Do 'ends justify the means'?

Amar had just joined an MNC as a fresher and within weeks of his joining his team was to go through an external audit and the team leader , Rohit summoned his team and gave each team member just one target for the upcoming fortnight- ‘ Each team member has the onus of ensuring that their respective portfolio does not have a single NCR  (non conformance report).’ The team came out with flying colours in the audit. No NCRs at all! They had done a clinical job of second guessing the possible concerns the auditors might have had and ensured none of the apprehended glitches were exposed. 

Since then , even after having spent 6 years in the industry, Amar dreads NCRs. Back then though , Amar who wasn’t yet seasoned with the nuances of the industry asked himself , ‘If 0 NCRs is what we are after, why have the audit in the first place?’ He didn’t find the voice to ask and the others didn’t have the ears to listen the unsaid and take a step back to introspect. Rohit celebrated with his team and the the team members went back with a message that 0 NCRs by hook or by crook - is the way to go whenever an audit knocks the door. Today Amar leads a team and his modus operandi remains the same for audits. Had Rohit adopted a different approach and let the audit take its own course, what could have been different? For starters, the team wouldn’t have won the bronze certificate from the internationally acclaimed auditing team. Rohit might have had to face some really uncomfortable questions from the organisational management. His promotion could have been delayed and his team members would have had truckloads of work following the audit report to get to the bottom of things and take corrective measures at the inception - the deep rooted causes instead of the easily concealed effects. It makes one wonder what would serve the team better in the long run. More importantly which knowledge would equip Amar to be a better leader today and diagnose the right problems ?

The Indian Mythologies have left behind a rich legacy of some really interesting tales which are not necessarily prescriptive but are indicative and yet open to interpretations. One such excerpt from Mahabharata, that has caught my imagination, is what followed after there was an unsuccessful (by divine intervention) treacherous attempt by prince Duryodhan and his brothers - the Kauravas, to disrobe princess Draupadi , their sister in law, at the court of Hastinapur. The princess left the court fuming with rage and locked herself in a room vowing that she would not step out of the room till her insult was avenged by her husbands- the 5 Pandavas. When no attempt to pacify her wrath worked, Krishna- the exemplar of the story and the mentor to the Pandavas and Draupadi , requested Draupadi to relinquish her anger and forgive Duryodhan and his brothers. Draupadi couldn’t believe her ears 

Draupadi : ‘And forgive the ones who have insulted me thus? I want them vanquished and only then can I forgive them.’ 

Krishna : Yes because you forgiving them is critical for you to take the right decision 

Draupadi: And let these sinners go scot free?

Krishna: When did I say that? They have sinned and they have to be defeated in a battle to restore sanity in the society.

Draupadi: How is that different from what I just said?

Krishna: If you seek revenge, you too will end up doing things that you will later regret. But think of it this way, what will the ones who dared to disrobe a princess in a court, do to the other women? Fight your battle for the injustices that will follow. Fight the battle for the right reasons. It’s not the action that matters but it is the intent behind it!

The story goes on to conclude with a devastating battle 13 years later but the reason was not just to avenge an insult. The end in either case would have been the vanquishing of the Kaurava brothers.  But would Draupadi’s initial rationale to fight the battle have made the Pandavas’ resolve as strong? Would we have looked back at the battle today and said it was indeed the victory of the better over the worse? (consciously avoiding the phrase good over evil / right over wrong) 

In a fiercely competitive world today, we end up doing a lot of things unflinchingly with our eyes on the results of the action. Once in a while it is important to step back and question rationale like Amar intended to,  shift our myopic focus from the results and introspect about our intent to have a slightly different perspective.

Charity begins at home

The Bhagwad Gita has had a telling influence on the Indian culture. The Gita, as you might be aware of, has been a part of the Indian  epic- the Mahabharata. The epic introduces us to a myriad of complex characters of which my favorite was Pitamaha Bhisma. Some of you might know, he was blessed with a boon of dying at will - Ichhamrityu. Doesn't that sound great? At the outset, it did to me as well. However as I started reading further I realized that dying at will in the context of Bhisma's life was more of a curse  than a boon. What my naivety failed to realize initially was the fact that he wasn't blessed with immortality, he was only blessed with the boon of dying at will. Death had to come by eventually. To delve a little deeper, let's also understand that he would be ageing and beyond a point his life will become more of a liability than an asset. To make things worse the context in which he was living latter half of his life was turning out to be excruciatingly painful. To cut a long story short, he saw his immediate family members in a terrible battle against each other and what was worse was the fact that he had to take sides. What aggravated  things further was the fact that he was compelled  to take the sides of the group that was at fault and despite taking their side he had to bear with repeated insults. From reverence to insult, from being the asset to Hastinapur to being a liability to himself Bhisma's life had turned into a burning hell. By the time he embraced death for himself , there was no iota of an intent to live any further.

The reason behind this annoyingly long introduction is what I observe in a section of the society today. The fact that almost everyone is joining hands to increase longevity of lives forgetting to improve the quality of the lives that we are living. Researchers across the globe are striving meticulously to increase the life span of average human beings- and noble is their endeavor indeed. Hypothetically let us assume our life spans doubled and we live close to 150 years. Imagine what we would be like at that age. While it is true that there have been speculations of human beings living that long in our history books, but in today's context how would that be? While the desire to live longer is there, are we even half as fit to last that distance? Man is looking at ambitious and expensive projects on exploring where else in the galaxy he can settle. The quest is indeed praiseworthy but nevertheless how about attempting to make our planet that we live in, just a little more live-worthy. Too bad we already are blessed with a planet that supports life. I am sure you would have read about the irony on the fact that we spend good sums of money on setting up wifi everywhere possible and chop down trees - the providers of free oxygen.

My friend and I - both novices in economics were having a discussion on what money is. His view was money is a unit of work. My belief was money also is a unit of what it can buy for instance- land and natural resources. While an economist would shoot down both our definitions, it got me thinking. If land would be one of the representatives of money, every year with the temperatures going up and global warming taking a toll, melting more ice, increasing the water levels, thereby engulfing a little more of our land, does it imply the same amount of money can buy a little less this year than what it could last year? The more I think about this the more apprehensive I feel.

While I am no environmentalist, I urge the readers to understand the gravity of the situation that our planet faces. Sri Krishna in Bhagwad Gita mentioned that the wise man thinks more about the mango tree than the mango and wiser man cares for the forest that the mango tree is a part of. While it is great that scientists are toiling hard to see if our life spans can increase, let each one of try to see if we can better the quality of our life. I did read earlier that the irony on there being more diseases despite there being more medicines. There's no point adding years to life if there's no life in those years. While it is great that researchers are looking out for options other than our planet that would sustain life, I urge my readers to take one step that makes the one that we live in a better place. After all, charity begins at ...... .