SYMBIOSIS INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

MANAGING
ORGANIZATIONAL AND
MANAGEMENT
CHALLENGES IN INDIA

7th National Competition for Management Students 2010

AMRITA SARKER

BIBASWAN DUTTA

8/10/2010
 On 15th August, 1947, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru delivered the speech of independence at the
stroke of midnight. “... A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step
out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long
suppressed, finds utterance..... We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers
herself again.” More than half a century has passed by and we beg to ask –Are we free? What
then is the freedom we want now? Most importantly, what is freedom then?

A country’s beating soul is its human resource. It is the citizens of the country that form the
pillar-stones of the organisations and enterprises. India has been marching down the
boulevard of economic liberation and development for the last few years. But we still beg to
ask you once more- Are we really to-be-economic-superpowers? Are we really getting
“developed”? What is a developed country then?

With this said, let us take a look at the organisational and managerial challenges of modern
India. For understanding the problem, let’s take into account a very familiar incident, our
Commonwealth Games; a fitting show for a country which leverages its booming IT industry
as a capability to deliver high end solutions at low prices. Even more fitting for a country
which showcased the Nano as the product defining low cost innovation. It was just the perfect
platform to showcase Delhi, and our country, as a developing nation prepared to receive,
assimilate and make fruitful use of the influences and investment that a fast-growing country
will attract. More than the construction of flyovers, pavements and swanky toilets, the
successful organisation of the games would have signalled the inception of mature city
planning. It would have paved the way how municipal bodies can work in sync with various
other departments in a time constrained paradigm and still deliver efficiency at reasonable
budgets. These should have been the takeaways. But instead all we got was ballooning costs,
overshoots, corruption charges, blame shifting and cacophony. Even if we do succeed in
sending the last athlete from his new hotel to the swanky terminal over 83 flyovers and wave
him off aboard the A380, all we would have gained is a soulless body.

Organisational and managerial challenges in India is a problem for real; an ugly truth that has
been plaguing the country. A brief look at the statistics for ranking of 183 countries:

Ease of
Starting Dealing with Trading Closing
Doing Employing Registerin Getting Protecting Paying Enforcing
Economy a Construction Across a
Business Workers g Property Credit Investors Taxes Contracts
Business Permits Borders Business
Rank
Hong
Kong, 3 18 1 6 75 4 3 3 2 3 13
China

India 133 169 175 104 93 30 41 169 94 182 138

Singapore 1 4 2 1 16 4 2 5 1 13 2
Clearly India is not quite the place you would love to start a business or conduct smooth
business or start construction or get contracts enforced, leave alone closing any business
smoothly. On corruption charges, India fails to clear even the 5 point basis out of 10, putting
it into league of Pakistan and China.

But was India always a country lagging behind in organizational acumen? History doesn’t
seem to suggest so. Over many centuries India has absorbed managerial ideas and practices
from around the world. Early records of trade, from 4500 B.C. to 300 B.C., not only indicate
international economic and political links, but also the ideas of social and public
administration. The world's first management book, titled 'Arthashastra', written three
millennia before Christ, codified many aspects of human resource practices in Ancient India.
This treatise presented notions of the financial administration of the state, guiding principles
for trade and commerce, as well as the management of people. These ideas were to be
embedded in organisational thinking for centuries (Rangarajan 1992, Sihag 2004). Increasing
trade, that included engagement with the Romans, led to widespread and systematic
governance methods by 250 A.D. During the next 300 years, the first Indian empire, the
Gupta Dynasty, encouraged the establishment of rules and regulations for managerial
systems, and later from about 1000 A.D. Islam influenced many areas of trade and
commerce. A further powerful effect on the managerial history of India was to be provided
by the British system of corporate organisation for 200 years, though their direct and indirect
implications proved to be otherwise. Clearly, the socio cultural roots of Indian heritage are
diverse and have been drawn from multiple sources including ideas brought from other parts
of the old world. Interestingly, these ideas were essentially secular even when they originated
from religious bases. This treatment calls for a detailed analysis of the British rule and its
implications. The British ruled our country for close to two centuries, leaving behind an
indelible mark of complacency ingrained into the Indian psyche; a mentality matured over the
years to be exploited by the colonials. Years of subjugation and lack of exercising
governance immersed the masses into a pit of ignorance and indifference. The modus
operandi of advancement for any civilization- the inquisitive mind was shoved into
dormancy. Mediocrity was the new aspiration. Monotony became the new rage.

Then happened independence, along with the Gandhis and Nehrus. A sleeping giant was
being stirred awake. But its slumber was far from over. With the strings removed, the puppet
started realizing the puppeteer’s role. So did the audience. Half a century passed and slowly
ripples started being visible on the surface. But the ripples remained ripples. And in the
meanwhile, the world surged ahead. Even with companies all over the world revamping their
organizational policies in the wake of heightened competition, their Indian counterparts
remained sluggish with the “babu culture” being the order of the day for all government and
public sector organizations. With globalization and opening up of the Indian economy,
courtesy some enlightened souls, the “urban” Indian was not late in developing apathy and
indignation for the country’s government. The cream of the country, reared on subsidised
education and food, was siphoned off to greener pastures. So what is the problem?

