequered records of the incumbent government necessarily makes it so: The continuing discovery of skeletons in its cupboard, its inability to deal with it due to the power politics of the coalition and the sheer scale and audacity of some of these scandals, make it almost the only story dominating the media. It is rather sad, as this steals the focus and detracts everyone from the great promise that India seemed to have shown early in the new millennium. The spectre of complete breakdown in governance makes people shy away from investing, even involving, in India.  However contrarian this may sound, it is worth asking whether this should indeed be so: Whether we should single-mindedly focus on Government corruption at the expense of everything else. India is a big country with myriad of issues; some of those, like communal or regional harmony, is as at leas...

This is exactly how The Economist puts it ( See article ). The significance of this is immense: First time a major international publication is writing off India and blaming it squarely, and rightly, on its leadership. The everyday despondence of the aspirational Indian middle class is now official.  Indian leaders, as The Economist puts it, continues to show 'Brezhnev grade' complacency. There is something in the Indian psyche, which always believes in eventual rise of India as a major world power. This is not about an Indian version of exceptionalism, but more of a manifest destiny, a deeply irrational expectation that this would happen regardless of any efforts as this is 'written'. Deep down, India's leaders seem to believe in this too, and they are blaming everyone else but themselves for the recent slow down. However, a country's economic future, and indeed its global power, is crucially dependent on its leadership. Alan Beattie recounts the story...

It was a fitting end to a disastrous year in Indian politics, New Delhi based blogger and journalist, John Elliot contends. With the defeat of Lokpal Bill, floor crossings and chaos, India's biggest weakness, its political class, once more is on public display. However, these are dangerous times, whether or not you believe in Mayan prophecy: Party may indeed end for India in 2012. India had its time in the sun. As a solid member of BRIC quartet, the Indian Prime Minister became a regular invitee on the top table of global economics and politics. The country emerged as a partner in democracy with the United States, a regional competitor to China, and started assuming some global role in Central and Northern Africa and in Afghanistan. Its urban middle classes looked stronger than ever. Indian students, buoyed by the rising income, stronger Rupee and upbeat rhetoric, flocked the Western universities. Its businesses started investing abroad, claiming limelight side by side with Chin...

If you are seen to be creative, an out-of-the-box thinker in your organization, you may actually be shut out of the Senior Management positions. This may be counter-intuitive, as the corporate jargon revolves around creative thinking. However, this is exactly what Jennifer Mueller of UPenn , Jack Goncalo of Cornell and Dishan Kamdar of Indian School of Business found, and presented in their paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. [For a summary, click here ] The key point is that a typical leader is expected to bring stability, promote a vision, achieve a consensus etc., not things that creative types would naturally do. The things they do instead - challenge status quo , start the debates - are not expected from the leaders. So, if you are showing your creativity, this may go against your prospects of rising higher up in your organization. Creativity is usually seen as a specialist activity: In many businesses, this is the preserve of 'creative' departments,...

Visit msnbc .com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy This is a great speech handling a difficult subject. The President took great care not to sound too jubilant , as Military Leaders often do, and offend anyone. Instead, he was on the message about not fighting against Islam, not fighting against Pakistan, and not fighting against the American right. His usual restrain works against him when Americans want emotion - as it did during the Deepwater Horizon crisis - but it served him well in this speech. Someone commented on Twitter - we are possibly watching a great second coming of Barack Obama.

Usually, politics is a negative word these days. Gone are those times when politics was a liberating force, a way of thinking and doing things for ascendant middle classes (and later still, for working classes), something that led to freedom and progress. Now, this means manipulative behaviour, something that one should not do. This negativity is nowhere more pronounced than in business literature. The reason for this is the rational roots of business thinking. We must remember that management as a discipline was created out of the great industrial organizations of United States and Europe in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century. The roots of business education lie in the economics and organizational science departments in North America, with great rationalist thinkers like Herbert Simon etc. The founding assumption of management as a discipline is that everyone, at least most people, would act in a rational way, with an enlightened self interest. There is little room to hav...

Aldous Huxley's point was that while Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it can not serve truth very well. Life's issues are often so complex that they need nuanced, detailed understanding. Executive Summaries are often too reductive, too naive, and our reliance on those often lead to lack of false understanding. Maslow's model, I shall argue, is one of those neat, well argued models which may lead to wrong conclusions. For the uninitiated, Maslow's model is insightful, breaking down human needs in five neat blocks - Physiological Needs, Safety Needs, Social Needs, Esteem Needs and Need for Self-Actualization - stacked up in a pyramid shape. Everything about it is useful and understandable: The categories seem clear and distinct, there is a philosophical implication of a man's journey to be a better individual and stages are quite clear. It is one simple model which tells a lot. The model was deservedly successful, becoming gospel truth among managers of men and m...

For all the talk of leadership, spare a thought for the followers. Because they make the leaders. In a way. A leader may not be an identified individual that we would like to believe. Or that's what celebrity obsessed mass media wants us to believe. Rather, more often than not, a leader emerges - based on the context - and other people, followers, choose to follow them. Think of the first man on the dancing floor and you know what I am talking about. So, leadership is not a position or a title, but a relationship, that one enters with others from time to time. In a way, then, followers make the leaders. Without them, there will be no leaders. Imagine dancing alone on the floor. Writing a book that no one reads. Standing up on Speaker's Corner without onlookers. We think of people who do them as crazies, not as leaders. So, then, why, in business, we assume leadership comes with position, or gets embedded in title? Because, indeed, business tries to fashion itself more after the...