“The AAP Effect”

The election season in India is on. One of the novel feature of this election is the impact of newly formed Aam Admin Party (AAP) in the political landscape.

The most significant achievement of AAP is the speed in which this party has come to so much of attention and relevance in the political process. It is too early to conclude its ability to reach positions of power and to hold on to it on the basis of what it delivers. However it has made significant contributions to the democracy in India.

Firstly it managed to shake up the established parties and their leaders by raising a number of questions; especially relating to corruption. It reminded them that the electorate cannot be taken for granted. This shake up has to some extent brought upfront the importance of addressing corruption in public life. I don’t believe this will result in a complete clean up. But it may to bring some moderation and more seriousness about the way government manages its finances; monitoring the quality of outcomes and its benefits to the society.

Secondly it has reversed the trend of decreasing participation of the common man in the electoral process. A large cross section of the society had moved away from participation in elections and voting because they were disgusted at what they experienced and felt that there is no point in any kind of involvement.  But today we see reversal of this trend.  We see active interest among many of the former disbelievers. More importantly we see many more good and educated professionals joining the fray with a commitment to make a contribution to the society and not just for private gains.

Third contribution it has made is the passion it has ignited among the youngsters. Recently I attended a function which was primarily meant for the youth. One of the speakers asked two questions to the audience. To the question on how many have voted in any elections there were hardly any raised hands. But when they were asked how many would vote in the coming election, the majority raised their hands.  I am sure this larger participation can only mean good for the society.

Is this going to usher a new era? Are we going to see a complete clean-up of political system? While I am excited about the reversal of the trend I am not sure of the sustenance and scaling of the collection of good people to overthrow the bad. This is because the very nature of the good people has the inherent fault line that could lead to its implosion. Remember the Janata Dal which came to power soon after emergency. What a great collection of statesmen and professionals. It failed from within without completing its first term.  

I had written a blog on this problem of “Good being Bad” I have reproduced it below for convenience.

To be or not to be  –Of Good being Bad

In the first part of this article I discussed about how any system of governance will always have a mixture of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ use of the system. I have used the word “good use” and “bad use” in a figurative way. Good use is when the system is used for the larger good of the humanity and bad use naturally its opposite.

The relative proportion of good and bad in the society is determined primarily by the value system of the majority. The natural tendency of this mix is to gradually degenerate with the proportion of bad getting more and more; the bad drives out the good.

This is similar to the income distribution and its shift in a society. In a society however evenly distributed the wealth is to begin with, eventually the mix becomes skewed with smaller percentage of the society controlling larger part of wealth.

The question is not whether it will degenerate. But how long it will take! Some social shocks and scams may cause periodic correction of this degeneration and eventually the society/ civilization degenerates to its cyclical low. May be the cycle will start all over again.

One of the key contributors of this degeneration is the inaction by the good. As the proverb says; “the best thing that the bad can expect is the good to do nothing”

The greatest tragedy is that the people who want to use the system for their private agenda (let is refer to them loosely as the bad people) have some of the good traits that help them prosper and the people who want to use the system for the larger benefits of the society (let us refer to them as the good people) have some of the worst traits that weaken them. Let us take a deeper look at these qualities.

Co-operation

The bad people are generally too happy to co-operate with anybody so long as that co-operation brings them power or wealth or both.

The good people generally carry a chip of honesty on their shoulder that they seldom co-operate even with people with similar value system. They believe that their goodness is one step higher and they are ready to dump and run if the other guy doesn’t play along exactly as he feels is right. In fact they almost make such renunciation a virtue.

Courage

The bad normally has the courage and with impunity cooks the account books /investigation/ assessment or any administrative process for their gain.

The good is often scared to take bold decision and hides behind rules and technicality. The obstructive bureaucracy is often a result of such cowardliness and not just self serving actions of the bad.

Power of Interpretation

The bad will interpret laws and technicality so long it meets its end or favors an ally.

