In the Wonderland Publicly Administered by Brain Dwarfed Individuals !

About two decades ago, the super boss of the public organization in which I worked as a middle level engineering executive, called me to his cabin for a private discussion. This boss was about to superannuate from the organization in another couple of months and a few private organizations had approached him with some lucrative director level positions after he completed his long innings with the public sector business organization he had been serving all along for decades. And he had almost made up his mind to accept one of his choice.

But he wanted to rope in me too to his new private organization and I had my own reservations and reluctance for various reasons. No doubt, he was offering an 'attractive' General Manager position with much larger pay and perks that I was getting in my public organization at that time.

As I was still reluctant, he was trying to influence me to change my hesitation. 

So at one point, he posed a question like this to me:

"Mr Mathew, I know that you have the power to take decisions that are worth millions of rupees in this organization. But tell me, do you have the power to take decisions worth ten rupees?" 

I thought for a moment. Yes, he was telling the truth. As an engineer my decisions that I take during the course of my work all involve money and can have cost implications to my organization in millions of rupees. The organization knowing or unknowingly had entrusted faith in me and had allowed me of taking independent engineering and technological decisions that are too complex or difficult to understand without some expertise or technical competency. But there are so many silly things for which I have no such powers.And those silly things are those which are too easy to understand even by a child! Besides, these apparently silly matters matter much for me to carry out my work effectively. 

It is a penny-wise, pound-foolish syndrome everywhere! There are so many rules and so many checks and balances for such silly things. There are too many people working overtime to checkmate the smooth progress of certain decision making processes. And there are more people everywhere to do these rather silly jobs whose overall impact to the organization is only peanuts. On the other hand, there are too few people to do works that are difficult and complex. If things are too easy for understanding, then there are too many rules! If things are complex or difficult, there are no rules!

Remember this. The IT companies made a kill initially in India because the administrators understood least about their works. 

No consider this example.  If I needed a pen or some other stationery material or some other such small consumable or facility which are essential for me to undertake my my official work smoothly, the procedures for getting those would take more than 50% of my time and energy that I have for doing my actual work for which I am hired by my organization. It often involves getting approvals from the highest authorities and that process is often much frustrating to those who have to do other important work!  It is often beyond their common sense to understand the need for such created complications in the organizational working. 

When I try to analyze the economic sense behind such things it is often difficult to make any logical justification. The whole of those materials and facilities that are required for me for the entire year to do my official work many not be worth even 10% of the salary I draw for a month!

There is a big organization generally called the general administration or establishment department who does these mundane tasks. In well managed organizations, this general administration department is manned by properly selected people who have the requisite aptitude and attitude to manage the show to the satisfaction of all while they also tactfully control any possibility of wasteful expenditures! However, in many other badly managed organizations, the general administration department is made up of people who are either with a general malice towards one and all due to various reasons.

The people in general administration are the facilitators for every other one in the organization. They serve both the mighty top bosses as well as the lowly beings. They are required to do many small but necessary tasks for all employees of the organization so that every one could perform well. They are the people who process the travel, and medical bills of the employees. They are also the ones who process the cases for allotment of office rooms, office furniture and facilities, residential accommodation, telephones, cars and the like. Of course, they do all these with the approval of the so-called competent authorities who happen to be the chief of the organization or such other subordinate officers to whom such approving powers are delegated by the chief from time to time. In government departments these powers are delegated by various kinds of administrative orders based on authority as vested by various statutes. 

Private organizations also have similar administrative departments. In private organisations, people are generally hired when the need is recognized for a function or work. The pay and perks are determined based on the worth of the person or the benefit that the person can do for the organization. Work is generally recognized because the work contribution of the individual is directly seen as linked to the organization's success and profitability. So, private organizations in general would not like to create any kind of constraints in a person's work by depriving him the essential facilities that he or she might need to do his work.

But the work culture in the private administrative organizations, especially those progressive ones, do differ from the so-called bureaucratic administrative set up of the governmental organizations. As the chief executive officers of private organizations are required to prove their performances to their boards and shareholders with tangible benefits, most of them take appropriate actions to bring dynamism in their respective organizations and take such other actions to keep their administrative departments also to function in accordance with the overall requirements and vision. However, this does not mean that all private organizations are better than public organizations. I have known private organizations that are worse than even the government departments!

