On Team-Work and Yes-Men

Today we are torn between Co-operation and Competition and in our rush for modernism and progress we are inclined to forget the masters of the past who saw ahead of their times and could be almost masters to us and direct us if we are so inclined. There was John Ruskin, for example, who thought co-operation was life and that competition meant death–and his views on life as much as economics, politics and art are worth consideration. For though we are living in a very different era from his, human nature is the same, and efficiency or progress is based on human nature and the value we attach to humans as such. Ruskin’s Sesame and Lillies and Queen’s Garden are books I read with interest at school, and as for his Seven Lamps of Architecture, I believe, it is a book that can be read by artists as much as laymen for the truths he propunds. I remember reading his works at Ruabon in Wales where I was teaching in a Public School and I carry happy memories of him. Ruskin was a sane man who believed in the higher things of life, like religion, values and art–and we need these if we are to save ourselves, our country and our heritage.

Are we not, I hear an objector say, are we not in an age of sputniks and space men, and don’t we need to think and feel differently from old John Ruskin’s? Much as we are sputnik-minded we cannot help being ourselves: we yet want sex and we yet want war; and in the absence of co-ordinating factors in our lives we are just lost. I am, therefore, of the opinion that a good deal can be said for old things that give place to the new, with a continuity (not a break or a jolt) that makes for healthy tradition and, what is more important, to sane living. Old things were once young–and the young things will one day be old and history is the story of the past with lessons for the future.

There was a time when someone who knew the job and was big enough to hold it, held together his men in what is known as the co-operative spirit. He was no humbug and really loved his men and saw to it that they were well. If one of his men failed to turn up, out went the boss in his car or his push-bike (bosses then used push-bikes oftener than they do now and had no swank about them) to the lad’s place (all men were called lads and felt like lads, rather than being premature grand-fathers, with sorry faces) and got the story straight from the horse’s mouth. If the lad’s wife was ailing, the boss would see to it that she was well cared for and he’d go personally to see her and take the lad with him to the hospital where she was. “Cheer up, boy!” he’d say. “Your wife is looking fine. I haven’t seen any kids of yours, now don’t say you are planning?” And the lad would smile from ear to ear. “No, boss,” he’d say, “you see the wife’s on the weak side and we don’t want problem children on our hands!” “No” he’d say and smile and later on he’d get the lad a few tins of Ovaltine and Cod-liver Oils and hand him a blank cheque. “Get what you want, son, and don’t worry about the bills. If your wife’s well, you are well and if you are well, the work’s, going to be fine. Understand? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve got the money and am the boss because I know a little more than you do–and for this I’ve got to thank the good God and my parents and my school. Well, we’ve got to do good if good’s been done to us. There’s no fun in getting good done and stopping doing good because you’re aren’t in the mood to do good. You see, son, among the Hindus they believe that Son means ‘redemption’ that is, redeemed from hell. And the debt that the son owed to the father is paid when he himself has a son and so goes on the story of repaying the good done to you. Or where’s the fun of living or the sense in continuity? We must maintain it rather than cut of the roots and find ourselves hanging mid-air!” I don’t pretend to have tape-recorded the talk but I believe (and most of my contemporaries, including heads of departments, principals, ministers and millionaires, will agree that the capital-labour relationship was cordial because of this personal note) that an understanding between the boss and his men is extremely necessary if work is to be done efficiently.