The good often tries to interpret with limited appreciation of what it stands for; by the time they finish splitting the hair it fails to be achieve any good.

Sacrifice

The bad is capable of sacrifice for what it stands for. Sacrifice its principals, society, environment and much more.

Good will hold onto technical correctness, its pride and prejudice even at the cost of its ultimate benefit to the society

Loyalty

The bad often demands and commits substantial loyalty to its partners so long as such loyalty is rewarding. They are willing invest in this loyalty for quite some time.

The good often has little commitment to his partners if it feels that their goodness is not of the same type. They are willing to abandon and run and not pull together.

Risk taking

The bad is willing to take its risk, because they see potential reward in taking risk.

The good is often too risk averse. The potential reward for sticking the neck out could be some brickbats. With no upside benefit for self and downside uncertain and costly, the good normally avoid getting involved.

Now we ask the question “How good is good”. There is a saving in our tongue which translates to “the good often bears the fruits of the bad”

I do agree there are many ‘good’ who are as good as the ‘bad’ and it is through them that we have gained anything.

What we need to do to avoid/delay of decay of our society is to develop a willingness to learn the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’, stick together and support each other for what we stand and not be a utopian island of fruitless good.

Willingness to co-operate, to take risks, to take a position, to believe in the intention of the fellow good, not to be cowed down by oppositions and mild differences in styles and not to run away to our comfort zones is what is needed today.

There is high probability that the future of AAP could end up be like this. The party is already showing signs of this internal fault line. If this happens it would be a loss to the democratic processes


"It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more" Woody Allen

“Whose loss is it anyway?”

“Vendor Lock-in” is a major concern for any buyer, especially if the product/ service procured is of high value and has long-term implication on future procurement. The concern is quite natural and justified because if the product/ technology has locked-in the buyer, it is quite possible that the seller could use this dependency to extract more than what is fair. There are quite a lot of discussions on this topic and there are quite a lot of strategies that try to address this. The mirror image of this is the “buyer- squeeze”. In this case the buyer who has significant market power can use the market power to squeeze the vendor to extent that he may really bleed to death.

One of the most classical buyers in this respect is government. This is because bureaucracies like many large organisations are designed with maintenance orientation than development orientation. One of the primary characteristics of such a design is to have policies, procedures, rules and conventions that are not adventurous, but which prevent misuse and misappropriations. Such excessively straight-jacketed systems limit opportunities for human innovation and initiative. Adding on to this is the status quo bias which is inherent in most human beings, and this encourages these organisations to resist change intensely.

Very often we hear about scams where some private vendors or service providers have connived with politicians and government servants to cut sweet deals or to circumvent due processes. What we don’t hear about or bother about are the instances when government as a buyer squeezing vendors and service providers to their extinction or resulting in poor service delivery. This behavior by the government servant could be on account of many reasons. It could be (i) to extract some private gratifications (ii) because he is too scared to take decisions (iii) to satisfy his ego trip (iv) on account of his feudal mindset (v) to prove his predecessor wrong (v) to get some brownie points from his boss and so on. Even if they don’t do such things they end up taking no decision or taking enormous time in taking any decision which is very frustrating for any result oriented person to work with.

What makes it worse is that in Government generally there is very limited dis-incentive for failure and there is limited incentive for success or even for timely completion of the project. So he has no compunction to make un-reasonable demands beyond the scope as per the contract in the name of executive exigency. He will also delay or deny payments on silly grounds. The killer weapon that he has is the threat of black-listing. In private sector if one company blacklists a vendor he needs to worry only about loss of business from that entity. But if one government department blacklists a vendor, the vendor can say good bye to all government business. This threat is often used by the bureaucracy to get their way. If not official blacklisting they may gang-up or use their influencing power to block any business of that vendor. Therefore, seldom the aggrieved parties protest or object. They pay-up or shut-up.

