Thai Airlines off load a Rude Traveller

Today, Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to Delhi, which was already on the run way for take off, taxied back to position to off-load a rowdy passenger.

This upstart of Delhi’s belly, allegedly, asked some cabin crew, who was struggling to reason with his wife, that their infant child was too big for the basinet, to “shut up”. It turned out, as per the Thai people ‘shut up” is not only impolite, but also an act of hostility.

Since the flight was still taxiing, the “shut-up” impropriety was reported by crew to the captain and by the captain to the ATC, and the latter determined that the flight could return to off-load the passenger.

A couple of co-passengers intervened, but the TG staff was adamant, despite an apology, albeit a delayed one, the family was off-loaded. When I argued to not off-load, the chief flight purser with hands folded kneeled by my seat, and explained the peril of flying off with a hostile passenger on board. Interestingly, he went on to explain, such problems were experienced more on the Delhi and Calcutta flights and not so much on the Hyderabad and Bangalore bound flights.

In India, both the organized and un-organized private sector un-excepted, people are becoming increasingly more aggressive. Democracy, civil rights movements, and public school education, all together are seemingly failing to inculcate a sense of sobriety, somberness and decency in the people. While cinema halls are increasingly getting replaced by multiplexes, yet the conduct of the audience is becoming increasingly pedestrian than elite.

North of the Vindhyas particularly, there is too much of un-necessary aggression, something that this part of the country can certainly do without. In shopping malls, cinema halls, eating places, fetes et all, even the hoi-polloi struts around with a very un-called for swagger, something that really threatens women, works to the discomfiture of the old and challenged, triggers parental anxiety, and necessitates worthless men to act as worthy chaperons.

We also tend to confuse, aggressiveness with assertiveness. We believe, if we are not aggressive, intimidating or pompous, we cannot be assertive and would not be taken seriously.

This mentality clearly does not augur well for a civilized society. In fact it has an ominous butterfly effect. I have often seen my lady colleagues become un-necessarily angry in traffic and parking lots or at crowded entry points, as they believe, womanly dignity will not take them anywhere in a society that understands only aggression. While I know, that notion is not completely correct, yet it is not wrong either. If you wait for your turn with dignity, your turn continues to elude you. If, you nudge, poke, scorn and elbow, you at least get your turn.

There is plethora of empirical evidence that heightened aggression leads to conflict. And that aggression is not at all genetic but acquired. While lot of people seems to retract just before the conflict becomes irreconcilable, nevertheless the whole process is very consuming.

The Thais are very polite people. Sometimes, we may confuse their politeness with submissiveness, and their mannerisms with obsequiousness, but that would be a blunder.

I have lots of Bihari friends. They are very polite and decorous. But they are not push-overs. And push coming to shove, they may even not fight shy of pulling the trigger, but would not deign to be un-decorous. I have several Punjabi friends, great people if you know them, but in anonymity they take an aggressive posture at the drop of the hat, but chicken out, when their posturing gives rise to debilitating conflict.

I am no way trying to advocate the much touted theory of genetic pre-disposition when it comes to aggression. Aggression is an acquired behavioral trait. It is a by-product of societal conditioning.

Having travelled to about 110 countries, ironically, as a society I think, I find India to be very aggressive. When on the road, we honk with a viciousness that can unsettle the most stubborn. While entering a train, we jostle to board first, inconsiderate to even ladies and children, when there is no prize for being first.

It is understood, it is an eco-system issue, and not nationality specific, perhaps, a British subjected to the environment of denial and rejection that an Indian grows up in, would exhibit similar behavior. But that is no excuse for not improving or making the much-needed change.

I have a friend who is a cop. A very good cop! And a very very good father! He has a pet theory with which he has been experimenting, and I am not only writhing in curiosity but also extremely eager to see the outcome of his real life experiment. He believes, aggression of society can be curtailed to a baseline if not out-rightly weeded out, if parents and schools can channelize that in sports in the formative years of the child. He also believes, criminal predilection can be curbed significantly, if sports are rewarded, recognized and re-emphasized both in schools and society.

  

   

The American Gun Culture and Charleston Shootings

There is a culture of shooting in America. One could call it the gun cult. When immigrants from Europe landed on American soil in the early 1600s, they encountered a highly evolved moralistic tribal civilization of the native Indians, who fought fiercely to preserve their independence and culture. While this civilization did not have too many rules or laws, they certainly did have an exalted sense of the right and wrong and they detested white interference in their native affairs.