But one thing is sure. These administrative departments whether they belong to governmental organizations or private organizations have an important role in making the whole of the organization to function properly or function miserably. Thus the people who man the administrative departments do hold an important key for the organization to perform efficiently. If such departments exist, they are equally important as the chief executives.

The administrative departments are retained as the key functional area in most organizations for the purpose of exerting an invisible force of cohesiveness over the whole of the organization. This invisible power is called the administrative power that controls the organization. This invisible power of administration may also include powers for disciplinary actions against employees who commit acts of omission and commission. Many people generally believe that the fear of disciplinary actions is essential to have proper governance of the organization.

So administrative functions provide a kind of net worked strings to keep the organization in cohesiveness. But the problem lies in the fact that this same strings can also strangulate the organization. Many times the administrative functions are essentially silly and simple, but are required any way to control people who do higher and complex functions. Just as we use those strings called the reins to control a horse or an oxen!

But have you seen how those reins are used by different people? Those who are very incompetent and have doubts about their own personality are more likely to use those reins to harass the animals rather than to harness their energies! In a similar way, brain dwarfed individuals having inferiority complexes are bound to act when they are manning administrative organizations!

Public or governmental organizations are more likely to have their respective administrative departments entrusted with the so-called lower level functions manned by inferior people. Of course, many private organizations  are also no exception. This is because such functions are relatively simple and any one with a little orientation can do it. But invariably after some period of time, these very same people who man the administrative departments become too familiar with the organizational loop holes and with their inherent nearness to higher level functionaries start behaving as if they were the big bosses who manage the whole organization. And every one in the organization who are not near to the top boss might become targets of the whims of at least a few of these lower level functionaries in the administrative departments at some point of time. The cumulative effect of such a situation prolonging for some long duration makes the organization to slip down in performance.

This happens more or less in all organizations in India. The governmental organizations and public organizations are typically affected more. Even the so called public schools in private domain are also no exceptions. The private telecom companies are no exceptions. The private electric or gas companies are no exceptions. Many small and silly administrative functions become areas of corruption when they are entrusted to give some facilities to the general public. Otherwise how could the simple functions of a registration become an area of corruption? 

Organizations become handicapped to perform, not because the people who are required to work and show the results are incapable of doing so, but of the fact that they are not properly facilitated to perform. In other words, those who are essentially responsible for achieving the objectives of the organization are overshadowed by those people who are deployed for facilitating the former group. The administrative groups knowingly or unknowingly become a nuisance and cause unnecessary sluggishness in the system.

This sluggishness of organizational systems are called system lethargy. But what is not understood is the real mechanism that causes this. This lack of knowledge in turn makes it difficult to resolve the problem without any damage to the systems and functions.

So a nation where more and more such organizations are affected this way, becomes a wonderland. Wonderland because no one really knows how the systems work and how to get works done. Nothing can be predicted. Nothing can be planned. Individually people looks as if they are good and intelligent. But collectively it is too difficult to assess!

I once went to a police station for a passport verification. The police clerk who was supposed to do the work and sent the documents back to the passport office was provided with a small 2' by 2' table and a small chair. Fortunately, he had a steel cabinet which looked as if an antique from the medieval times.And it was full of shabby files. There was no place for him to keep the files, open the files or do any other thing. The whole place was stinking with ink, gum and other such things that spilled for years. There was no place for those like me who happen to go there could sit or even stand. There was no guarantee that the papers that he take out would get misplaced or damaged. Yet this man and his predecessors and successors worked apparently with no flaws. Is it not a wonder? But then, to achieve that wonder, he needs to be motivated to some extent. You need him and others like him to be motivated to work by paying  them something! Because they are too demotivated to work in their official environment. They are not facilitated for work nor motivated. The very sight of their work place would demotivate any human being!

If you probe a little more, it is not difficult to find out that there are some others who are supposed to do the work for making the said police station (or for that matter any other office meant for any public service!) with necessary facilities. I am not telling that they are never with any facilities. They do get it. But it would never be the way they want it. It would be either in excess or in scarcity. It would never be in time or regular as they need it. If they have some, then they lack many others. All that is required would never be there! In any case, those who are supposed to do some public service for others become so demotivated that they no more desire to do their work because their work environment is not conducive for self motivated working.