Most often they package their action under the garb of executive exigency. Indian law in this aspect has addressed this clearly. The judiciary has appreciated that if this is not addressed properly, some executives, with a short-term view could use this plea of executive necessity to drive his personal agenda.  The judgment by Justice P N Bhagvati who has served as the Chief Justice of India has addressed this matter lucidly in Motilal Sugar Mills case (AIR 1979 SC 621). The sheer beauty, brilliance and clarity of this judgment is amazing. "The law may therefore now be taken to be settled as a result of this decision that where the Government makes a promise knowing or intending that it would be acted on by the promises and, in fact, the promisee, acting in reliance on it, alters his position the Government would be held bound by the promise and the promise would be enforceable against the Government at the instance of the promisee, notwithstanding that there is no consideration for the promise and the promise is not recorded in the form of a formal contract as required by Article 299 of the Constitution”

He has further elaborated, “Why should the government not be held to a high "standard of rectangular rectitude while dealing with its citizens"? There was a time when the doctrine of executive necessity was regarded as sufficient justification for the government to repudiate even its contractual obligations, but let it be said to the eternal glory of this court, this doctrine was emphatically negatived in the, Indo-Afghan Agencies case and the supremacy of the rule of law was established. It was laid down by this Court that the government cannot claim to be immune from the applicability of the rule of promissory estoppel and repudiate a promise made by it on the ground that such promise may fetter its future executive action."

But unfortunately there is little compliance to this principle in real life.  Some argue that such hard bargain is for the benefit of the exchequer. But it often doesn’t. With such a tight squeeze and unfair dealing the quality of service suffer and many good people avoid/ limit doing business with the government.  Those who know how to “manage” flourish. Such an environment begets crony capitalism which is detrimental for a sustainable society. Lord Acton’s quote on power is quite relevant in this context. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Who else but government has absolute power?

Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases. John Adams

At What Cost

All of us will agree that Result orientation and Reliability are two critical attributes of a valuable executive in any organization. These are of as important as his/her domain knowledge. Most successful and sought after executives are very high in these two attributes.  Let us call these twin attributes R&R (not Rest and Recreation of the army variety.) Although we value those who are high on R&R there are cases when these essential attributes can turn out to be the poison within that contribute to organizational decay. Let us try to understand this a little more in detail. 

Result orientation describes how a person goes about executing his work, his logic of prioritization and his problem solving.  Result oriented people will focus on the outcome expected. They do not get bogged down by the constraints and difficulties. They also do not allow themselves to be caught up with procedural cobwebs. If there is a roadblock, they will find a work around. If there is a limitation they will find an alternative. If they are confronted with a procedural Gordian knot, they will find a sword to slice it away.

Reliability is highly correlated to result orientation. But it also has some different flavor. This also portrays how he relates to the members of the team and/or other stakeholders.  It is about how a person can be depended to do what is expected of him or what he has committed. When we ask a reliable person do something, you can be sure that he will give an honest feedback on if it can be done by him, and by when. Once he commits you don’t need to follow-up. If he is faced by a problem that he can’t solve, he will let you know in time. He will also give you an assessment of the impact of what is being executed among various stakeholders.

Some exhibit R&R in all/ most of their dealings. Some of them exhibit these qualities more to their subordinates. We can term this as downward orientation. They are those who look after their team. Such people can be sure to be bosses who are admired and adored. As they rise up to in their career they turn out to be leaders who can take their team along. But some time they fail to keep their bosses in good humor their growth may get stunted; especially if their bosses are insecure by nature.

Some exhibit it more to their colleagues. This can be termed as horizontal orientation. They are excellent peers you can have. They are normally very popular in the office and office parties.

Some others are resourceful and reliable for their bosses. They have upward orientation. They are bosses favorites. They are much clued onto what their bosses want. Especially they are alive to factors that irritate their bosses and they will find ways to solve them and they are alive to their bosses weaknesses. They become almost indispensable for their bosses.

