Aristotle had once said, “Humans are social animals”. True, it is our basic nature. We can’t survive outside society. To fulfill our different needs, we have different people in our society? The role based arrangement is well constructed. We deal with colleagues at office while we share our emotions with our friends, families. We [...]
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Of The Fools, For The Fools, By The Fools
Posted By ambuj on August 11th, 2010
Democracy is considered as the best form of government and India is the largest democracy of the world. We [ Indians ] are a democratic nation from last 60 years. But,
Why 42% of India still falls below the international poverty line?
Why 34% of India is still uneducated?
Why we have a national crime rate of 167.7%?
In search of these answers I tend to agree more with George Bernard Shaw when he says Democracy is a government of the fools, for the fools, by the fools than Abraham Lincoln’s original thought where he says Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.
People are core of the democracy but collectively can they form a better government? I doubt. Albert Einstein had once said, "two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe". True. On a large extent people are stupid. They are emotional. They are jerks. Most of them are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings. They are simple careless. They don’t care. And, if they don’t care you can’t expect them to make a collective wise decision.
In Democratic India, we have seen prime ministers whose names were not known to more than 50% of the public – till the time they became prime minister. I wonder – what kind of democracy is this? Our current Prime Minister doesn’t even bother to go to public and fight an election. He is happy with the blessings of monarchy – which again increases my doubt over the form of democracy we have adopted.
We have a democratic state like Kashmir, whose problem is getting bigger and bigger. None of the democratic institutions are able to solve this. We have a democracy where more than one million people across 10 different states are fighting against government since past two decades, and our democratic institutions are helpless.
If we go back in history and see the origin of democracy we’ll find the traces back in India. The place was Vaishali, a city in North Bihar which came into existence around 4th century BC. The famous King Nabhaga abdicated the thorne due to an accusation about Human Rights violation. The city then declared itself a Democratic Republic (Prajatantrik Ganarajya) – first democracy of the world.
The point which I want to make here is – we [Indians] have seen various forms of government in India and democracy has never been a successful form, at least not in last 2500 years of known history. I would not like to comment as what should / could be the alternative but I would surely recommend a revisit to Indian History. Every nation has its own culture, own way of living and own way to govern. We need to understand our way of democracy or rather say government. In stead of blindly following global form of democracy we need to rely more on something which we have learnt from our past.
I know this subject can’t be discussed in just 500 words. It needs lots of study, lots of facts, lots of brainstorming. Though, I would just like to trigger a discussion which can help us to think on various spectrums of this topic.
Submitting this post to “Mera Bharat Mahaan” contest of Blogadda and Pringoo
Management Lessons from IPL
Posted By ambuj on April 29th, 2010
In the midst of all the controversies surrounding IPL, there are many transcendent attainments for management students / professionals. There are many virtuoso with ennobling leadership skills. Let’s explore them, manifest them, and exhibit them.
One of such marvelous magnetism was shown by Shane Warne. Leadership is the ability to get extraordinary achievement from ordinary people. When Shane Warne got a team of ordinary players, he had the same thing in his mind. He proved that a leader can make things happen, and make them happen in a BIG way. Rajasthan Royals became the first IPL Champion and the key was the passion of Shane Warne. He portrays the basic rule of success. At the end of the day, It’s not the name but the work that matters. In an intense competition where everybody is relying on reputation – you can concentrate on your work and by-product success, will automatically follow.
Second stupendous charisma to watch was Adam Gilchrist. Jealously is normally treated as a bad feeling to have, but in some proposition it gives a better result. That is exactly what happened with Adam Gilchrist when Shane Warne’s team became a champion of first IPL. The battle of ego, expertise between Shane Warne and Adam Gilchrist has always been a news. You can read about it here, and also here. So, the point here is – in certain scenarios you perform brilliantly because you want to prove yourself better than your competitor. The jealousy can compel you to achieve success.
In a tremendous pressure, there could be only two outcomes, either a diamond will emerge or it could be vanished with no reigns remaining. Fortunately MS Dhoni emerged as a diamond from IPL 3. He proved the notion that if you handle the pressure well, you can achieve the desired results. Expectations can lead into performance. And, the high expectation everybody had with Dhoni was converted into a high performance by mighty Indian Captain. Chennai’s victory in third edition of the league is credited to exceptional leadership skill of MS Dhoni, which blossomed even under formidable pressure.
Along with this, there are many more lessons to learn from masters like Sachin, Kumble, Ganguly. Let’s hope to see some great achievements going further.