Modern day administration has a cultural legacy from the past. It is founded on the presumption that people are inherently bad and require fear and punishment to keep them working. Perhaps, this notion would be correct to some extent for those who are intellectually weak and inferior. But applying that notion generally to all would be disastrous in modern times.

Therefore, it is a wonderland when the  modernized  society of the land tries to stick to the mores of the ancients. It is again a wonderland when those who have acquired enough intelligence and maturity behave as if their brains are dwarfed and not expanded to accommodate modern thoughts. 

India is such a wonderland. The role of administrators, top to bottom and bottom to top, cannot be neglected in making this country such a wonderland. I do not want these individual administrators to be termed as brain dwarfs, but I can't help it. They could well be individuals having extraordinary brain growths in some directions but not in the direction that would make them befitting to be called as facilitators!

The nation administered by such brain dwarfed individuals would indeed be a wonderland!

A wonderland of puzzles that are difficult to solve!

But is it really difficult to solve these problems? In my opinion, it may not be an easy task to solve these problems totally within a short time. But it could well be done to a considerable extent now. But for doing that there should be a collective desire and an honest resolve by those who happen to occupy top functional levels in various organizations.

And it is up to us whether we want to keep our land a wonderland administered by brain dwarfed individuals always or to make it a nation where all are not kept puzzled always, by having our general administrative departments in various kinds of our organizations simple , transparent and managed by human beings with normal brain growths!





  

The Price You Pay for Ignorance and Incompetence!

A few years ago, a person who was well known to me contacted me for a professional advice. He had just recently  taken up a top management job in a well known private company at that time. He too was a professional engineer like me and much senior to me. But he knew me well professionally and did not hesitate to show his high regards and respect that he had towards me for the professional expertise that I had in some areas, especially in the field of water and waste water engineering and technologies.

His company had almost taken some decisions to spent some substantial money for improvements in their production processes taking help from an engineering consultancy group. And a substantial portion of this proposed expenditure was towards modifications in their water and waste water systems. He too being an engineer having decades of industrial experience could sense some thing not so okay with the proposal made by their consultants, but was not able to make out any valid points to question the wisdom of the consultants due to his own limited knowledge in this field. So he wanted me to have a look and give my advice.

Over a cup of coffee, I glanced through the consultants' project feasibility report and could immediately find many things superfluous. Either the consultants are not so knowledgeable in this field or they are adopting an unethical practice of enhancing the project cost with unnecessary complexities in the design. Since the consultants' fees are directly linked to the project cost, this kind of an unethical practice is often resorted by some professionals here and there! 

With my experience and expertise in that field, I could immediately assess that there was a scope for reduction of the cost by a few million rupees. I told him the areas where the cost reduction could be effected and he being an experience engineer could immediately catch my points. Later he informed me that he could take up those points with his company's engineering consultants resulting in substantial savings in the proposed investments and also thanked me for my guidance.

In the professional field, especially in the engineering field, substantial sums could go to the drains with no one gaining any benefits commensurate with the expenditure due to the ignorance of those concerned with the investment planning and decision making. Sometimes it could be vested interests, but even vested interests would be able to effect their detrimental acts and proceed the way they want only when there is an atmosphere of general  ignorance and incompetency all around!

This kind of a situation is not rare, but very common in the underdeveloped and developing economies. It is not limited to engineering, but to almost every field of activity. In reality, the reason why the economy is underdeveloped or lagging behind in development as compared to some others can solely be attributed to the general deficiency in the distribution of knowledge and competence among its peoples.

While knowledge and competence can be acquired by education and training to some extent, there is an inherent limit for every individual to the extent to which such knowledge and competence could be acquired. In other words, you cannot forcibly enhance any one's knowledge and competence beyond certain limits! Hence, it is essential that we recognize this fundamental reality first and device suitable systems in such a way that right persons are entrusted with the right kind of jobs and responsibilities. An organization can fail in its mission and objectives even when it has people with desired levels of competence, character, courage and compassion but are all occupying positions haphazardly and not according to their capacities!