But this last variety while they are excellent in what they do may end up being poison to their organizations; especially if they don’t have respect their colleagues and are not sensitive to their preferences and concerns. They may run roughshod with their colleagues and subordinates to give what their bosses want. When boss give a guideline of his preference, normally they expect the implementing person to assess and field reality and optimize the implementation plan. But purely upward oriented R&R completely disregard constraints/ concerns and aspirations of the team. They are almost  like bulldogs. Very often others will not complain to avoid being termed a whiner.  

We need to be very careful with such people. Because, silently they vitiate the environment they belong. Because they are very useful they become our favourites, we praise them too much because they deliver. If we are not alive to such insensitive behavior we may end up over promoting them. But this will breed resentment all around. This is specially the case with some people who work in the staff function like personnel, administration and finance. With very little responsibility in client facing activities where client satisfaction may get measured and significant control they have of day to day conveniences, upward orientation gives them enormous influence with the big bosses. They grow very fast. But this is cancerous growth. If it is not contained, it can spell doom for their organization in the long run. Unfortunately such behavior will have very negative impact on the bosses

I have met a few such people in my long career. One used to be an HR executive. She made sure that she implemented her boss’s wishes ruthlessly. She gave regular feedback to her boss on what is happening around. But she was an absolute failure as far as her role as an HR executive. Her colleagues could not stand her and her subordinates hated her. But she was the gunslinger for her bosses and hence their darling.

The worst is when they reach very senior position. That often becomes the beginning of the end for the organization they head. If they have risen up primarily by pleasing their bosses, they will have difficulty in making the team/ organization to deliver. But by then many of the good people would have left. With what is left, it could be practically difficult to deliver. That is why when we evaluate and reward performance of people it has to be against the total organizational cost (not the cost of salary and perks alone ) and not just on what they may deliver. Bull dogs can be good in hunting trips, but they can not be the one running the farm.

In the past a leader was a boss. Today's leaders must be partners with their people... they no longer can lead solely based on positional power.  Ken Blanchard

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Flight to Freedom (Leisure)

I was always a water person. As a child, I enjoyed swimming. I moved on to rowing and then I learnt the joy of windsailing in Jakarta. Then I experimented with to scuba diving. When I moved to Mumbai my passion for the sea still persisted and Colaba sailing club enabled me to pursue this. An early morning sail out into the deep blue sea, (I can’t vouch for the blueness of Mumbai sea!) with the sea princess caressing every inch of my body with her wet and salty embrace, still fills me with an exhilaration that is difficult to express in words.


After that I shifted to Delhi; a city far far away from the sea. I could no longer manage my morning sail out into the sea before getting busy with the daily grind.

I met Rahul who became a good friend within a very short time. May be some connection from our previous incarnation: - ). I shared with him my frustration of not being able to indulge in something that connected me wuth the nature and tickled my adrenal glands.

He offered to find me a solution. He asked me to join him on a Saturday early morrning. Both of us got into my car. Rahul took the driver’s seat. I was all excited and my heart was filled with anticipation. I was looking forward to any surprise. From the highway we turned into a side lane. The road was narrow and deserted. It was luscious green all around. We reached the destination in few minutes.

What a sight. All those beauties standing out in the field, enjoying the early rays of sun. I could not take my eyes off them. Rahul asked me to choose one and mount her.

“Don’t worry. I have selected a gentle one for you. She will be nice to you. Once you mount her and she is on the go, you should start your up-and-down motion with her rhythm” He explained to me the basics of dealing with them.

Before this, I had sat on a horse only at those touristy places where the groom held the reins and the horse walked along placidly. In the club the groom helped me to mount the horse and then handed me the reins and a whip. I was filled with trepidation. Rahul rode up to me.

“Koshy start trotting” He suggested.

“How?”

“Rub your heels against the girth of the horse” He explained.

I did what he asked me to and the horse (her name was jungle baby) started trotting.

Oh My god, I was bouncing up and down and my back hurt.

“Koshy you have to move up and down, kind of like sit ups, along with the rhythm of the trot” Rahul started his lesson.