I remember (and I am reminiscing rather than preaching which I don’t like) my Principal take me under his wings when I joined the college where I was a student. “I’m glad you were in station when I called for you. You’re joining tomorrow, unless you have something important to do. And my colleagues will give you all the possible help. You won’t be alone!” And he shook my hands in such a cordial manner than I’d sacrifice anything for him. When I joined duty next day there were my colleagues (formerly my good teachers and friends) who were anxious to help me; and there was nothing which I wanted and which they failed to accede to do. In course of time I began to feel more confident of myself and took initiative in matters that called for personal initiative; and when I made mistakes I was called to the Head’s office and told what had been done and why, and I saw the whole mistake clear before my eyes and was not rebuked for it because I was young and only the young make mistakes and progress through them. The pity with the old is that they make no mistakes nor progress and are hindered from making both by a vigilant eye and a sharp tongue of the head! I cannot forget the paper in Literary Criticism which I was doing under a Professor who was an Indian who had travelled widely on the Continent and loved things of spirit. He had visited the rishis of the South and the North of India and had seen the great sages of the west and he was humble in spirit. He had been within the portals of Oxford University and talked endearingly of his alma mater and the professors there and the good friends he had met in Britain and in Europe. He was a well of knowledge undefiled and it was a pleasure to hear him. He was, what I’d call, a Fount of Good Sense and though he had a huge library of his own, there was precious little that was offered to him by the Government by way of promotion. He retired as an Assistant Professor and was worth his weight in gold. He was no Ph.D. but he could carry on a conversation with the best on any subject. He needed no limousines or a set of flatterers to feel great. He was a philosopher, friend and guide to his students. He’d often rise at 3 a. m. and read. His food consisted of fruits. He regulated his physical diet as much as his mental diet, according to the season or the mood of the year. And in this connection I am reminded of my wife (who is a widely-travelled woman and who, as a nurse, has been beside the bedside of some of her very dear patients who are now no more) who once told me when she was showing me the pictures of some of the great western art masters including Van Gosh that the faces of the men and women he portrayed resembled the food they ate: there were men and women who looked like potatoes and others like pumpkins and so on and so forth. And in this connection, again, I am reminded of the saying: ‘Tell me who your friends are or what you eat, and I will tell you what you are!’ I have mixed up the two sayings into one, but you aren’t confused because you partake of foods that agree with you and not with food that disagrees with you unless, like a yogi, you are doing penance!

And so I see all along the line of success or efficiency the team spirit not only works but acts as an incentive to more work and progress. And it is only when the boss does not buckle down and work with his colleagues that things do not go to plan. Fear is not efficacious as Love; and Human Nature is not that red in tooth and claw that we need Machiaevelians at every step to help us out. In fact, very much of the success or failure in work depends on the top-man or top-men: if the top-men are sound, the others must be sound. In the Army there’s a saying that there are no bad men but bad officers; and whenever there’s a cause for failure the top-men are taken to task. Or why have these top-men when they do not know their job or men? It is not enough knowing your job if you do not care to know about the men who work with you. And the art of getting-on-with-people is best learnt by knowing them and what they want. People, whether they are Indians, French, Germans or British, know when they have a man to deal with and when they have a monster on their hands. They also know when they have a man who knows the job and a mouse who has crept in from the door. In fact, a man, irrespective of whether he is a boss or an ordinary worker (excuse the epithet, ‘ordinary’) is always a man: he does not lose his sense of pride or control, nor is he rude or bad-mannered unless his liver or his wife is out for long, nor is he mischievous by nature and always putting people in the wrong. A good boss invariably takes on himself the sole responsibility of the wrongs done by his men and that he’s a good boss (not soft, mind you, but human) who helps him to always get his work done in A-1 condition. He appeals to the best in his men.

Somehow, with the advent of freedom, we have begun to change and there is no harm in changing but we must needs change in such a way as will bring out the best of the people. This is, unfortunately, not being done. Today we see our own men and women kicking us on no other plea than that we are no good! And we sometimes wonder why they have such airs when they are no better than we are, nor have they anything really, intrinsically superior, except their technique at knowing the right men for the right jobs. Wanting leadership does not mean ignoring others who aren’t leaders. All cannot be leaders and in a country like ours when those who want leadership want at every step to speed up progress, we cannot help feeling that there’s something radically wrong with our sense of leadership. Does leadership mean getting all the good things of this earth for me and depriving others of their right share? Does leadership mean so treating humans as though they were slaves? Whether we are the boss or ordinary workmen, we are Indians, citizens, and no one has the right to put anybody down unless, of course, he deserves it, like criminals, lunatics or spies. But I have seen (and so have you) where the presence of a car, a bungalow, a certain grade or salary entitles people to rule the roost. They are the Boss. They not only feel it. They look it (like the portrait of Potato-humans of Van Gosh), pot-bellied, lazy, bossy or officious. Even their wives and children so behave as if the land belongs to them and all others are just aliens! Western people to whom power means power for the good of the people, begin to laugh at us for our folly, our immaturity. For who, in his senses, expects people to bow down and feel he is a slave when he is a human (and in a democracy) as good as anyone else?