Engineering is that profession that has the biggest contribution towards economic development. Therefore, ignorance and incompetence in the engineering field could cause tremendous adverse impact on any economy. Economies where the decision making processes are vested mostly with people having inadequate knowledge in the nitty-gritties of engineering are bound to lag behind in economic development. They are also bound to incur higher expenditure for keeping pace with development elsewhere and to maintain their forward progress.

Engineering is both and art and a science and real engineers who develop knowledge and competency to perform their roles with confidence and perfection emerge only when those freshly trained engineering students get opportunities to practice their knowledge and gain higher experiences.Engineering is also a vast and complex field of knowledge and hence, it would not be possible for any one to know every thing. Engineering has divided itself to various disciplines at the learning stage,because of this. But in reality, every engineer who actually work in the real field of application of their skills gains vast knowledge and practical experience that cannot be taught in formal classrooms! This causes another work related problem. Often, it is difficult for even fellow engineers to fathom the knowledge and skill levels of their own colleagues unless they are very keen to know about it. For managers and the so-called technocrats to function effectively, it is highly essential that they know the expertise, knowledge and potential of the those engineers in their team or teams. Knowing the potentials of others is highly essential for team leaders or top managers to make success.

In all professions, especially in the engineering profession, mentoring is a desirable trait and culture that needs to be understood and practiced for long term success of the organization. Mentoring is the honest practice of helping and projecting peers, juniors and perhaps even seniors. It is culture or practice of making the knowledge and competence of others known in such a way that such knowledge and experience do not go unnoticed. People with deep knowledge and competency often shy away from projecting their capabilities while people having limited knowledge and experience keep working overtime to project themselves always! In such a situation, there is always a likelihood that inferior people in an organization are entrusted with superior tasks and responsibilities for which they are not very suitable. Obviously, the organization has to pay a big price when it happens this way! 

In the small example that I cited in the beginning, it was only due to the fact my senior professional friend knew about my expertise and was willing to tap that source, his company could avoid some wasteful expenditures! I have seen many good technocrats making huge blunders for their organizations just because they had pretty no idea regarding the knowledge and competence levels of their team members creating situations that prevented their teams to deliver their best.

Suppose that you want to make a house of your own. If you are a bit technically knowledgeable in the basics of house construction, construction materials and the markets and if you are prepared to use your knowledge for your advantage there is all possibility that you could make substantial savings in the overall costs for getting your house made and also on the overall quality of your house so made. 

Many engineering infrastructure projects are similar, but much more complex, voluminous and pose various alternatives over which best decisions are to be taken. You could possibly do the best collective decisions and implement the project cost effectively and successfully only when every one involved in the project right from top to bottom have the desired levels of competence. If the team leaders and the key members of the team are those with desirable levels of competency, character, courage and compassion (the 4 Cs) there is perhaps no reason that the projects they undertake not getting successfully implemented. 

Let me cite another example. Electricity and water are burning issues in every modern economy and India is no exception.

Let us consider the set up of a thermal power plant of say 500 Mega Watt production capacity. What could be the cost of setting up production facility of this kind? Depending upon the various factors  the cost of such a facility could vary any thing between Rs 40 Million to 80 Million per MW of installed capacity. That means the overall project cost could be any thing in the range of Rs. 20000 to 40000 Million. This is just an approximate assessment based on costs of power projects completed earlier. The actual costs depends on various factors, the main being the manner in which the basic engineering and the detailed engineering (ie the design and technical specifications) of the power utility, is formulated. If the plant design engineers are knowledgeable and competent and if the decision makers are able to make full use of their knowledge, there is a potential of substantial savings in capital expenditure for achieving the same end result!

Now the cost of power produced by the power utility depends on the costs towards fuel ( coal, oil, gas etc), operation and maintenance (O&M) and the costs towards recovery of the capital with interest and also on other charges such as taxes, depreciation allocations, etc. Imagine the advantage of the power utility that had spend much lower with regard to capital expenses! 

