The Statesman and the VIP!

My grandfather was the first VIP known to me.  All family celebrations and everything good and bad was blessed by him.  His children were the bread winners, but they brought in their economic contribution and he was the headman who ran the house.  Gifts to his grandchildren on their birthdays, even though, paid for by the parent, is passed on to the family headman to bless the child with.  Everyone waited for him to be present before a meal is served and consumed.  He was simply the leader to look up to with respect and reverence.   Every wedding invitation, including the ones of his younger brothers' children,  went out in his name.  There was no ill feeling that he was prioritized over others in the large joint family.  

The experienced elderly statesmen (the term is not gender specific), were competent leaders who managed relationships.  They were equanimous and acted as the fuse.  It will be fool hardy to believe that the "statesmen of the yore" were all exemplary and without any blemish!  Umpteen instances of blemishes can be cited, if we were to put it to debate.  But the larger good of the family and the society were at their heart.  The vast new opportunities and economic prosperity was always tempered with the traditional virtues and the common good of the extended family.  Of course, there were occasional tensions caused by the need for change and rebellion of a younger member of the family.  These were the tests that the statesmen passed by sheer grit or by superior sense of compromise.

The lesser fortunate members of the extended family were treated with compassion, owing to either goodness of other family members or the dictat of the elder statesman who upheld the traditions and ensured common good is not sacrificed in loud celebration of personal success.  There was a system of taking care of the sick among the family members.  Crisis of all nature was referred and resolved.   The younger lot stayed involved with their pursuit of professional activities, unhindered by the day-to-day incidents of hospitalization or extra attention to an errant child!  In short a well defined commune existed under the leadership of the statesmen.  

Cut to the present day, where joint families are anything but a fading memory, economic considerations have simply overtaken and colored our psyche.  Today's VIP's are those who are in a position of power generated by either economic might or political power.  So much so that the value system has been relegated to be subservient to economic priorities and political equations. The question is not one of right or wrong, it's one of social transformation post the demise of the statesman across all spheres of the society.   

As a society we have strongly clutched the philosophy of VIPism without upholding the qualities and values of prioritisation.  This is immensely manifest in the system of lowly gangsters, rapists, thieves and robbers claiming to be the new VIP's and the resultant chaos.  Our trials and tribulations as a society are clearly on account of our scepticism and it's time we took a stand and attain enlightenment.  Such enlightenment alone can preserve our freedom and peace.

The Chairman!

I just read a news item on the dilema of State Bank of India on a sticky issue of how to address their first ever woman leader.  Should it be "Chairman" as the rule book says, Or as "Chairperson" as the new traditions of the society?  

I realise that professional titles cannot be gender specific.  A manager is a manger whatever be the gender of the title holder.  Aren't we collectively, consisting of men and women, addressed as "Mankind"?   In a manufacturing organization they don't have "Foreperson" or "Forewoman", the position is "Foreman" irrespective of the gender of the person performing the function.

There are naming confusions which were never resolved, like the President's wife is a "First Lady" which is a ceremonial title as a First Lady has some protocols to observe!  How do we address the President's husband?  Will it be "First Gentleman" or simply "First Man"? 

However, there are justifiable gender equivalent titles where gender differentiation is of consequence, like for example "host" to "hostess",  or, "Master" to "Mistress"!   That leads me to an anomaly which must have been the result of ill informed activism when, someone indeed decided to rename the position of "Head Master" to that of "Head Mistress" as there is a provision made to differentiate a "Master" from a "Mistress" however absurd it may sound at times.

Ultimately the culture that we adopt shapes the language we speak!   Social bias and belief based on such bias determining gender specific competencies to perform certain jobs and roles, leads to a job being titled reflecting a gender specific naming convention, eg. "Midwife"!  I remember a global customer service leadership conference of a multinational company that I was part of, where I was the lone male member!  We are living in a time when there is absolute equality in terms of what the genders  can professionally accomplish.  We cannot ever determine a specific, job, task or function as feminine or masculine, with the exception of, may be, conceiving and delivering a child in a natural manner, and there we can absolutely have gender specific naming convention.

