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Dr. L Balasubramanyam
Management of time is a
systematic way of doing all activities in any field of
human
effort. The western management thought of prosperity to some for
some time has absolutely failed in its aim to ensure betterment of
individual life and social welfare. The despondent position of
Arjuna in the first chapter of the Gita is typical for this human
situation which may come in the life of all men of action some
time or other. Krishna in the Gita advises how to manage for a
better time.
"Mind is very restless, forceful and strong, O Krishna, it
is more difficult to control the mind than to control the
wind" said Arjuna to Krishna
India's one of the greatest contributions to the world is
Baghvad Gita.
According to the Mythology of Mahabharat, Arjuna got mentally
depressed when he saw his relatives with whom he has to fight. The
Baghvad Gita is preached in the battle field Kurukshetra by Lord
Krishna to Arjuna as a counselling to do his duty. It has got all
the management tactics to achieve the mental equilibrium..
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.
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 Baghvad 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 organizations 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 Baghvad 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 Baghvad Gita expounded thousands of years
ago by the Super Management Guru 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 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 Baghvad 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 modern
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 Baghvad 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
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. Management by materialism caught the fancy of all the
countries the world over, India being no exception to this trend.
India has been in the forefront in importing those ideas mainly
because of its centuries old indoctrination by the colonial rulers
which inculcated in it a feeling that anything Western is always
good and anything Indian is always inferior. Hence 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 modern 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 organization
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 hirable 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, go-slows, work-to-rule etc
to get maximum benefit for themselves from the organizations 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 organizational structure resulted in a
permanent crisis of confidence.
The western 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.
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