But a closer look into the organisational challenges reveals that these are not the problems but
the symptoms of a far greater and deep-rooted problem, the problem in our thought process;
the thought process that was never free, is not free and will not be free unless we delve deep
into ourselves and rectify them.

Whenever the country’s data is released on official notes, our politicians and citizens swear
by statistics. Let us look into some of the true pictures of India:

 Poverty:

o 42% population on < $1.25/day

o 72% population on < $2/day

“Being poor means being invisible, voiceless and powerless. So eliminating poverty is not a
matter of reducing to zero the number living under a dollar-a-day… inclusion and
representation along with sustainable livelihoods is the need of the hour.”

 Malnutrition:“49 per cent of the world's underweight children, 34 per cent of the
world's stunted children and 46 per cent of the world's wasted children, live in India”-
World Bank

“Most malnourished children suffer from protein deficiency, affecting the brain; hardly a
foundation for skilled workforce”

 Literacy:

o 65% literacy-84% world literacy

o Nasscom estimates that 5 lac technical graduates and 2.3 million graduates are
not employable to the extent of 75% and 90% resp.

“Enrolling for the school and subsequent drop out can’t be blamed on children. Uninspired
teaching faculty and infrastructure are the culprits. Identify the problem before the solution,
and then deploy.”

 Government:

The constitution of India guarantees equality for all, but the governments that have ruled us
have always followed divisive politics, which only results in one section of the society
benefiting at the cost of others from it, and thereby removing harmony in the society.
Government has no business to interfere into the religious life of its citizens, for religion is a
personal choice and the policies of the government should in no way affect the citizen’s life
based on his/her religion. Instead of providing haj subsidies to the muslims, let the
government ensure that every muslim child in this country gets quality primary education.
Instead of dividing the society in the name of reservations and quotas, let the government
ensure that all backward class children get free quality primary education, and there by
ensure that they can compete based on their own merit, and not based on government
courtesy.
The government of India can insist IITs in India to provide reservations, but if a backward
class student wants to study in MIT in US, can the government get a seat for that student with
its quota laws? But if the government has ensured quality primary education to this student,
he/she would get a seat even in MIT based on their own merit. If the government ensures that
muslims in this country get quality education, and if they get into good jobs, wont they be
able to go to Haj with their own money?
By providing subsidies to a section of the society, and reservations to another section of the
society, the government only wants to ensure that they are permanently dependent on the
government for everything, and by doing so the political parties are only creating and
maintaining their votebanks. They are not at all interested in the real development of these
sections of the society. And this is the biggest tragedy of democracy in India. The biggest
problem faced by India today alongside terrorism and naxalism is its incompetent, corrupt
political class whose policies are guided by its votebank politics. A simple calculation of the
sum total of all the money spent till to date in Independent India to develop this country
would raise a question mark about where has all that money gone?! Ask any common man on
the streets of India as to what is their opinion about the politicians in this country, and that
would answer it all about the contributions of the political class to the society. If every
municipal corporator, every panchayat member, every MLA, every MP, every Minister in the
government did their duties properly, India would be a heaven on earth in the next five years.

 Urbanization
Urbanization is another problem that deserves serious attention. There is increasingly greater
migration from villages to cities. This situation is generating pressures on cities which were
meant for a definite size of population. The limited civic facilities, civilian organizations and
structures are facing difficulties in meeting the demands of the people. The mega cities like
Mumbai, Kolkata Chennai and Delhi have crossed the limits for which they are capable of.
This situation creates a number of problems such as unauthorized and illegal activities,
emergence of slums, problem of waste disposal, crime and health related problems. The
social organization, economy and environmental planning in many cities are becoming
unmanageable. Also, urbanization is linked with certain kinds of attitude like consumerism
and individualism. Consumerism emphasizes on exploitation of resources for personal
consumption without any concern for society and environment. This attitude is responsible
for the ecological imbalance that is widely experienced in today’s world. Similarly the
individualistic attitude favours the view that the individual is the ultimate reality and all
processes need to be explained at individual level. The individual is free and responsible to
his or her self only.
With all these problems, we realize that if there is something that needs to change is the
thought process of the Indian Citizen. And for addressing that we need to establish a solid
foundation and framework which can orient a billion people to imbibe values of a human. We
don’t need a need a Narayanmurthy if there are a thousand efficient managers and
entrepreneurs. At this juncture let us answer the questions we put forward at the beginning.
What is the link between freedom, development, thought process and managerial acumen.
 Freedom is the power to uphold humanity and its values by every human. Freedom is the
power to lead life with head held high. Freedom is the power to rationally accept truth. And
development is the deployment of all the fruits of freedom by humans embedded with the
ideals to respect and uphold freedom for all. It’s for the upholding of human values we need
to metamorphose our thought process. And therein lays the path to solving our organizational
and managerial challenges. Therein lays the path to salvation for our motherland.