Finally, the news article did mention that the State Bank of India board did name and decide to call their first woman Leader as "Chairman" as their policy did not offer another option to address their leader.  That's settled, then!

The perils of a "devalued" society!

Switch on the radio, watch television or read a newspaper, you see a chorus on a civil society movement or a guru egging his followers to condemn corruption and black money through satyagraha and there is a whole din and melee caused by political dialogue around the subject of graft.

For those among us who call ourselves thinkers, it is crystal clear, we have lost almost all the values that we cherished as a nation or society.  Slowly and steadily we have built a society or rather attempting to build a society which is looking to build material wealth and slackened the rules around the path of material progress.  Lenders are happy to lend without much scrutiny, borrowers are not keen to assess their ability to repay or assess the risk of income loss on account of job-loss and other unknown phenomenon.  In a growing economy everything is hunky dory until the economy is heated to ultimately melt down. We have seen this happen is other economies in the first world and the repercussions of mindless consumerism. While those nations have already built a social welfare structure including a well developed medical insurance programme, we have none to write home about.  Can our fragile social fabric take the pain of economic meltdown along with deterioration of the value system?  All the din about graft in the media are signs of rapid deterioration!

Our strength has been our way-of-life and support system built around a strong extended or joint family system, which allowed resource pooling and resource regeneration.  In the new way of things, families have become nuclear and our social welfare systems, if they exist, are dysfunctional.  In such a scenario what are we communicating to the individuals?  Every member of our society is made to believe that he is on his own and he needs to save up and the message everyone has clearly internalised this message "save up as much as you can".  There is a thin line distinguishing saving from hoarding!

There is a deep rooted insecurity.  This insecurity is driving individuals to mop up as much resources as one can, and the means don't matter.  Slowly but steadily "mop-up-as-much-as-up-can" has become a motto of people from all walks of life.  The traditional value systems around honesty, truthfulness, courteousness and generosity are steadily eroded.  Elasticity to accept dishonesty in day-to-day dealings steadily erode the foundation of true value system. Value system is created through word of mouth and significant demonstration through practice.   A father who is dishonest at work everyday, cannot preach honesty to his children.   The result is evident, there is ready justification for violation of our own values, all this leading up to large scale corruption.  The beauty is we are happy to jump queue using influence, however it hurts us when someone else does it, leaving us in the queue (sometimes for ever)!

As responsible individuals, all of us need to revisit our own values.  Start practicing them and also preach them day-in-and-out to our circle of influence to establish a sensitive and generous society. Loka samasta sukhino bawantu!

Generosity as a value...

I used to wonder, as a child, why we had a large cemented platform built outside the door leading to our small village house. I asked my grand mother why she keeps refilling the pot with water kept ouside the door. My grand mother used to say that the passers-by can have a sip, if they ever felt thirsty. On a hot summer day when an odd passer-by sat on our cement platform, she would ask us to offer water or a glass of butter milk. She would urge us to share the mango and other delicacies with a host of children from the neighbourhood. She was very nice to even strangers. She believed all our neighbours were our well-wishers and never suspected anyone to be mischievous. If she found anyone saying anything that was hurtful or mischievous, she would correct the person, if younger, or chose to ignore if elder stating the person may have had a rough time. In short she was generous and very positive.

Having spent the last three decades chasing a career and building businesses, I look back and realise that I have missed the environment of generosity and positive outlook. I wonder if things would have been different if I practised my grandmother's brand of management. She saw herself as someone who was in a position to help and she did what she can to help anyone. She never judged and hence she was not afraid of anyone.

I am convinced that the world needs positive and generous people. For every mean and ambitious human being, we need a minimum of two trusting and genrous persons. It's time we taught our children the joy of giving, respecting strangers and doing what we can to help others (including strangers).