[This article formed the basis of my speech on “Gandhian
values in participatory management” at the Gandhi Peace Foundation (Chennai Chapter)
on January 29, 2012.]
A retired army veteran from the Military
Intelligence who participated in wars and dealt with traffickers, forgers, criminals
etc for nearly three decades speaking about Gandhian values may sound like an
oxymoron.
I make no claim to be an expert either on
Gandhi or on Gandhian values in participatory management the subject of my
speech today. But I come from a family whose values were conditioned by
Gandhian thoughts from 1930 to 1947 when my father actively participated in
Gandhiji’s freedom struggle. These family values imbibed in childhood have guided
me most of the times in my personal and professional life. I used these values
to successfully cruise through some of the acid tests I had to face in the army
- the biggest practitioner of participatory management.
A superficial view of Gandhiji would only see a
number of contradictions in his life. He spoke of grass root participation and
freedom for Indians, yet he ensured the Congress party chose its leader by
consensus and not free vote. He appealed to the conscience of the rich to part
with their wealth to benefit the poor, yet he went on a hunger strike to force
independent India to share the united India’s treasury on Pakistan’s terms. However,
a deeper study of his life and actions would reveal how he introspected and
tried to correct himself to overcome his weaknesses. That is what made Gandhiji
a leader of different calibre.
Gandhiji’s contribution was much more than
leading the non-violent struggle to achieve India’s freedom. He was a great
visionary with a universal idiom who recognized syncretism of Indian society
that transcends differences of religion, caste, language and ethnic differences
as its strength. He used it with great success to rally the masses in the
freedom struggle. Thus he reinforced
India’s national identity and enabled the people to regain not only their
freedom but their pride and dignity, eroded by two centuries of colonial rule.
Gandhiji’s greatest achievement was in
motivating and mobilizing the masses of India across the states, regardless of
their differences in language, religion, caste, creed and sex, to come together
and fight for the cause of freedom under the banner of Indian National
Congress. There cannot be a greater example of participatory management than
this.
Gandhiji managed to achieve all this when
electronic media was practically non-existent, most of the Indians were
illiterate, and physical communication excluded rural India where most of the
population lived. How did he manage to do this? It was through his technique of
participatory management that he appealed to one and all to see it as their
campaign rather than his.
Gandhiji
did not consider himself a pacifist. In fact, speaking at Geneva in 1931 he
said “I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of
peace.” He used quite a few principles of war - selection
and maintenance of aim, flexibility, economy of effort, sustainability and
cooperation to name a few - in his campaigns. His leadership style also shared
many features of the armed forces’ leadership. These included ruthless
adherence to goals, flexibility of approach, constantly testing and validating
the strategy and tactics, and clear communication of objectives. Gandhiji led
from the front like military leaders, persevered in spite of setbacks. His
approach was not doctrinaire but based on doctrines. He inspired by example. Finally, his planning
was centralized, but execution decentralized.
Gandhiji like military commanders reduced
complex operational objectives into small achievable targets that gave everyone
a sense of participation and achievement. That was how he motivated and involved
the masses to voluntarily undergo hardships. Sometimes I wonder whether Gandhiji picked up many of
these military practices when he participated in the Boer War in South Africa
as a soldier of the British ambulance service.
If the armed forces style of participatory
management was based on an ideal armed forces,
Gandhiji’s style of was rooted in
his vision of ideal society. His concept of ideal society was based on the
following ideals:
- Social harmony where rich and poor of different castes and creed live in peace as equals;
- Gram Swaraj where the village is the basic unit of governance with grass root participation;
- Ahimsa: use of non-violent methods like ‘Satyagraha,’ and non-cooperation to persuade resolution of conflicts by evolving consensus solutions;
- Adherence to truth: Gandhiji’s believed “the voice of God, of Conscience, of Truth or the Inner Voice or ‘the still small Voice’ mean one and the same thing.” This faith in ‘eternal truth’ gave him a moral authority across religions and races. In action this translated into integrity in approach and transparency in action. He identified the ‘small voice’ as most important part of purifying himself.
Gandhiji identified seven social
‘sins’ as obstructive to the achievement of ideal society. These were: politics
without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without
conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality,
science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. We find the seven social
sins to be relevant even today as they continue to cause of social and political
aberrations in our country.
While Gandhiji was clear in his core
values, he showed great flexibility in his approach. A good example is the
Chauri Chaura satyagraha (1922) in a small town of that name in Bihar which
turned violent and a police post was set on fire killing 22 policemen. Gandhiji
regretted the deaths and suspended the entire non-cooperation movement, though
it meant loss of face for him as it was the early days the non-violent
experiment. But he did not give up his non-violent approach but only refined
his technique. Such integrity in thought and action to own up the mistakes and
learn from them gave him a clear moral strength when he dealt with his
political opponents and detractors.