From killing to spreading disease, the white settlers tried all means to weaken the native civilization. The primary objective was to be able to exploit the land and forests in territory on which they held sway.

President Jefferson was instrumental in moving the Indians west of the Mississippi. Perhaps the idea was to settle some tribes in the Indian state of Oklahoma (meaning red people)

While this could in some measure be the provenance of the gun culture, the 1791 Second Amendment granted the constitutional right to own weapons, which further gave this tendency a legitimacy that even today a civilized United States of America finds too hydra-headed to combat. The background checks that a vendor of assault weapons is supposed to perform on the buyers of the weapons are given a go by, thereby putting weapons in the hands of the rash and irresponsible, and even those with a criminal record and propensity.  

During the pre-civil war era, the whites would often be shooting the Reds and the Reds would often be shooting the whites, till the issues of the blacks(traded slaves) also rolled in the whole picture. In the late 1700s, there are reports of reds shooting white children returning from school.

The rate of carrying arms is the highest in the United States, counting as high as 9 guns on 10 Americans, is double of the second highest – an anarchical Yemen - a failed Sunni state facing Shia separatist insurgency. The second highest absolute number of arms today are owned by us – Indians - but given the large population base the per capita ownership is still not an astounding number.

The latest Charlston Church shootings are an aggravated manifestation of background that I have just painted. The American Press calls it Hate Crime. I would call it Mad Terror or Black Horror.

Corporate Vs Political Leaders

I have in some colleges spoken to youngsters on various aspects of leadership. I have also spoken on leadership in my own company to a team of leaders in making. And one aspect that I always over emphasized, is that leaders should be able to inspire trust.

The best of leaders fail if their tracks when teams lack trust in them or if due to some turn of events, the trust that the teams have dwindles or is all together breached.

On the other hand, when we examine the political arena, we find a host of leaders who people don’t trust. Do their followers trust, an extrovert Lalu, a reclusive Mayawati or an enigmatic Jayalalitha. The answer that is mostly expected is a vehement denial and complete lack of trust such leaders. How then are these leaders successful and how they script their comeback is something that baffles the common mind.

Unlike corporate leaders, the political leaders thrive on the cult that they create about themselves. Misgivings notwithstanding, I am talking about leaders who have used caste and other demographic diversity to monopolize power and am not alluding in any measure to some transformational or inspirational leaders. As the latter rely mostly on personal charisma. They also don’t follow any pre-defined model for leadership. They are impromptu,  masters of the moment, and skilled in the art of the rhetoric.

Corporates leaders lead their immediate teams, which in turn provide leadership and guidance to the next level and this process of cascading continues. Political leaders don’t work with the people they lead. They work with their secretariat, which does not have the power to comment on criticize them. The people who this political class leads are far removed from their leaders, and seldom get a peak into what they do, and rely more on what they say.

While corporate leaders like to work to a plan, political leaders including transformational leaders may often like extempore action till the time the activities are not antagonistic to their public image. They also maintain deliberated distance and calibrated allofness from their followers. They try to create a perception of un-approachability that stokes that myth and cult that they try to build around themselves.

Ability to listen, and then ability distill the salient points made by the team is a very important trait for corporate leader. It is said that Alfred Sloan would very intently listen in a meeting, and then in the end, beautifully summarize the meeting, and send a brief memo on the actionable points to the team. While this trait is important for both, it is particularly important for political leaders, given their variegated mass base.

But one thing that is common to both corporate and military leaders is that both work to a plan. For any leader to succeed, it is very critical that he conceives a plan, and then works to that plan. And how many times plans succeed is something that I don’t need to expound upon. We all know, more often than not, in personal and business lives, plans don’t succeed. This does not mean, that we don’t plan or work to that plan. If we don’t work to a plan, losing traction of the firmament on which we stand is almost certain. The reasons why plans don’t often work are usually extraneous to the plan and exist in the evolving eco-system, which swoops on the plan, and frustrates it. For a pharma company, it could be warning letter from the regulator, or for a manufacturing labor-intensive business, it could be a strike.

