PASSPORT OF GUJARAT: HAZARDOUS JOURNEYS
Alexander K Luke
Manas Publications;
380 pages; Rs 795s
The contents of this book by A K Luke, a Gujarat cadre officer of the Indian Administrative Service (who preferred resignation in 2006 to accepting a sudden transfer) suggest that he should have been named the divine hero Hercules and not the mortal Alexander, because cleaning up the Augean stables of corruption appears to be his (self-appointed) mission in life.
At the start, this reviewer must admit to some confusion. In November 2006, the local press referred to Mr Luke's departure as voluntary retirement. He himself terms it so the first time on page 280. That becomes resignation in the very next paragraph and remains so for most of the book. Respected retired members of the service have told the reviewer that the two are not quite the same. Mr Luke needed to clarify what it was that he did, especially in view of the moral tenor of the book.
Mr Luke says this is neither a conventional management book nor a soliloquy. He claims it is about ethical principles he used in running and reviving commercial and development organisations. Neither the title nor the flow of the book is in consonance with this statement. The book is mostly a first-person narrative of the author's career from 1975 to 2010, in and out of government.
Mr Luke's take on ethical management is repetitive and irksome. He appears to be claiming that he invented it even as he debunks all management gurus, including indirectly Peter Drucker, who needs no testimonials from anyone. Right at the outset, the author seems to say that corporations are inherently unethical when they follow the best management practices to grow and make profits. The author appears to believe that private corporations also behave like government ones with questionable ethics and business practices. In reality, ethics is an integral part of all successful business survival. Otherwise, chaos and anarchy would have prevailed, and not the interlinked and interdependent world.
Gujarat has always encouraged entrepreneurship both in the public and in private sector. Yes, politics and bureaucracy do have an overarching relationship that Mr Luke often managed to overcome for the benefit of the corporation he then served. There is no gainsaying, however, that the prevailing Gujarati ethos allowed him the leeway to do so. This is borne out by the fact that many other Gujarat public corporations were also revived in the same period. The book takes no account of this important fact.
The book is also about Mr Luke's relationships with people around him, as can be seen from his personal comments on the doyen of the chemicals industry, K H Gharda. With a very short stint of six months with Gharda Chemicals, Mr Luke claims that "substantial improvements were achieved, doubling the profits". He then goes on to reiterate what he did and what others did not.
No success is achieved overnight. It takes years of effort and teamwork - and not only in Gujarat. Mr Luke is not the only one who faced hazards in his journeys. Hazards are part of the progression of all enterprises without exception. Mr Luke would have enriched readers if he had detailed what his hazards were, how he overcame them and how these steps could become lasting management philosophy.
The author's achievements in Gujarat were indeed commendable and worth emulating. But the book would have been of greater use to the reader had he been able to really distil the ethical management practices and leadership guidelines from his experience of leading from the front and turning around various public sector units. That would have helped lay down the path for future leaders inclined to follow in his footsteps. Instead, each chapter in the book is a very rambling and first-person account of the events at different phases of his career. There are no takeaways for the reader. This brings down his work to saying, in essence, "what I said and did was right but everyone else wrong and how I had to fight with everyone and the system".
Sharing knowledge does not amount to making management books detached and cold, as he claims. He could have converted each of his experiences into case studies. Given his human touch and his record in Gujarat, the book then would have become a treasured legacy for future generations. Instead, it is a paean to himself and critique of everyone else.
Mr Luke is obviously fond of language and literature. He admits to this in the preface when he talks about quotations from literature and famous words. Therefore, it is a disappointment that the book does not measure up to accepted standards of copy-editing, with numerous lapses of language, grammar and syntax.
If you want to read about one man's work in various positions largely within government, this book may appeal to you. If, however, you are tempted by the word "hazardous" in the title and if you are looking for sound management principles based on ethics, you are in for a good measure of disappointment.
