Insular leaders: Indifferent followers
Creating market for merit
With increase in popular consciousness and political awareness, the social expectations about the institutional performance are rising enormously. There seems to be a crisis in many institutions which otherwise have been respected for their integrity and involvement with larger social discourse. There are several sources of this crisis: the leaders have discovered lately that their spines were actually very weak, they could not take the load of expectations; many of them have taken recourse to buying peace through compromise, collusion and connivance of the powers that be. Some of them got into leadership position through patronage rather than merit. Even if the patrons don’t demand rent, they prefer to use that system to build following. When the merit suffers, many stakeholders keep quiet either out of fear or on account of collusion or sheer indifference. The institutional decline then does not take much effort. If institution after institution go through this process, the performance that society expects will obviously not follow.
How do we break the trend and create market for merit? It goes without saying that institution building process requires considerable investment in creating market for merit. The dissent and diversity are generally disliked by the leaders who are not confident of themselves. Any leader who does not encourage dissent and defiance closes the feedback channels that can help in learning, growing and sharing the wisdom. At political level, if we compare different cabinets in the last six decades, we notice that proportion of people who could stand their ground has gone down. However, the coalition politics came to rescue and helped sustain democracy by creating conditions for tolerance of dissent and disagreement. In academic institutions, one can find a similar trend of decline though situation is much more optimistic because base DNA of democracy and merit still exists among many elite institutions. Sometimes, the members of such institutions take recourse to such collective measures which may cause more harm than good. But, if leaders remain insular and many followers become indifferent, then the currency for cooperation among the rest may become popular. The unionization will inevitably follow. Mrs. Thatcher broke the back of old left parties by providing incentives in the form of stock holding to the members of those parties. Once the middle class becomes entrepreneurial and finds allurements for its greed or ambitions, it becomes difficult to persist with only ideological and value based institutional processes. The hurdles for earning money can be lowered and effort for more intensive achievements can be diluted. What else is left for institutions then to strive for. Since majority always prefers mediocrity, the market for merit becomes weaker.
One way to reverse the trend would be that political leaders realize the damage they may cause to the long term growth potential of the institutions and the economy by imposing subservient and mediocre leaders. Ravi Matthai used to say that institutions are best served by reluctant leaders, i.e., the people who don’t need positions but who should be courted and persuaded for positions. Because positions need them. I think this principle still holds. Unless institutions of higher learning, other regulatory or policy bodies are headed by people who don’t need those positions, market for merit will not become stronger. Another way to achieve the similar results is to share the information about the credentials of the top achievers. If none of them is craving for leadership position, then it says a lot about the culture of compromise prevalent in the system. Today not many self-respecting people would find apex positions in different institutions worthy of their time. The transaction costs of meritocratic governance have gone up enormously. A genuine leader is the one who allows herself to be led by the followers and does not hesitate in taking unpopular decisions when the situation so demands. Increasing authoritarian streak among the leaders reflects their timidity and inability to tolerate the merit. There are also leaders who join ranks with the indifferent followers and just pass their time. They are only leaders by position and not by the respect of those who have distinguished themselves.
May be I am asking for a moral revolution. But, the trends around the world seem to indicate that individuals can and will make a difference. Distributed leadership will come about. Individuals with their own command on conscience will create new benchmarks that will sweep the culture of collusion and compromise away from the system. Wikileaks created one such benchmark. Tunisia has created another. The whistle blowers around the world are taking control of the situation when insular leaders and indifferent followers have colluded to shortchange the society. But, relying on such whistle blowers for correcting the system and reinforcing the market for merit is a very costly process. Can we not collectively reflect and create public paschatap [remorse] among such leaders. Society expected much more than what such leaders have delivered. It is time they fade out gracefully and allow more accountable, accessible and appreciable meritocratic structures to emerge. Nehru had written once an article in Mainstream using pseudonym criticizing the emergence of authoritarian streaks in his character. We need much more catharsis and self-criticism among the leaders for creating and reinforcing market for merit.
A bundle of sticks is far stronger than a bigger bundle of spineless people in any institution — Anil K Gupta