As I proceeded with my riding for couple of days I realized that it was not going to be easy to be a good rider. A lot to learn! The moment a person mounts, the horse realizes how good a rider he is. When it realizes that you are a novice, it decides what to do. Each horse has his /her own personality. Some are gentle and well behaved. Some are lazy and just won’t move, while others are rascals and will try to throw you off.

A few days into my riding, one morning as I was mounting a horse some fellow riders invited me to join them for a hack in the forest behind the club. I decided it was worth a try. As we trotted into the wild, the horse picked up speed and I was both scared and ecstatic. Rahul was behind me. Suddenly the rider in front shifted to a canter. Meenakshi, my horse followed suit. I did not know that when a horse started cantering I had to stop sit-ups and just sit. So I continued to do sit-ups and I was getting thrown up and down. I thought that I was going to fall off.

“Koshy stop the up-down motions and sit steady” Rahul yelled.

I pulled at the reins and Meenakhi slowed down.

I was hooked. But I had to pay the price to get some level of mastery on these animals. Only then could I take him where I wanted and not the other way! For the first few days my back and hip joints hurt, and I could not walk normally. May be it raised a few eyebrows and some of my friends asked me to my face what my latest pastime was. I experienced what we mean by "a pain in the butt"  However all these are nothing but minor irritants in comparison to the feeling of exhilaration I had when a horse zipped along the tracks.

I knew that horse riding could be a good exercise for the horse; but I never knew that it could be an exercise for the rider too. That is because I had only sat on a horse that walked slowly. But as I graduated to a trot, a canter and a gallop and when I learned to balance on my toes in the stirrup and do continuous sit ups I realized that the rider does get some exercise too.

Whenever I am in Delhi I try not to miss my early morning rides. Some days I stay back in the arena, some days I go for hack rides in the forest behind the club and on some days I practice my jumps over the hurdles. Now I know what Shakespeare meant when he worte  “When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.”

Tail Piece: When I moved over to Delhi from Mumbai, there was no more sailing. When I moved over to consulting from industry it was like a metamorphosis from being mother to a nanny or from a builder to an architect; life had changed 180 degree .I was out of my comfort zone. I had two options; either to look behind with fondness and regret or to look ahead for new adventures. I chose the latter and I am having fun!

“I hate the word success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s goal in life. It is like the male spider that gets eaten up when it succeeds in its courtship. I like the stage of continuous becoming, with a goal in front and not behind” Bernard Shaw.

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Related Read
"Musing of my Partner in Sin"

Customer is the King (You must be joking !)

On a hot Monday morning I reached the branch of a reputed private sector bank at Connaught Place, New Delhi at about 10 minutes to 10. The bank branch opens at 930 for the employees to enter; but the bank counter for public opens at 10 am. As I was on the way to a formal meeting I was attired in my suit. By the time I had reached the bank branch from the parking lot I was sweating. The security at the gate in a quite rude manner told me that the service starts only at 10 and I should wait out in the sun till then. I requested that I may be allowed to enter the branch and wait at the customer waiting area till the service starts. But he was un- relenting. He in his most authoritative tone and manner told me that it is the rule! I could see the pleasure in his face at this opportunity to show his power and authority at that moment. After few minutes, one of the officers of the bank came out. I explained to him my plight and he was kind enough to let me in. (See the paradox; even I feel that I received a favor!)

Is this an isolated instance? No. This is a kind of standard experience we get to face when we deal with most of the service desks of most of the service providers in India. The man (women) behind the desk often believes that he is doing a favour to the client who has approached him. In some of the industries like hospitality we see conscious effort to treat the customer with respect. The management has appreciated how this service orientation is critical to their business success and continuously tries to build in incentives to this dimension of service. However the level of treatment deteriorates with the extent of monopoly/ market  power of the service providers. When the service provider becomes a government entity; especially with some enforcement responsibility, it reaches its nadir. Although we euphemistically call a government employee ‘public servant’ in his heart he is the king dispensing favours. If you demand for what is due to you, then you are considered arrogant and if you raise a complaint to the senior he takes this as a personal affront. Then he will go out of the way to see that you are harassed and you suffer. You can hear his boasting. “You don’t know whom you are dealing with. I will teach you a lesson. I will see to it that you keep climbing the stairs to this office for quite some time". Often the seniors do nothing.

