Management Perspectives

To my mind, two biggest problems faced by the world today are climate change (cause célèbre of sustainability) and inclusivity. All progress that humanity is making by way of scientific breakthroughs, industrialisation, new discoveries, innovations, space exploration, medical sciences, digitisation, artificial intelligence, et all, can come to naught if we fail to (a) arrest the march of climate change and (b) ensure that all economic gains percolate down to bottom of the pyramid and are distributed reasonably fairly between countries, states and regions within the country, rural and urban areas, even within the same village between farmers who become super rich by selling their lands for industry and others who continue to till their small parcels of land, different sections of society, people with disabilities, gender parity, etc. There has to be adequate balance in jobs both in the government and in private sector, blue collar and white collar employment, factories and offices, e-market places, infrastructure building, utilities like electricity, water, railways, transportation, R&D, cyber spaces, police, para-military and defence forces, teaching, hospitals, performing arts, even admission to institutes of higher learning like IITs, IIMs, medical colleges, etc.

Let me start with how the rich countries are dealing with the developing ones on the crucial issue of ‘climate change’. Everyone knows that rapid industrialisation by the rich—post 1950— is a major cause of the accumulation of GHGs (Green House Gases) in Earth’s atmosphere which is leading to the increase in the intensity and frequency of ‘extreme weather events’ like flash floods, heat waves, cyclones, etc. Scores of international conferences have been held during the last twenty years and everyone has shown ‘serious concern’ about the problem but when it comes to picking up the tab most of them clam up. The rich—responsible for the current horrendous state—just refuse to accept that putting brakes on the deadly advance of climate change is also their responsibility and they must pay for it. When it comes to ‘reducing emissions’ they want all nations to agree to similar targets, completely forgetting that they have already built their infrastructure and factories and the developing nations have yet to do so. To add insult to injury, whenever ‘emissions’ are discussed, they flaunt ‘total amount by various countries’ and ignore the ‘per capita’ figures. The world, collectively, needs trillions of dollars to phase out fossil-based energy, to make all our factories and transport—air, sea, and land—move over to really ‘green living’. Developing countries just don’t have the resources to do all this on their own. So, we will continue to argue matters; we have already signed the Montreal and Kyoto protocols and there will be many more, but to help us meet our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the rich will not budge from their rigid stand. Despite all this, India has made great strides in the direction of increasing the share of clean energy out of the total energy produced in the country and, in fact, taken the lead by jointly establishing the International Solar Alliance (ISA) with France. ISA already has 90 odd members including USA which was playing truant till Donald Trump was the president.

Within our own country, the gap between rich states like Maharashtra and the five southern states vis-à-vis Bihar, UP, Jharkhand, and MP continues to increase. It is a fact that the richer states always manage to grab big FDI projects and no one wants to look at the poor ones. Interestingly, the five southern states put together account for an eye popping 30 per cent of the total GDP of the country. In addition, they also have the lowest ‘Debt to GDP ratio’. I guess their being sheltered from invaders over centuries has also helped them but, perhaps, more than that the education level and enterprise of the people in the South and, of course, better governance has also played a significant part.

Let me now look at a few other areas of huge (corrigible) disparities and lack of inclusivity. A glaring example is higher education. We just don’t have enough seats in management, engineering, and medicine to be able to accommodate all the youngsters finishing school and wanting to pursue higher studies. Out of the 26-27 crore students in our country’s 15 lakh schools, nearly 2 crores must be finishing higher secondary or equivalent level every year and, I presume, at least 10 to 20 per cent must be aspiring to join our elite, world-class IITs and medical colleges. Now, the total number of MBBS seats in our 600 odd colleges is about 92,000 and another 27,000 for BDS. This figure of 92,000 includes 48,000 government seats—I suppose these are in government medical colleges. Add to this the total 16,600 undergraduate course seats in all the 23 IITs put together. So, where can our 20 to 40 lakh budding aspirants go? Their only chance of getting a seat lies in joining the grueling and very expensive coaching classes to be able to clear JEE, NEET, CUET, CLAT, etc. Even that is fine because the best must get the prized seats except that many from poor families just can’t afford the fees of good coaching schools. But, there is a bigger and sinister menace called ‘capitation fees’. I recently read somewhere that, as per a National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) study, the capitation fee collected by private colleges, on management quota seats during the year 2013 was a whopping R5,953 crores. Needless to mention that most of it must be in black. I believe this system has somehow been plugged for medical colleges but the engineering ones are still raking in and the figure must have multiplied. Obviously, kids from rich families grab most of these ‘management quota’ seats leaving those with limited means to go for the plain BA degrees and clerical jobs all their life. Even primary education—a matter of constitutional right for every child—is denied to some because their poor parents just cannot send them to a school.