Normally, the cost of the plant is reflected through the Project Feasibility Report as prepared by the project consulting engineers. The project consulting engineers hold the key for reduction of capital costs of a project. If they are ignorant or incompetent, the project completion costs could never be any thing near the costs as was predicted in the feasibility reports. In India, project completion costs often exceed much more than the estimated costs. Project completion time also exceed much more than what was originally envisaged.

Time and cost overruns in projects are routine than an exception in India. This kind of a situation creates problems for fixing tariffs and rates for common utilities such as electricity, gas and water. Often the authorities are forced to pass on the costs of ignorance and incompetence to the common customers or the public at large.

The fundamental reason for this kind of a situation is because of the inability of decision makers to understand the working of professionals as a team. Engineering profession accomplishes results as a result of team effort of scores of specialists with differing experiences and expertise. It is difficult for engineers themselves to understand other engineers working in other areas of specialization. This often results in internal conflicts within engineering consultancy groups, many times affecting the quality of their professional services in formulating projects properly. Often, the constraints of individual engineers are overlooked adding to the problems and multiplying the effect of ignorance, incompetence and vested interests.

Consulting engineers are now required to quote for their services. Their services are also decided based on open market bidding and based on lowest cost considerations! But how could you evaluate the quality of their advise? Again they are required to produce project reports of large scale projects involving billions of rupees within a few days or months. Not enough time to even print the copies of their reports! Did they study the situation and assessed every aspects? Did they get the time to do the essential surveys and studies? Did they get the time to think? No one is bothered. What is required is the project feasibility report and the tendering specifications as quickly as possible. Without these documents, no one can proceed to the authorities for approvals and approvals take years! No one can speed up the time required for approvals. What can be done is only to squeeze the time to study the project details and making those documents. Consulting engineers are forced to produce their reports 'as quickly as possible'. This kind of a situation has downgraded engineering profession to its lowest esteem in recent years in India. Expertise and experience have least importance and value in this kind of a situation and professional ethics is also not talked or discussed any where. In the present environment, it seems that pliable consultants who are too willing to comply with the desires of their clients are the only preferred ones. Others have ceased to exist as engineering consultants for all practical purposes. 

If consulting engineers are forced to produce their reports in the manner described above by those who are positioned to do so is again due to the ignorance of the latter about the working of consulting engineers to a great extent. Again this ignorance causes money to go to drain!

When we moved towards market oriented economy, competition began to play a bigger role in our decision making processes. Time has become a major factor. It is a do-or-die situation. In this process we lost our ability to think wisely. We also lost our ability to honor and respect those who thought wisely and who would perhaps had given us the best advise to save us from utter failures in the long run. A highly competitive environment in a society full of unequal peoples, such as the situation in India, is bound to widen the gaps between the haves and the have-nots. If policy makers are ignorant of this fact then there is no chance for the society getting proper policies to make things in order so that the society progresses properly for everyone. 

The damage due to ignorance and incompetence is happening in all professional fields and engineering field has suffered the most without any one really realising the consequences.

Imagine the situation when an ENT surgeon is posted as the Cardiac surgeon! This is too obvious a situation and perhaps no patient would ever be willing to accept such a thing. Nevertheless, Indian authorities do this kind of misadventures when no one is objecting! One can imagine the consequences!

So what is the solution?

I would only say this much. There is a need to honor and respect knowledge and competence. There is a need to honor professional ethics. Not by simply saying. But doing it honestly.

Unfortunately, engineering academicians in countries like India do not really understand the practical aspects of engineering profession to make any real guidance to their students in the practice of engineering. If I remember correctly, decades ago, the government of India had enacted a law that made it mandatory for all industries to provide apprenticeship training to fresh engineers for at least one year. This law is totally forgotten now and the whole thrust of engineering education has been shifted towards getting people of some employable skills rather than getting a workforce who are competent to undertake challenges of progress and development on a whole some basis and not in isolated pockets of economic activities.

When you do not know how to do some thing properly, you have to take help from others who would then do it for you. But when your skills and knowledge are at lower levels, those who come to help you would demand a high price for the services they render. Or you would not know to whom you would turn for help and advice!

Think of this. Why are the Indian manufacturing units in many areas are shifting their bases to other countries? Why do we have to depend on foreign technology suppliers always? What could have been the cost advantage to us had we knew things better?