Compare this to the service expectation explained to me by one of my friends from New Zealand. He is a doctor and works in a public health center where lots of people from not-so-affluent strata of society visit for medical consultation. He was explaining to me the extent of service quality expected from him and I found it absolutely amazing. Imagine that a patient comes to his clinic and he a suffering from an ailment which requires certain procedure to be performed on him and a time and is fixed for this procedure. If the patient does not come and get the procedure done then it is the responsibility of the doctor to find out why and  follow up with the patient. The doctor is even expected to take the help of local social worker to address his concerns.

Why is service orientation so poor? There are many reasons for this.

(i) It appears that we have a feudal mindset. We love to exert and exhibit our power over others than be of help. Even when we do our duty in providing a service we like to feel that we are doing a favour.

(ii) The job description seldom includes service quality and how the clients are treated as  key parameters. Even when service quality is attempted to be built-in it seldom addresses the way the customer is treated.

(iii) Most of the service providers do not have an exception handling mechanism. Grievance handling is often an attempt to justify the failure and not an attempt solve a problem.

(iv) There are no measures instituted to see how the clients are treated. In many cases it is difficult to actually measure this in an easy fashion and we need innovative ideas to do this

(v) There is no incentive/ dis-incentive (either financial or in terms of career progression) built-in for the quality of service that is provided either to the servicing officer or to his boss.

(vi) We live in an environment of shortage. There are no sufficient hospitals or schools or colleges or transport service to meet the demand. Such an environment naturally encourages rent seeking behavior and we attempt to replicate this behavior in all walks of life.

May be it is time that we encourage every service organization to undertake independent customer satisfaction audits periodically and publish the same. It could be made mandatory requirement in the annual report for private companies. In case of government entities this could be made a key component of the performance appraisal which will affect the career progression of the officers responsible. This may be the invisible hand that drives changes the way the customer is serviced.

"We cannot always oblige but we can always speak obligingly." – Voltaire

Related Readings

Bureaucracy – Nature or Nurture ?

Service with a smile

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Riding a Tiger

“It was like riding a tiger; not knowing how to get off without being eaten” This is how Raju, former chief of Satyam, described his cover up of the poor quarterly performance he started few years ago that grew to a multi-billion dollar accounting scam that finally engulfed him and his company.

I don’t claim to be privy to what happened nor do I know the complete details of the scam. But I don’t think that he is the only one who is into managing the books in some fashion to achieve or over achieve the targets. I am sure most of us would agree with me. May be he took it to the extreme; or maybe he just got caught?

See what happens when the year-end approaches. The extra effort and extra push to generate more sales is of course a great idea and desirable. But it doesn’t end there. Each industry has its own bag of tricks. Arm twist the distributer to take an extra consignment which he may not be able to sell in the coming quarter. An accommodating purchase manager could be asked to book an order which he can cancel in the next month. A conditional loan conformation from the client. Create a fictitious company to book an order that will one day be written off. This is not just a private sector phenomenon. Ask the tax-collector what tricks he has to reach the target. Anything goes for the sake of ‘numbers’; especially when the numbers lead to fat bonusus and or promotions. One of the primary reasons for the 2008 meltdown in financial markets was also this mad scramble.

The degree of accommodation may vary. Some will do a bit of arm twisting. Some will shift the next quarter sale to this quarter. (A short fall in the first quarter is understandable!) The degree of dishonesty varies from coercion to manipulation to absolute fraud. This is not just the handiwork of the sales manager. This is the culture we are inculcating and encouraging. This culture of deceit then becomes a part of the organisational DNA.Sometimes somebody gets carried away and goes all the way and occasionally a Raju gets caught. Just hard luck!

