Ravi Matthai the living legend13 Dec, 2007, 0000 hrs IST, TNN
IIM Ahmedabad turned 46 earlier this week. This is as good an occasion as any to recall the services of its legendary founder-director Ravi Matthai. Ravi Matthai, son of John Matthai, finance minister in Nehru’s Cabinet, was appointed the first full-time director of IIMA in 1965. (Vikram Sarabhai had been honorary director until then). The choice of Matthai was in itself remarkable. He was not an “insider” — the Institute had been set up earlier. He did not have an advanced academic degree — he was a corporate executive who had only recently joined IIM Calcutta as professor. In a country that is still gerontocratic, he was obscenely young — he was 38. It is a tribute to Sarabhai’s own leadership qualities that he made absolutely the right choice. By 1972, when he stepped down as director, Matthai had not only put IIMA on the national map, he had laid secure foundations for its continued success. If IIMA has since gone from strength to strength, it is very substantially because of the strategic decisions taken in Matthai’s time as well as the culture, systems and processes he put in place. In my nine-year association with IIMA, I have often been struck by the abiding impress of its founder-director. I remember attending the then director’s welcome address to the incoming post-graduate batch soon after I had joined. In the course of a 20 minute address, the director invoked Matthai’s name four times. In the initial years, I noted with astonishment how almost any significant process would be traced back to Matthai. (“Oh, that happened in Ravi Matthai’s time”). Heads of institutions fade into oblivion within weeks of demitting office. Matthai is remembered at IIMA all the time. What explains Matthai’s success and his profound impact on IIMA? First, a clear sense of purpose. IIMA’s concern, as Matthai put it, was “with the application of knowledge”. This meant that the Institute would be involved in teaching, research and consulting. The impact “would be greatest if it were the combined result of all activities”, so faculty must engage in all three activities. Matthai saw clearly that to focus merely on business would limit IIMA. It would also expose it to charges of being elitist in its orientation. IIMA’s ambit needed to be wider: it would be an institute of management, not just a business school. It would develop expertise in important sectors, including agriculture. Secondly, Matthai’s conviction that academic activities can flourish only when faculty are given the fullest freedom. In an academic institution, excellence cannot be ordered. It springs forth when people are given the space to grow and to express themselves freely. Thirdly, the idea of a faculty-governed institute where decision-making rests primarily with the faculty and not with the director or the board. An example is the admissions committee that is independent of the director. The mechanism has been crucial in insulating admissions from unhealthy influence.
Fourthly, what is, perhaps, Matthai’s greatest bequest to IIMA: the principle of a single term for the director. After six years as director, Matthai stunned the community by announcing his decision to step down and stay on as professor. He gave two reasons for doing so. One, leaders of academic institutions tended to use their positions for career advancement; this was not good for the institutions. Two, it was important to establish the principle that the director’s position is not hierarchical; he is only first among equals. You are professor, you become director and then you become professor again. This one contribution of Matthai’s cannot be overstated. In the present scheme of things, the director has sweeping powers. The board of governors does not quite have the monitoring authority of a corporate board. Faculty governance can work only to the extent the director is willing to let it work. Limiting the director to one term is vital to good governance. It is the knowledge that a director’s actions can be looked into once he has reverted to a faculty role, the certainty that he will be cut dead in the corridors by colleagues whom he has mistreated that acts as a check, however inadequate, on the incumbent. There is more to Matthai’s enduring impact than his grasp of the principles of good governance in academic institutions. He managed the relationship with government with great skill. He was a superb man-manager with the gift of drawing out the best in people. Above all, he had moral authority: he brought to his office high integrity, a spirit of sacrifice and self-effacement. India has been fortunate in having had great institution builders. At the national level, we had people of the make of Nehru, Patel and Ambedkar. At the organisational level, we have had the likes of Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai and RK Talwar (of SBI). In that constellation of institution builders, Ravi Matthai shines brightly.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
FROM LORD MACAULAY’S ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT ON 2 FEBRUARY, 1835.
