A fundamental problem affecting the quality of public services in India is indiscipline amongst both providers and users. The culture of indiscipline begins at the top when important people feel they are above the rules, says Arun Maira.
THE King of Sweden inaugurated the annual Tallberg Forum in July 2005 and decided to stay on to attend some of the sessions. I was lucky to find one of the last remaining chairs in a popular session the next day. A little later, I felt someone, who could not find a chair, standing beside me. Looking up, I found it was the King himself! Someone else noticed him and pointed him to a vacant chair in another part of the room. In Sweden it did not seem unusual to find the King waiting behind others.
Before the start of another session in Tallberg, I was in animated conversation with a Swedish executive. A distinguished looking older man came up and asked if he could sit in the vacant chair next to us. The Swede turned to him and said that we were all assigned to groups and he would find his name in the lists posted at the door. So the gentleman walked back to the door, but reappeared a few minutes later and sat down with us. When the conversation was over, he introduced himself to me. He was Peter Wallenberg. The Wallenbergs are perhaps the richest and most powerful Swedish industrial family. It did not seem unusual in Sweden that a Wallenberg should be treated, and expect to be treated, like everyone else.
Last June, I was sitting in a plane boarding passengers from Delhi to Mumbai. Union minister for agriculture Sharad Pawar came on board carrying his hand-bag which he himself put into the overhead locker and then sat down waiting for other passengers to board. This was unusual; because in India it is customary for VIPs to be escorted into the plane at the very last minute with airline staff carrying their bags for them. The airline coach into which the passengers disembarked in Mumbai got held up on the tarmac due to 'VIP' movements in the airport. Soon a jeep with red light flashing came to take Mr Pawar off the coach to the terminal. He refused, saying that everyone on the coach was in a hurry. Very soon, an alternative route was cleared and all the coaches that had been stranded reached the terminal.
Running to check in at the Mumbai airport a few weeks back, I turned and found Ratan Tata behind me, pulling along his carry-on. The airline staff also saw him and rushed to grab his bag and offered to get him a boarding pass. He would have none of it. He was in queue behind me and the others, he said. This is rare in India, where some 'important' businessmen only show up at the last minute, their staff having already checked their bags and obtained their boarding passes for them.
The Swedes are disciplined and have the best run public services in the world which work for all, rich and poor. A fundamental problem affecting the quality of public services in India, whether they are provided by the public or private sectors, is indiscipline amongst both providers and users. We must change our basic Indian culture of indiscipline, people say. There are two requirements to change cultures. The first is to begin with simple things that affect everybody and the results of which can be made visible very soon, like house-keeping as the first step to create a culture of high quality. The second requirement is to begin at the top, with the people who should lead and show the way. For example, the CEO should stoop to pick up the trash paper on the shop floor rather than asking his aide to do it.
HOWEVER, it is not easy for people at the top to forego their privileges. In the 1970s, when some executives determined to create a new culture in Telco's new factories in Pune that would be more egalitarian and less status oriented than the culture in any other Indian factory at the time (including factories of MNCs), they proposed eliminating separate canteens for managers and asking managers to queue with workers in the same canteens; also that the security staff would stop managers' cars in their sample checks of vehicles at the factory exits. Some managers resisted the changes with two arguments. One was that symbols of difference are necessary to strengthen the authority of people in charge — which is the age-old argument for providing the King with a crown and dazzling clothes to improve the authority of the King's government!
The other argument was that senior managers' time is more precious than time of workers and hence they should not have to wait in queues in the canteen or at the security gates. This same argument would justify CEOs and ministers arriving at the last minute to board planes with their bags having been checked in before hand. But imagine the embarrassment of a senior Tata executive who self-importantly rushed onto a plane in Mumbai that had been held up a few minutes to wait for him. The first person he saw sitting amongst the fuming passengers was none other than J R D Tata! JRD had checked in punctually with the other passengers with no pretensions about the greater importance of his time.
Another reason why top people must use the same facilities as the masses is to know what the real state of affairs is. Sumant Moolgaokar, chairman of Telco, would occasionally stop on his tours of the Pune factories to use the workers' toilets. And if they were not clean, God help the resident director! So the resident director got into the habit of using the toilets himself, just to be sure. Some years ago, the India Brand Equity Foundation, presenting foreign investors' impressions to Indian CEOs and government officials, pointed out the delays visitors faced in the immigration and customs' queues at our airports. Some Indian CEOs were surprised. They did not know how bad it felt because they were whisked through by special escorts! Fortunately, this was looked into and now, I am glad to say one can clear out of our airports even faster than in America and Europe, even though the infrastructure in our airports is poorer. Culture is not about hardware: it is about software — the attitudes and behaviour of people. Money is not required to change culture: leadership is.
(The author is chairman, Boston Consulting Group, India)
This (Above and below) are pictures of Regency Park. Residential complex, being my block
This (Above and below) are pictures of Regency Park. Residential complex, being my block
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