DESAI'S DICTUM
By:- Ramesh N Desai
Students of Management are, these days, plagued by a lot of laws and principles, what with C.Northcote Parkinson, Dr. Lawrence Peter and others running riot. To confuse the picture further, I propose to add what I call Desai's dictum, which, in reality is merely an extension of the Peter's Principle.
Peter's principle states that one rises to one's level of incompetence. While fully agreeing with this principle, I would like to add that one rises to one's level of ego requirements. In Peter's principle, the basic assumption is that everyone wants to go up and each one gets stuck up at his level of incompetence. There are however many cases where competent people do not wish to go up.
In our country, there are many cases of notable people perfectly capable pf achieving a particular level but have not chosen to do so. Mahatma Gandhi could very easily have become the first Prime Minister of India, had he so chosen.He, however, preferred to be a Rishi venerated by Kings or a Bapu, a father figure, since those were his ego requirements.
Then again, it is not merely the extent of one's ego requirements but also the type of ego requirements that matters. For example, an industry tycoon's ego requirements are entirely different qualitatively from those of a cinema superstar, though quantitatively, they may be the same. This is perhaps why Amitabh Bachchan did not establish the Reliance empire and Dhirubhai Ambani did not don the make-up and join films. A hitherto unfulfilled ego requirement of Amitabh to follow in the footsteps of his celebrated father has perhaps impelled him to write a blog of his own to give vent to his talents in that direction.
The ego requirements provide the motivation without which competence is of no avail. For every Eliza Doolittle that becomes Mrs. Henry Higgins, there are thousands of flower girls who are perfectly content to be themselves. Not all are "sour grapes" cases.
Desai's Dictum could therefore be stated as follows:-
" One goes upto the level and type of one's ego requirements concommitant with his competence to fulfill them ".
Comments about Gandhi are a bit too simplistic. It must be pointed out that he was totally sidelined just as world war II was drawing to close. Mountbatten realized this and started negotiations with Nehru and Jinnah.
ReplyDeleteIn "from Curzon to Nehru" by Durgadas Nehru/Patel clearly state their PM ambitions.
So it is extremely doubtful hat Gandhi would have been accepted as first PM of India.
At very least it would have been not at all certain outcome of power struggle
Anupam's assumption is that Gandhi wanted to become P.M. which is not true.
ReplyDeleteNo, it is not my contention at all. The author said that gandhi, if he wanted could have become Pm and that is what I contested. he also would have dound it difficult in light of soaring ambitions of other eladers
ReplyDelete"Mahatma Gandhi could very easily have become the first Prime Minister of India"
ReplyDeleteThis is what was written and that is what i contested. My thinking is that, other leaders were too ambitious and eager to have power that Gandhi's proposal to have Jinnah to be PM of united India was rejected out of hand. This amply demonstrates that he had lost all say in matters by the time of independence.
So much that he was not even present at celebration on 15th Aug 1947 and no serious attempt was made to get him. He walked out of Congress working committee and no serious attempt was made to get him back.
can he be having authority to out forawrd his name as PM?