BHAGAVAD GITA AND MANAGEMENT (Part - 1)
By M.P.BHATTATHIRY 

Introduction

Management has become a part and parcel in everyday life, be it at home,
office, factory, Government, or in any other organization where a group of
human beings assemble for a common purpose, management principles come into
play through their various facets like management of time, resources,
personnel, materials, machinery, finance, planning, priorities, policies and
practice.

Management is a systematic way of doing all activities in any field of human
effort. It is about keeping oneself engaged in interactive relationship with
other human beings in the course of performing one's duty. Its task is to
make people capable of joint performance, to make their weaknesses
irrelevant -so says the Management Guru Peter Drucker.

It strikes harmony in working -equilibrium in thoughts and actions, goals
and achievements, plans and performance, products and markets. It resolves
situations of scarcities be they in the physical, technical or human fields
through maximum utilization with the minimum available processes to achieve
the goal

 The lack of management will cause disorder, confusion, wastage, delay,
destruction and even depression. Managing men, money and material in the
best possible way according to circumstances and environment is the most
important and essential factor for a successful management. Managing men is
supposed have the best tactics. Man is the first syllable in management
which speaks volumes on the role and significance of man in a scheme of
management practices. From the pre-historic days of aborigines to the
present day of robots and computers the ideas of managing available
resources have been in existence in some form or other. When the world has
become a big global village now, management practices have become more
complex and what was once considered a golden rule is now thought to be an
anachronism.

Management Guidelines from The Bhagavad Gita

There is an important distinction between effectiveness and efficiency in
managing.

Effectiveness is doing the right things and

Efficiency is doing things right.

The general principles of effective management can be applied in every
fields the differences being mainly in the application than in principles.
Again, effective management is not limited in its application only to
business or industrial enterprises but to all organisations where the aim is
to reach a given goal through a Chief Executive or a Manager with the help
of a group of workers.

The Manager's functions can be briefly summed up as under :

Forming a vision and planning the strategy to realise such vision.

Cultivating the art of leadership

Establishing the institutional excellence and building an innovative
organisation.

Developing human resources.

Team building and teamwork

Delegation, motivation, and communication and

Reviewing performance and taking corrective steps whenever called for.

Thus Management is a process in search of excellence to align people and get
them committed to work for a common goal to the maximum social benefit.

The critical question in every Manager's mind is how to be effective in his
job. The answer to this fundamental question is found in the Bhagavad Gita
which repeatedly proclaims that 'you try to manage yourself'. The reason is
that unless the Manager reaches a level of excellence and effectiveness that
sets him apart from the others whom he is managing, he will be merely a face
in the crowd and not an achiever.

In this context the Bhagavad Gita expounded thousands of years ago by the
Super Management Guru Bhagawan Sri Krishna enlightens us on all managerial
techniques leading to a harmonious and blissful state of affairs as against
conflicts, tensions, lowest efficiency and least productivity, absence of
motivation and lack of work culture etc common to most of the Indian
enterprises today.

The modern management concepts like vision, leadership, motivation,
excellence in work, achieving goals, meaning of work, attitude towards work,
nature of individual, decision making, planning etc., are all discussed in
the Bhagavad Gita with a sharp insight and finest analysis to drive through
our confused grey matter making it highly eligible to become a part of the
modem management syllabus.

It may be noted that while Western design on management deals with the
problems at superficial, material, external and peripheral levels, the ideas
contained in the Bhagavad Gita tackle the issues from the grass roots level
of human thinking because once the basic thinking of man is improved it will
automatically enhance the quality of his actions and their results.

The management thoughts emanating from the Western countries particularly
the U.S.A. are based mostly on the lure for materialism and a perennial
thirst for profit irrespective of the quality of the means adopted to
achieve that goal. This phenomenon has its source in abundance in the West
particularly the U.S.A. Management by materialism caught the fancy of all
the countries the world over, India being no exception to this trend.

Our country has been in the forefront in importing those ideas mainly
because of its centuries old indoctrination by the colonial rulers which
inculcated in us a feeling that anything Western is always good and anything
Indian is always inferior. Hence our management schools have sprung up on
the foundations of materialistic approach wherein no place of importance was
given to a holistic view.

The result is while huge funds have been invested in building these temples
of modem management education, no perceptible changes are visible in the
improvement of the quality of life although the standard of living of a few
has gone up. The same old struggles in almost all sectors of the economy,
criminalisation of institutions, more and more social violence, exploitation
and such other vices have gone deep in the body politic.

The reasons for this sorry state of affairs are not far to seek. The western
idea of management has placed utmost reliance on the worker (which includes
Managers also) -to make him more efficient, to increase his productivity.
They pay him more so that he may work more, produce more, sell more and will
stick to the organisation without looking for alternatives. The sole aim of
extracting better and more work from him is for improving the bottom-line of
the enterprise. Worker has become a hireable commodity, which can be used,
replaced and discarded at will.

The workers have also seen through the game plan of their paymasters who
have reduced them to the state of a mercantile product. They changed their
attitude to work and started adopting such measures as uncalled for strikes,
Gheraos, sit-ins, dharnas, go-slows, work-to-rule etc to get maximum benefit
for themselves from the organisations without caring the least for the
adverse impact that such coercive methods will cause to the society at
large.

Thus we have reached a situation where management and workers have become
separate and contradictory entities wherein their approaches are different
and interests are conflicting. There is no common goal or understanding
which predictably leads to constant suspicion, friction, disillusions and
mistrust because of working at cross purposes. The absence of human values
and erosion of human touch in the organisational structure resulted in a
permanent crisis of confidence.

The westem management thoughts although acquired prosperity to some for some
time has absolutely failed in their aim to ensure betterment of individual
life and social welfare. It has remained by and large a soulless management
edifice and an oasis of plenty for a chosen few in the midst of poor quality
of life to many. Hence there is an urgent need to have a re-look at the
prevalent management discipline on its objectives, scope and content.

It should be redefined so as to underline the development of the worker as a
man, as a human being with all his positive and negative characteristics and
not as a mere wage-earner. In this changed perspective, management ceases to
be a career-agent but becomes an instrument in the process of national
development in all its segments.

Read Part 2