“I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief ; such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage . And, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.’’
In 1835, Lord Thomas Macaulay, as President of the Indian Committee of Public Instruction proposed that the British create “a class of Indians who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern. A class of persons , Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste , in opinion , in morals and in intellect “.
Macaulay also proposed establishing bilingualism in India. He succeeded in the century of his reign . English and Western culture have not merely survived but have spread across the country.
For over 2 centuries thereafter, through treachery & deceit the British succeeded , beyond their wildest dreams , to destroy Indian culture which was in it’s time the most enlightened & sophisticated culture and education system in existence . Having consistently plundered India of it’s resources of every kind , which , apart from numerous other traumatic consequences, resulted in widespread famine and deaths on a scale never before witnessed anywhere in the World , when millions of Indians died. But all this apart, the British succeeded in reducing Indians to a nation of paupers, of grovelling, servile and corrupt anglophiles devoid of all vestige of national pride in their own culture, and self respect ; whose sole aspiration became to faithfully mimic western lifestyles, morality & value systems, and to reduce the majority of those Indians adopting the English language & ways of life to a class of Anglo-Indian bastards , as Macaulay and his tribe so fervently desired . Macaulay laid this down to ensure that Indians became “ what we want them, a truly dominated nation ”, and “the best mercenaries in the world” instead of a proud & self respecting people who took pride in their ancient culture, reviving it and adapting it progressively to meet the imperatives of modern times. Particularly restore those elements of it’s ancient culture to ensure it’s former education system would produce people of “such high moral values ” & “caliber ” that once evoked in foreigners, the British in particular, nothing but admiration !
Following what the British called “the 1857 Indian Mutiny”, to ensure that India remained it’s, ‘Jewel in the Crown’, Britain continued to ruthlessly, but infinitely more surreptitiously, the policy that had served it so well , to remain it’s major source of economic support, it’s policy of ‘divide and rule ’. It continued systematically to sow & nurture seeds of hatred between the two brothers of the same family - the Hindus and Muslims of India to ensure that it led to outbreaks of the most lethal riots of unprecedented magnitude.
Britain then enacted it’s most dastardly act of treachery, under it’s policy of ‘ divide & rule‘, and divided the country when Britain was forced to cede it Independence, and create Pakistan. In fact, as it did subsequently, it created a festering wound by wresting land from the Arabs to create a permanent home for the Jews of the World, to establish Israel which has become a major cause of international tension in the middle East between the West , the USA in particular , on the one side , and the middle & far East on the other which might well lead to the next World War .
However, following ‘Partition’ Britain continued to exploit both India & Pakistan by conspiring , in cohorts with its co-conspirator the USA, to aggravate the hatred it had created , to sustain the continuous fear of attack by one brother against the other. This was to ensure that what the western conspirators euphemistically called “Defence equipment“ became the largest, but undisclosed item in the respective annual national budgets of India & Pakistan to sustain and support the largest industries of the Western allies, to prevent the economies of both UK & USA from sliding into another “Great Recession” as the USA experienced in the 1930s , the initial signs of which had begun to emerge in the US economy after the end of the ‘First Cold War’. Is it not time that every self-respecting Indian and Pakistani does whatever he/she can to restore the world’s respect for their ancient culture, particularly their once ancient and sophisticated education system that produced people of such high mindedness & integrity, as Macaulay so spontaneously recorded after his early visits to India, after which he advised the British to systematically destroy ? This they faithfully did , apart from much else , through the flood of Christian missionaries they brought to the Indian Sub-Continent, to anglicize its culture & educational system ; not merely to make it’s people flunkies of western culture but also to convert them to Christianity. Much more importantly to destroy its ancient culture which Macaulay frankly recorded was “the very backbone of this nation” that created “people of such caliber” and “high moral values”. Surely Indians, and now no less Pakistanis, owe it to themselves to contribute in every way possible to restoring it, after attuning it (not westernizing it) to the imperatives of modern times.
