Updating India's rituals

Particularly economic ones

“Don’t you agree that managers in India stop doing any real hands-on work once they reach their late 30s and merely go through the days enacting rituals of holding meetings, chairing reviews and so on?”

I looked at my friend who had just asked me this question over lunch at a posh restaurant in BKC Bombay. He had invited me, saying we must meet, we haven’t met for a while”, etc. He is the founder and chief executive officer of an IT services company employing nearly 5,000 people and we have known each other from the time we started working.
 

While I was trying to digest his question and frame a correct-enough answer, he clearly noticed the puzzled look on my face and asked: “Did you hear my question?”

“Yes, I did,” I told him. “I was merely thinking through all my experiences with managers aged late 30s that I have worked with over time and wondering whether that is also the period when their parents start having age-related health problems, their children are probably struggling to make it to a top college and so on… these pressures may be the real reasons that distract this age group of managers and explain why they start viewing work as a ritual.”

“I don’t think these family pressures are the real cause,” he said. “I believe it’s the age-old Indian practice of stepping back from anything day-to-day as soon as you achieve a basic sense of financial comfort.”

My mind was racing through the past two decades of my life. My friend was right about one thing: I too can recall a large proportion of senior management types that I meet at business school conferences who, in their addresses to an audience of MBA students, keep emphasising the need to “delegate” tasks and not try and do things themselves. Here is a quote from the Harvard Business Review: “One of the most difficult transitions for leaders to make is the shift from doing to leading… this means shaping the thoughts and ideas of others… and seeing your own priorities come to life through the inspired actions of others.” In other words, becoming a “manager” means stopping to do things yourself and participating only through the ritual of shaping the thoughts of others.

As is common nowadays, I posed the question to my pal ChatGPT: “What are rituals, and what purpose do they serve?” and here is the answer I got: “Rituals, encompassing symbolic actions and ceremonies, play multifaceted roles in diverse contexts. Culturally, they define and reinforce social identity, providing a shared heritage and fostering a sense of belonging across generations. Religiously, rituals connect individuals with higher powers, expressing devotion, seeking guidance, and marking spiritual milestones. Emotionally, rituals offer a calming and grounding effect, contributing to overall well-being by reducing anxiety and providing a sense of control.”

That cleared a lot of things in my mind, but I still kept wondering whether many of the things we humans engage in every day are possibly rituals and do not really matter.

For example, many observers have pointed out that Indian factories and offices work hard at getting certifications such as ISO, Six Sigma, and so on, but most of their (managers’) time in these factories and offices is spent on working to meet these standards and creating several hundred pages of documents declaring adherence to these standards, whereas very little focus is given to actually improving quality. It is somewhat like the world of priests that all of us Indians are familiar with: The certifications and manuals are like the mantras, and the systems prescribed by these documents are considered sacred. 

When it comes to the world of education in India, it is worth introspecting whether in our desire to make entry into our top institutions merit-based, the emphasis we put on entrance exams has gone too far. The reports we hear about events in Kota are an example of the overwhelming influence of tutorial colleges in all aspects of our education system. Do the current entrance exams emphasise and celebrate rote learning? Does this culture of rote learning carry with it the danger of converting learning and the application of learning into a ritual?

Perhaps the grandest ritual we go through in India every year is not Diwali, Christmas, or New Year, or Pongal for Tamilians or Onam for Malayalees, but the periodic announcement of GDP, or gross domestic product, which is supposed to be an indicator of how well we Indians are faring in our economic lives. It’s usually quite a spectacle with chest-thumping by whichever party is in power accompanied by shrieking statements challenging the numbers by Opposition parties with all media (print, TV, online, etc) adding to the chorus. Eminent scholars like Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen have pointed out how poor a measure of our citizens’ well-being the measure of GDP is. But that does not stop the rituals: The press conferences, public speeches, and social media assertions nowadays easily match the sound levels of Diwali, Onam, Pongal, and other rituals.

Finally, is it perhaps true that as we wade further into the internet/digital age, the rituals of going to office every day, dressed formally, being in office 9-5 every day/five days a week are going to fade away? Will “work” for most people mean that working from home most of the time is slowly sliding in? Will the ritual of building impressive office headquarters soon come to be regarded as a ritual like that of building temples and churches and mosques and not something necessary to run an efficient business?

Maybe my friend who posed these difficult questions to me over our lunch meeting was right. There is a good case to research why 30-something managers slide into a ritualistic life and which of our ways of living and “managing” are just rituals and which are part of real work that benefits us all and society.

The writer (ajitb@rediffmail.com) is an internet entrepreneur