DailyPost 1582
IF YOU COME THROUGH FAVOURS…
If you come through favours, you can only give favours. This is the adage which has been the defining Indian public life for quite sometime. Public life by its very nature extrapolates into large number of areas, governance and businesses being the first victims. This is very visible during the decades which we have traversed to reach the present moment. We have slowly and steadily moved towards a Favour Industry Ecosystem, notwithstanding the pulls and pressures of talent and merit which finally gets subsumed into this tsunami. If we see the world around us, it would be difficult to find a person who has neither taken or given favours or both.
The power in this country is in giving favours. As the names suggests that you are favouring somebody against somebody genuine and general perception is that it is done for a price not necessarily money. Money is certainly not the only currency in circulation. The psychology is more killing than the practice. This in academic jargon is known as transfer psychology. You have battled it out at every level. You have been at the receiving end and somehow managed to find favour and reach the right spot. Now that you have arrived, its your time to make hay while the sun shines and also gain good name in the world of distributing favours.
In this system the favours comes out of the public ecosystem, both are the winners, giver & the taker, the loser is the ecosystem. The so to says real beneficiaries, people who have been waiting for their merit and talent to pay. The professionals who have put in their life in creating great expertise and outstanding performance and also great appraisals to be thrown out in a manner as that l of the baby with the bath tub. In the favours industry there is no permanence but the professional world is based on permanence, thus creating mental agony and battles of a lifetime. Nobody has been able to sort this out and doesn’t seem to be getting sorted out in the foreseeable future.
When rules don’t rule the roost, favours do. On the face of it the rules are followed. Ways and means are found to evade, use loopholes, use disclaimers or the parties are asked to customise themselves to fit into the rules for name sake. The lakhs of cases in Indian courts stand testimony to it. And lakhs don’t reach the courts. Lots also happen very subtly. Over a period of time the Favours Industry develops its own surreptitious rules of the game and all the interested stakeholders get to know of it, start little hesitatingly but perfect it at an amazing pace. At this juncture the society loses the game.
DISTRIBUTING FAVOURS AT WILL IS POWER.