Growing up in moffusil Orissa, I was constantly goaded by my folks to aspire for what was probably the most coveted profession in our parts of the world: The Civil Services. Sure enough, as time flew, there were successful "candidates" in the neighbourhood. Their joy at having discovered the Holy Grail was short-lived as a rabble-rousing, union leader of the town that we lived in ( the guy Ma warned you against)went on to occupy ministerial position and our very own blue-eyed boy had to grapple with the ignominy of taking instructions from him. The fear of being shunted to (even more) far flung, famine struck districts and its resultant complications (the wife's kitty parties et al) ensured our neighbourhood envy was sufficiently compliant.
Suitably disillusioned, one decided to plunge for the lucrative world of multi-national corporations with starry eyed dreams of climbing the corporate ladder, raking in the big fat bonuses and teeing off with the gliterrati over the weekends. The corporate world though was not remarkably enlightening and one had to quickly come to terms with the fact that the boss was keener on the price at which you sold his bosses' property than what your "goal-statement" specified and one dealt with "crackberries" who responded to emails on their PDAs at unearthly hours of the night or day depending on the sleeping habits of the CEO. My only consolation, when I checked the toilets of a hotel room the global head of my organisation was slated to occupy was the fact that I was accompanied on this supremely cerebral activity by somebody who was significantly higher up in the echelons.
Whilst grappling with shallow and often meaningless jargon like "mission statement", "strategic intent", "long-term vision" and the like, my thoughts wandered to the day-job of a politician and a comparison with the enviable Corner Office seemed like a no-contest. The challenges and perils of governance aside, if one were to dissect a minister's job like a MBA is (supposedly) trained to do, one arrives at some interesting comparisons.
One of the toughest challenges that corporate leaders face is the need to deal with several talented and ambitious people all of whom aspire to reach the top but the pyramid ensures only a few do while the rest are left licking their wounds. The leader is supposed to reward the truly meritorious and yet ensure the relative "have-nots" are kept suitably motivated after every round of promotions or job rotations. While a business leader has to deal with faceless individuals all of whom will go unrecognised at public places, compare it with the challenge that a political leader has to face post a ministerial reshuffle when he has to deal with bruised egos of public figures as their "moves" (or lack of them) make national headlines the next day and will determine whether they stand in serpentine queues at the airport or qualify not to be frisked.
How about job complexity? Without even getting into trying to compare the relative difficulty of managing a P&L and governing a country, lets get into a more basic facet. The single purpose for existence of a business is profit. The Government on the other hand has a far-reaching social responsibility apart from dealing with several legitimate yet conflicting points of interest. Hydel power generation v/s population displacement for instance. Add to this the myriad pulls and pressures of a system with various forces legally bestowed with powers to influence or obstruct a course of action and the challenge multiplies geometrically. For the record, most corporations claim to have a system of checks and balances too but the single point control of bonus cheque ensures absolute power.
Right from the time one aspired to join business school, one was made to believe that communication skills were the one trait sans which all hopes of making it big could be laid to rest. In north India, this was defined as a superior ability to roll ones "R"s while those south of vindhyas typically believed in peppering their power point presentations with abstract graphs and charts in a bid to appear suitably intellectual. Contrast the communication skills required for a board room presentation full of pretentious Zegna-clad employees with that of addressing half a million people at Ramlila Maidan or negotiating in a "heads-you-lose-tails-i-win" situation a la the topical Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan.
Despite the obvious no-contest on "skill-sets requirement" (pardon the corporate jargon please) it is alarming, and even a tad disappointing to see the absence of interest within the intellegentsia for a political career. The government could more than do with private sector discipline and the private sector would be greatly enriched by folks with understanding of grass-root dynamics and governance. Sadly this cross-pollination is absent in our society even though it defines the developed world where there are examples galore of people making the shift on both sides of the border.
For all the hype around youth and nex-gen, governance in our country continues to rot with the geriatric polity and an archaic, mafia-like bureaucracy which lends itself to sycophancy and self-preservation. Hopefully, some of us can and will make a difference.