Similar is the condition of sports. With most of the federations—athletics, wrestling, hockey, football, tennis, badminton, et all—chaired by political appointees only those promising children with strong political patronage manage to join national schools and then move up the ladder. Many brilliant ones with potential rarely catch the eye of selectors. Thankfully things are changing in some sports. There is also significant gender bias in sports. Men have always been favoured when it comes to pay of the sports persons. ICC—dominated by India—has happily made a beginning for correcting this; mid-July this council announced ‘equal prize money for men’s and women’s teams at its global events’; great beginning and hope this spreads to other sports too and not only at global events but within the country also. There is indeed huge disparity in salaries of men and women in almost all sports.

Gender bias is of course not confined to sports—it happens in virtually all spheres of life. Barring some brilliant exceptions, men hog majority of the corner office suites as well as in the places of higher learning and even the legal profession—female professors in most private law schools draw significantly lower salaries than their male counterparts. A recent news from IIT Madras has brought cheer on the gender parity front. While announcing the establishment of India’s first IIT campus abroad, at Zanzibar, IIT-M has appointed a distinguished woman professor of chemical engineering, Preeti Aghalayam, as its first Director. Preeti has been a fierce advocate of gender balance and it is fitting that she has been given the responsibility at the Zanzibar institute. Of late several leading women actors have also spoken about the ‘humongous gender pay gap in the film industry’.

Another section of the underprivileged is Persons with Disabilities (PwDs). Dimensions of the problem—how many PwDs are there in the country—is under a haze. A Census in 2011 had come up with the figure of 28 million but, as we are all aware, this is grossly underestimated. I would not blame the Census officials because our society hides the fact if there is a child in their home who is not gifted with the power of vision, hearing, speech, mobility or has cerebral palsy, epilepsy, motor neuron disease or any other symptoms of not being normal.

Organisations working in the area of empowering PwDs and making them self-dependent and an asset to society soon came up with an estimate of about 100 million such cases in the country. Studies by WHO and the World Bank, around 2020, validated these estimates and reported that between 100 to 120 million Indians suffered from some sort of disability! Indeed, there are well meaning NGOs all over the country who are trying to bring them out in the open, impart skills to these less fortunate ones and find suitable jobs for them in the corporate world or in government departments. Some of them also have ‘early intervention centers’ so that the child’s conditions are scientifically assessed and corrective measures taken so that their disease is arrested and rehabilitation process is quicker. But the numbers are so large that we need at least 500X effort in the area. On paper there are ‘reservations’ for about 2.5 % of all jobs to go exclusively to PwDs, but ground realities are different. There is an independent ‘Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, headed by a full GoI secretary, under Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment and they are doing great work but we need much more by way of financial allocations and trained manpower to be able to touch the lives of all PwDs in the country.

A disgusting case of lack of inclusivity manifests in the treatment meted out to ‘service staff’ at some of the residential complexes. There have been cases of residents abusing and even manhandling lift operators and security staff when flat owners return drunk after late night parties. Recent case of a twitter post about a proposal made by residents of a housing society in Bengaluru - reputed as our most cosmopolitan city - to the RWA, made headlines -for all the wrong reasons. It stated that “residents can feel uncomfortable when being surrounded by maids in the common areas and also objected to cooks, carpenters and plumbers sitting on sofas in the reception area; it even went on to mention that most of us have stopped sitting on those sofas.” Separate ‘service lifts’ are of course par for the course in all condominiums which must be used by drivers, delivery persons, and domestic help. It is indeed a travesty that ‘the people we do not want loitering in our gardens are the very people we rely on to run our lives’!

In closing, I want to add that mere slogans are no longer enough. The governments— central and states—as well as society, particularly influencers, literary figures and religious leaders must come forward and actively work on closing yawning gaps between ‘haves and have nots’ of the country, indeed worldwide, before we reach a point when the oppressed ones just cannot tolerate the discrimination any longer.