How could we address these issues? 

Are we in a position to judge the manner in which our democratic governments address these issues with the help of the so-called bureaucracy at present?

Though there are many kinds of professionals, the ones whose incompetence and ignorance could create some problem to others are the technical professionals such as engineers, doctors, pilots, etc. Obviously, the top administrators, policy makers, law enforcers etc do not come in this category though they play some roles in making the professionals work as non professionals! 

The current practice of ensuring better service from the professionals is by the use of fear and threat of the law. When an error in the working of a professional causes some damage of life or property the law zeros in to some one and tries to punish the individual or individuals with punishments of various kinds including imprisonments.

Thus professionals like engineers, doctors and the like who are have to use their intelligence, knowledge and skills to the highest order for doing some complex jobs which others cannot perform are kept under the threat of the law. They work in an environment of what is called 'work-risk'. 

How could any one enhance a person's competence and skills of doing some work under threat? A person working under fear is more likely to fail than to excel. Fear also makes people to avoid even routine works that they are capable of doing and if possible they would try to escape from such jobs.

I have seen this happening. I know many cases where young engineers are trying their best to escape from such jobs that they feel as complex, non rewarding and having work-risks associated.

Any wonder why the best trained engineers from premier institutions discard engineering and migrate to non-engineering fields of works? This causes those having lesser brain capacities to get assigned to perform jobs that require higher brain capacities!

This does not mean that those who do willful acts of omission and commission are allowed to do their nefarious activities. But even the system of enforcement of rules and the system of vigilance management are also affected by ignorance and incompetence and could create more damage than good in such an environment!  

I know that I cannot do a job which requires an intelligence level higher than what I have. I cannot perform a job for which a higher knowledge and competency is required and my inherent brain capacity would not allow me to acquire that. If I am forced to do such works, I am bound to make mistakes and gross errors. If it happens, am I at fault or the ones that forced me to do it at fault?

This is a complicated issue. It gets further complicated as more and more ignorance and incompetence creep in at all levels.

And imagine the price the society would pay for such a proliferation of ignorance and incompetence!

And what is the probable solution to check the proliferation of this situation from rotting the whole system?

In my opinion our human resource management systems need to be overhauled drastically. The systems of recruiting people and promoting people everywhere needs to change. The method of assigning works and responsibilities need to change. The right man for the right job approach need to be practiced honestly.

So, where to start first? If you have incompetent and characterless HR managers and CEOs it is easier to get the whole systems getting corrupted too quickly. If you extrapolate this logic, it is very easy to to see that a leader with the 4-Cs as the leader of the country, I mean the PM, could do a quick change in the systems if he or she so desires.

Perhaps, the Aam Admi Party (AAP) in India, is advocating for such a thing! And if the majority of citizens of India are not ignorant of this then there is a possibility that India might escape from paying a big price for ignorance and incompetence in the near future! 

Learning to Respect Leaders with 4 Cs for Reducing Acts of Omission and Commission in Public Functions!

Acts of omission (mistakes) and commission (committing a crime) done by people holding responsible positions in public functions or corporate functions are liable for punishment under various rules and regulations as adopted by the concerned organization.

While some acts are easily understandable by any one with some common sense, that is not the case with several others. This difficulty in understanding the depth of an act of omission or commission causes many such acts not getting noticed for corrective actions.

This kind of a situation makes an ideal situation for the propagation of corruption in public life. By the word public, I mean all walks of functions that concerns citizens at large, whether or not the organization concerned is managed privately or publicly. 

Acts of omission can happen when people entrusted with certain functions are incompetent to carry out the work properly. In such cases the mistakes they commit are due to ignorance, lack of knowledge or lack of training or lack of up-to-date knowledge or training. Acts of omissions can happen both deliberately or non-deliberately. Whatever be the case, some acts of omission can cause serious problems to the society while some other may not be so serious. Let us consider some examples:

If the pilot of a commercial aircraft or the driver of a passenger train commits an error while doing work, it could turn out to be fatal for many. Many people including the person who commits the error could die in such a case. However, it is not so easy to attribute the said act of omission to the person so easily. Elaborate investigations would be required and the findings of such investigations may not be perfect always because such investigations are also carried out by imperfect beings! This way acts of omission of any one in an organization can cause detrimental effects on others. While some acts of omission may not affect many, some others could affect several people. A surgeon committing a mistake can seriously affect his or her patient, but an engineer making such a mistake could some times affect several people. An on the job mistake of a bank employee, a financial services employee, a mechanic, an electrician, a pathological laboratory technician and the like are all likely to create small and big problems to one or many individuals or even the organizations that they work for.