Napoleon was a very meticulous planner, and so was Alexander of Greece. But we all know their plans failed more often than they worked. But Napoleon was prone to planning each successive battle with greater meticulousness than the previous one. Plans can be hostage to unforeseen events but their failure not withstanding, planning cannot be jettisoned to vagaries of the ecosytem. A team working to a plan has far more chances of succeeding in adversity than a team relying on adhocism.

Ranthambhore Tiger

In India, what we need to urgently create at all levels, is an eco-system that recognizes merit, also inculcates a mentality to spot and reward it. Another deficiency that grievously plagues our information resource base is our inadvertent but stark dismissal of informal and anecdotal knowledge as claptrap and bunkum, and I will tell you why.

A couple of weeks ago, just for a get-away, we drove to Ranthambhore to experience the Tiger Safari.

Spotting the Tiger is an art in itself, as this elusive creature is shy and shuns the human gaze. Besides, you cannot track it scientifically by following pug - marks, or sometimes by smell of its fresh urine, because most wildlife authorities in India, in the interest of ecology don’t allow such route improvisation to tourists. They demarcate tracks on which mechanized transport can move on, and tourist vehicles cannot deviate from such track. So spotting is often from very far, triggered by the warning calls of a sambhar, nilgai or a deer, and always while the tiger is walking, as moving objects are easier to detect.

Tiger tourists come from far and beyond, and hope and anticipation for sightings is writ as large on their faces, as the disappointment and despair after failing to do so.

I therefore was very intrigued by the fact, why the tiger is not collared with a radio device with which its location can be tracked – a practice well proven in Africa. This will immensely improve sightings and also help the conservationists in tracking this majestic beast, giving it a fillip to its own safety.

From local anecdotal knowledge I discovered something very interesting and something that would otherwise require years of grueling research and observation to establish, the tiger when mating grips the tigress round the neck and the collar hampers such gripping.

Path breaking work for the tiger-ecology has been done by foresters like Billy Arjun Singh, Kailash Sankala and Fateh Sinh Rathore.

The 400 sq kilometres of Ranthambhore Jungles were not so neglected as some other forests in the country, as they served as the game reserves for the Maharajas of Jaipur, due to sheer proximity with Jaipur, and were in some measure maintained for their recreational hunting.

Nevertheless, unless declared as a part of the Project Tiger in 1973, this ecology would have withered away, and the tiger would have succumbed to extinction by  poachers or vengeful villagers.

Today from near extinction, Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve has a healthy population of about 60 tigers and is poised to rise.

Admittedly, the single largest contribution to the tiger-ecology of Ranthambore was made by Fateh Sinh Rathore. This handle-bar moustachoued forester had a critical role to play in the preservation of the Ranthambhore park. He understood, if this majestic beast with such exquisite mien that makes all other look gauche in front of it, had to be preserved, habitation in the precincts of the forest must be relocated.

And this he did not by the power of fiat, but by that of persuasion, by the zeal of a reformer, by convincing the villagers of how the tiger was integral to their habitat, and source of their sustenance.

The Star Male captured on my Cannon 400 mm Lens

Few facts about the tiger while lesser known were well understood by Fateh. He had, in his long days of tracking tigers as a Forest Officer, realized that the Tiger, contrary to common belief, was not a nocturnal animal. It probably came out in the night only because it wanted to avoid contact or confrontation with man. He also observed, while generally believed to be strictly territorial, sometimes it acted in packs like the lions. This knowledge of behavioral patterns of the tiger helped  Fateh to lay the foundation of a sustainable tiger ecology. A beast that hunts not by chasing but ambush, cannot live in a habitat denuded of trees and bushes, it is these trees and bushes that provide him the ambush. If it was appearing in the night, it was not because it was nocturnal, but because during the day, there was too much human activity within the forest.

Fateh, true to his name, an indefatigable fighter for the rights of the tiger, while on one hand, relentlessly liaised with the government and his own department, for allocation of funds and resources to revive the Tiger park, on the other, he embarked on a crusade to educate the villagers on aspects of health and ecology.

Today, his son, a medical doctor by training, but a forester at heart, and pretty much the alter ego of his father, runs a resort called Khem Vilas sprawled over a 25 acre of once barren land, now verdant from the last 20 years of toil and labor of his family. Run and managed by Usha Rathore, his daughter in-law, it is a boutique property tucked away in the desert yet ensconced in green.   

I exhort all my friends to tour all Tiger reserves so that there is desire from the government and people to preserve them.