In 1835, Lord Thomas Macaulay, as President of the Indian Committee of Public Instruction proposed that the British create “a class of Indians who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern. A class of persons , Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste , in opinion , in morals and in intellect “.
Macaulay also proposed establishing bilingualism in India. He succeeded in the century of his reign . English and Western culture have not merely survived but have spread across the country.
For over 2 centuries thereafter, through treachery & deceit the British succeeded , beyond their wildest dreams , to destroy Indian culture which was in it’s time the most enlightened & sophisticated culture and education system in existence . Having consistently plundered India of it’s resources of every kind , which , apart from numerous other traumatic consequences, resulted in widespread famine and deaths on a scale never before witnessed anywhere in the World , when millions of Indians died. But all this apart, the British succeeded in reducing Indians to a nation of paupers, of grovelling, servile and corrupt anglophiles devoid of all vestige of national pride in their own culture, and self respect ; whose sole aspiration became to faithfully mimic western lifestyles, morality & value systems, and to reduce the majority of those Indians adopting the English language & ways of life to a class of Anglo-Indian bastards , as Macaulay and his tribe so fervently desired . Macaulay laid this down to ensure that Indians became “ what we want them, a truly dominated nation ”, and “the best mercenaries in the world” instead of a proud & self respecting people who took pride in their ancient culture, reviving it and adapting it progressively to meet the imperatives of modern times. Particularly restore those elements of it’s ancient culture to ensure it’s former education system would produce people of “such high moral values ” & “caliber ” that once evoked in foreigners, the British in particular, nothing but admiration !
Following what the British called “the 1857 Indian Mutiny”, to ensure that India remained it’s, ‘Jewel in the Crown’, Britain continued to ruthlessly, but infinitely more surreptitiously, the policy that had served it so well , to remain it’s major source of economic support, it’s policy of ‘divide and rule ’. It continued systematically to sow & nurture seeds of hatred between the two brothers of the same family - the Hindus and Muslims of India to ensure that it led to outbreaks of the most lethal riots of unprecedented magnitude.
Britain then enacted it’s most dastardly act of treachery, under it’s policy of ‘ divide & rule‘, and divided the country when Britain was forced to cede it Independence, and create Pakistan. In fact, as it did subsequently, it created a festering wound by wresting land from the Arabs to create a permanent home for the Jews of the World, to establish Israel which has become a major cause of international tension in the middle East between the West , the USA in particular , on the one side , and the middle & far East on the other which might well lead to the next World War .
However, following ‘Partition’ Britain continued to exploit both India & Pakistan by conspiring , in cohorts with its co-conspirator the USA, to aggravate the hatred it had created , to sustain the continuous fear of attack by one brother against the other. This was to ensure that what the western conspirators euphemistically called “Defence equipment“ became the largest, but undisclosed item in the respective annual national budgets of India & Pakistan to sustain and support the largest industries of the Western allies, to prevent the economies of both UK & USA from sliding into another “Great Recession” as the USA experienced in the 1930s , the initial signs of which had begun to emerge in the US economy after the end of the ‘First Cold War’. Is it not time that every self-respecting Indian and Pakistani does whatever he/she can to restore the world’s respect for their ancient culture, particularly their once ancient and sophisticated education system that produced people of such high mindedness & integrity, as Macaulay so spontaneously recorded after his early visits to India, after which he advised the British to systematically destroy ? This they faithfully did , apart from much else , through the flood of Christian missionaries they brought to the Indian Sub-Continent, to anglicize its culture & educational system ; not merely to make it’s people flunkies of western culture but also to convert them to Christianity. Much more importantly to destroy its ancient culture which Macaulay frankly recorded was “the very backbone of this nation” that created “people of such caliber” and “high moral values”. Surely Indians, and now no less Pakistanis, owe it to themselves to contribute in every way possible to restoring it, after attuning it (not westernizing it) to the imperatives of modern times.
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