Hence, it is essential that acts of omission by people at work are kept at the minimum practical levels always. The ways and means of doing this is ensured by good practices of management and governance. To prevent frequent occurrences of acts of omission, it is essential to ensure that the people selected for the work are competent to do the work and are motivated to do it error free always. This is the function of the  management in any organization. If the people of an organization are not generally competent or lacks knowledge to do their work or not motivated to do their work, such a situation could be attributed as an act of omission by the management! Disciplinary actions are often resorted by many legacy organisations to prevent their employees committing mistakes or acts of omission. However, an organization in the hands of a management which is in itself incompetent cannot set things right with disciplinary actions on erring employees because of the likelihood of acts of omissions by the management during execution of the disciplinary actions!

In short, acts of omissions by the management functionaries are much more serious than that of the lower level employees in the long run. In other words, it could be an act of omission of the management that results in acts of omission of the employees of the organization. Thus a pilot or a doctor or an engineer or a technician or a clerk doing an act of omission is partly attributable to an act of omission of the management of the organization where such persons are hired for working.

The simple technique to find out whether a person could actually be held responsible for his act of omission depends on whether he or she had the full control or authority to avoid such an erroneous act. If a person has only responsibilities and no authority or facility to match those responsibilities, the act of omission is not fully attributable to him or her.

But acts of commission are deliberate acts and often done so cleverly that it would be very difficult to detect or even take corrective actions. The acts of commission are criminal or willful acts done for some personal benefit causing larger loss to the public or organization. Higher forms of corruption come under this.

It is easier for top level authorities to commit acts of commission without leaving any direct evidence. Let us consider some illustrations:

A is a large public company making a regular product for the use by another public company, B, to use it for some public infrastructure. Both companies have public servants as their Chief executives and they in turn are answerable to their boards. The CEOs and the board members keep their respective positions so long as their political bosses are pleased with them. It is possible for the top authorities to create a situation where in they could deprive company A from supplying its product to B on some excuse and get the supply from another company, foreign or domestic, who is willing to go to any extent for such a shift in the status-quo. If that happens, there is all possibility that company A go out of business and possibly incur huge losses or even a lock-out later. In another scenario, the CEO of company-A could be influenced in such a way that he or she could immediately make some changes in the production and quality control team so that the product in question deteriorates in quality and company B gets an excuse for sourcing the material from elsewhere!

There are many such scenarios and all these are not mere imaginary ones. Such tacit acts of commission have been taking place here and there in India for the past many years that it has caused the country to be projected and perceived as a nation of corruption. 

It is indeed a welcome sign for those silent citizens of India to see that weeding out of corruption has now become the sole objective of an emerging political outfit called the Aam Admi Party or AAP. Whether they could make any marked success or not is some thing to be seen later!

But it is time for all those who consider acts of commission as not any thing to be seriously viewed, to change their attitudes. There is a need to purify the Indian society from this filthy dirt called corruption.

In my opinion, viewing each and every one with suspicion, as we have been doing all along, is not the way to eliminate these acts of omission and commission in various walks of like in public service or business. 

Punitive vigilance alone cannot resolve these problems. The right man for the right job should be the core philosophy to be implemented with honesty.

And that is the biggest issue. For that we need people with the 4-Cs that I wrote in a blog earlier.

When we learn to give regard and respect to people with Character, Competency, Courage and Compassion and learn to entrust them with higher responsibilities of leadership, things are going to change positively.

And if people of India are now finding people like Mr Arvind Kejriwal as different from many others is some thing that reflects the desirable positive changes in the attitudes of the Indian people that is slowly and decisively setting in. 

At last they are learning to regard and respect the 4-Cs for their own good! If more and more of people of this country are going to realize this, it would indeed make this nation great !