I have seen in Britain men go up to the employment exchange and demand a job of the man at the counter and often these men who want work are downright checky and come with their hats on (why should they take them off, they say, when they are all equal and belong to a Welfare State?) And no one in Britain, unless he’s a damned neurotic, believes he is anybody even when he’s a somebody–and this we call a Democratic State. It is not in Constitution that we are a Democracy but in every thing we feel, think and do. The essence of Democracy is that the State or Government is of the People, by the People, for the People. The goods of the State (including the coveted posts under Government) thus belong to all and there must be advertisements for such posts. Or there will be lock-outs or frictions as are now in the offing between capital and labour; or the factories and the men.

Life is like a huge factory where every single unit counts and nothing is too insignificant or useless. Every single worker, be he working upstairs or at the bottom of the floor, every single worker has the conviction of a man and all work with duty as their keynote. No one is too great or too small: the work’s got to be done and it’s got to be done in team-wise spirit. And there’s no need to pull anyone up because he is a man (and not a monkey) and is conscious of his duty and responsibility by the boss for whom he is working. In Britain and the West you are never let down by the people who work with you or under you because they know you and like you: but here in India the boss seldom or never meets the men he’s working with nor does he go out to clubs or to places where people congregate. Here, I am afraid, people are too status-conscious to feel or move about with ease: and naturally when the post is bigger than the man who’s under it, so to speak, there’s bound to be tensions, lock-outs, rudeness, fights, bad confidentials. Such bosses can’t work in team spirit: they want yes-men–fawners, boot-lickers, men without bones: lostmen.

It is a truism that if you can’t get on with men whom you know you can’t get on with those whom you don’t know–and in a country like India where we have people of all castes and creeds (India’s a Continent on her own and not an Island), the need to know and understand the people is greater because we have to move on from mediaevalism to modernism; and this means a good deal of adjustments. And in a country that was once caste-ridden, it would be futile to continue it by subtler forms of caste systems as are beginning to be too often prevalent through the length and breadth of the country. Foreign tourists come to see our temples and homes, palaces and museums, and if are in love with things and people ancient and do not love the living people around us and give them scope for improvements in the jobs they are in, if we treat them as so many galley-slaves, are we any better than those who practise Apartheid or are for the continuation of the Colour Bar?

Where we differentiate between man and man on grounds of colour, creed or caste, status or pay, we are no better than worms that crawl on the earth–and for such, the good things of earth and heaven are never near, though near. India is not only politics (one would believe it is!). India is Philosophy, History, Literature, Arts–and humans can be supermen if only they are encouraged. It is not education that makes people cultured or civilised as ground, and the newly-rich are inclined to parade their greatness at the blast of the trumpet if not the tom-tom. The really great are the silent people and we need a good many of these silent workers if we are to make India the Land of Dreams in our lifetime or in the near future. Peace, Security, Stability–all these are based on Team-Spirit; but when the ‘Yes-men’ come to the surface all others go overboard and then we have the crumbs for the starving millions. Selfishness is a short-sighted policy unbecoming of this glorious land of Sages and Rishis. Where the country is at its highest, emmigration is at its lowest. For when people fail to make good at home they go abroad and try, forget their homes which they loved so much. A great pity when we have the space and talents.