May be we should take the spirit of the “General Anti-Avoidance Rules” in taxation where admissibility of an item of expenditure is supposed to be based on whether it is a truly value adding transaction or a transaction just for the sake of tax avoidance. In the same fashion the top management could insist that only a true sale or true collection that brings revenue for the period under consideration is booked as the income. That could be the first step towards recognizing and encouraging honesty.

The problem is not just about managing the book for achieving target. It is about the culture of honesty in our business dealing or even governance. As Laurie Calhoun noted in his article The Problem of “Dirty Hands” and Corrupt Leadership “In thinking about this issue, it is important to distinguish self-serving opportunists from those who suffer corruption through their sincere efforts to govern well. Self-serving opportunists often rationalize their dubious measures to themselves through self-deceptive references to ‘the good of the whole,’ claiming that group loyalty demands moral sacrifice or that ‘the end justifies the means.’”

But we live in Kaliyuga when it is all about managing “The art and ethics of lying” (Read on Part 1 and Part 2)

The truth is never dangerous. Except when told. PHILIP MOELLER

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Some People All the Time.. Humour

Major Desai retired from the army and returned to his hometown. Many people wondered with the kind of network he claimed to have and the heroism in the wars that he boasted about why he did not go further up at least to be a brigadier. As per him he had got bored of being in the army and hence he decided to quit and be back where he belonged. Of course there are few skeptics who raise their eyebrows on this claim. Maybe they are just jealous of his charm and popularity; especially with the Municipal commissioner and the local Sub Inspector who are his drinking buddies.

In the second month after he returned home, his neighbor came and asked him whether he had any way to find out the results of the soldier selection in Indian Army, Neighbor’s son had appeared for the selection. Major Desai remembered that one of his old buddies Havildar Sharma from the army may be able to find out about the results. Havildar Sharma helped him and gave him list of all the five young lads who qualified from Major Desai’s home town. Major promptly informed all the five families and they were all impressed by the ‘connects’ Major Desai had. Now for the whole town Desai became Major Saab.

In the next selection season many parents approached Major Saab in advance to seek help for their lads. He offered to help on two conditions. He will first evaluate these lads as he would not like to recommend nincompoops to the Army. He should be given Rs 1 lac in advance for each lad who passes his evaluation. The money was not for him; but to make some in the selection committee happy! But he promised that he would return the money of those who do not get selected.

He interviewed about 30 lads and agreed to recommend for 10. When the selection team came to town he was there at the ground where physical examination was being held. He walked up to Captain who was the team leader shook hands and introduced himself. They had few army jokes to share. Major Saab of course knew by name many a colonels and brigadier’s who were his ‘batch mates’. Capt was impressed. The lads from his town saw Major Saab pointing his hands in their direction and were convinced that he had put in a word to the captain. Actually, Major Saab was describing the story about the temple that was behind the ground in the same direction as the prospective soldiers were standing. After these pleasantries Major Saab returned home.

When the selection process was completed, Havildar Sharma informed Major Saab in advance, before the results were announced, about the outcome. Seven lads from his town were selected. Out of these, five were from the lot who paid him. He met the parents of the other two and told them that they would not be selected unless some action is taken immediately. He asked for Rs 2 lac for each with the promise that he would return the money if they were not selected. Of course they were selected Five out of the original 10 who had paid him were also selected. Major Saab was a gentleman. He returned 1 lac to all the five who did not get selected. He made sure that every other person in the town knew about what he did for the lads of the town. Municipal commissioner arranged a felicitation ceremony in his honor.

Major Saab is not an exception.We come across some in all walks of life. When the stakes are high very often Major Saabs appear to manage a lead. Most of us have a small Major Saab hiding in us too, though we feel ashamed to let him loose. But then it is for us to choose! 


Shame is like everything else; live with it for long enough and it becomes part of the furniture. SALMAN RUSHDIE,

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