Gandhiji’s practice of participatory
management was driven by ethical and moral considerations without sacrificing
goal orientation. Its core values include: evolving a collective vision,
balancing stakeholders and shareholders’ value, customer driven approach, and
360 degree communication. All these values were woven around his unique
leadership style.
Gandhiji evolved a collective vision
after protracted sessions at conclaves from the lowest to the highest level.
Though at times he was stubborn in his style of execution, he gave a hearing to
contrarian views. Though there was difference of opinion in national leadership
on issues like non-cooperation and participation in legislature, he did not
allow the differences to affect his personal equation with those who differed
with him.
Gandhiji believed in looking after
the interest of both stakeholders and shareholders. He believed in trusteeship
management. For instance, Gandhiji considered every shareholder who invested a
single rupee to buy a share of ‘Young India’ magazine, not only invested his
money but trust as well. His ideas on stakeholders’ value were rooted in their
needs. The Bardoli Satyagraha (1925) is a good example of this. The Bardoli
taluka had suffered from floods and famine, resulting in total loss of crops and
farmers faced financial ruin. Mindless of their problems Bombay Presidency
authorities increased the revenue tax by a crippling 30% and refused to revise
it although farmers represented against it. A young Vallabhai Patel approached
Gandhiji to seek his concurrence to launch a movement of farmers’s struggle and
refuse payment of tax. Though Congress was not involved in the movement
Gandhiji gave his blessings to it because he considered rural Indian as an
important stakeholder. Though the government confiscated the land initially, ultimately
a settlement was reached in 1928. Bardoli marked one of the earliest successes
by non violent struggle and earned Vallabhai Patel the sobriquet ‘Sardar’.
Gandhiji was an instinctive marketing
man who can translate the ordinary thing into an extraordinary icon. Khadi – the homespun cloth woven by villagers
all over India – came to symbolize their survival struggle in the face of
imported cloth. Similarly, the charkha
to which the common man could relate became the symbol of Congress-led freedom
struggle. Thus the use of symbols provided the rural masse rallying points to
identify and participate in the Congress movement.
Communication is now a key element in
modern life - be it politics, business or entertainment. But even in those days Gandhiji realized its
importance. He had an instinctive ability to communicate across the
lines – the rich and poor, the upper and lower castes with equal facility.
Simplicity, sincerity and clarity of thought were the keys to his
communication. He used it as a powerful tool in spreading his inspirational message
not only across the country but the whole world. I can think of only one other leader- Swami
Vivekananda, Gandhi’s contemporary in the early days, who had this gift.
Gandhiji’s successes inspired a host of leaders
– from Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose to Abul Kalam Azad to Motilal Nehru and the
young Jawahar Lal – who had their own ideas on freedom. During the World War II
Netaji inspired soldiers of the colonial Indian army to join the Indian
National Army. It sent a clear message that the British cannot depend anymore upon
the colonial Indian army’s unshakable loyalty. At the end of war the British
got a real scare when sections of the Indian Navy mutinied for the cause of
freedom. On top of it, the War had crippled British economy and British troops
stationed in India were keen return to their homeland after six years of war. Clearly
the British in India were an exasperated lot.
Gandhiji showed his real time strategic skill
when he leveraged these vulnerabilities to hasten the exit of British from
India. So to my mind the greatest contribution of Gandhiji was not merely
leading the freedom movement but in using the dynamic environment to further
his aim of enabling Indians to regain their freedom, dignity and national
identity.
Is Gandhiji relevant today? This is a question
in the mind of many in India. Winston Churchill said in 1931 that he was alarmed and nauseated “to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious middle
temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding
half-naked up the steps of the vice-regal palace, while he is still organizing
and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal
terms with the representative of the king-emperor.” But four years later the
same man wrote to GD Birla: “Mr Gandhi has gone very high in my esteem since
he stood up for the untouchables….I do not care whether you are more or less
loyal to Great Britain….Tell Mr Gandhi to use the powers that are offered and
make things a great success.”
What made
Churchill a diehard conservative colonialist to change his mind about Gandhi?
Gandhiji’s management style was ruthlessly
leadership-driven; yet he ensured it related to the poorest of the poor, the
downtrodden and the enslaved, the weak and the discriminated. This is what made
Gandhiji’s message universal. It was this universality
that influenced Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, two great leaders of our
times, to adopt Gandhiji’s methods for their non-violent struggle and
succeed. To me Gandhiji continues to be relevant; the
more I learn about him, the more it grows.
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