Kanika Datta: Lessons from Mount Everest

SWOT

Last week, Business Standard published an intriguing snippet on its front page about a Sherpa who chose to strip on the summit of Mount Everest. For BS, no doubt, this was merely an attempt to add a small element of offbeat entertainment. Yet, that tiny news item wasn't really out of place in a business paper. If anything, it contains the kernel of a message that modern corporations might want to think about in their quest for the dizzying heights of achievement.

For Tibetans, Mount Everest is worshipped as Chomolungma, Mother Goddess of the Universe. Stripping on the summit may have been a news-making feat. But it also marks an act of rank disrespect and reflects the depths of crass commercialisation on the world's highest mountain. Summiting Mount Everest has always been the mountaineers' coveted prize. But half a century after a New Zealand beekeeper and a Sherpa first reached its summit in 1953, the mountain has become a victim of human ambition.

The route Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed became a frequently-used one and was later nicknamed "The Milk Run". Until the early nineties, a growing number of mountaineers headed to Mount Everest in search of newer and more difficult routes to climb.

This pushed the frontiers of achievement significantly. Mountaineers chose to risk their lives above the "death zone" of 26,000 feet because, in George Mallory's immortal words, "it was there". Those early expeditions were true mountaineering ventures, in which the brute force of nature was pitted against human skill, endurance and, most importantly, spirit.

By the nineties, things began to change for the worse. First, the governments of Nepal and China, the two countries that Everest straddles, started handing out climbing permits liberally to maximise an easy source of income. Today, it is not unusual for hundreds to reach the summit each climbing season. Second, technological advances in equipment have enhanced the safety and lessened the difficulty of mountaineering. Inevitably, this development spawned the guided expedition. Anybody who can shell out upwards of $75,000 a shot and is reasonably fit can sign up with companies who offer experienced guides and Sherpas, who literally haul or "short-rope"clients up and down the mountain.

The "Milk Run" is suited to the non-specialist climber. It is not considered especially difficult""the achievement lies in staying the course over the massive height of the mountain and surviving the perils of the glacier at its base. The result of this is that where mountaineers delighted to tread, Everest is now routinely being scaled by people long on resources and short on meaningful climbing experience""socialites, businessmen, journalists and even the handicapped. Real climbing, as the mountaineer Joe Simpson put it in his book Dark Shadows Falling, had been replaced by a "circus" on Everest.

This, again, might not have mattered if the consequences of such high-stakes ventures were not becoming distressingly visible. Commercialism tied with raw ambition has desecrated the mountain and the sport. Today, Mount Everest is a 29,000-foot garbage dump. Despite sporadic attempts to clean up, the mountain is littered with detritus""tent fragments, discarded oxygen bottles and food packaging.

Even more ominous is the retreat of basic human ethics. "Safety first, comrades first" is an unwritten mountaineering code. Till the eighties, fewer than 50 people had died on Everest in 60 years. In the two decades since more than 150 people have died in the summit attempt. A significant number of these deaths could have been avoided. One of these occasions was in 1996, when a freak storm on Everest killed eight people, mainly a result of the crowds on the summit, which delayed descent and trapped people on the face when the storm broke. Shamefully, climbers of a Japanese expedition on a summit attempt on the North Face passed two dying members of an Indian expedition without stopping to offer help. Their explanation: the Indians were dying anyway, so nothing could be done for them.

A decade ago, that incident created a furore even in the non-mountaineering community. Since then, there have been several more incidents, but few have occasioned comment. A day after the news of the stripping Sherpa hit the wires, another Everest-related news item received scant coverage. This one was about how climbers, in their feverish bid to summit and optimise their return on investment, walked past a dying British mountaineer without stopping to offer succour. On Everest, the old values of selfless teamwork, compassion and concern for the environment are increasingly being sacrificed.

What does any of this have to do with the corporate world? If you equate summiting Everest with corporations' aggressive search to achieve ever-higher goals, then it represents a potent example of its perils. Of course, we have our Enrons, WorldComs and the impact of global warming to periodically remind us that ends never justify the means. The world's highest mountain, however, stands as a permanent reminder of that lesson.

The views here are personal.