LEADERS. That’s what the world and the country are looking for and not getting them — more acutely in the political realm and somewhat less intensely in the corporate domain. There is, of course, no dearth of politicians in the social sphere and managers in the business arena, who are getting passed as leaders without really being so.

 

Tall personalities of vision, wisdom and knowledge, who are clear about where they are leading the flock of humanity, is a rarity now when such leaders are needed more than ever to guide the rest through the complex maze of the current era. What we have instead is umpteen number of what Winston Churchill referred as “men of straw who will get blown and will be heard no more”. No Gandhi, no Nehru, no Marx, no Roosevelt, no Kennedy, no Ford, no Jamshedji Tata. The new age doesn’t produce anymore such towering leaders who made the big difference to the world and to the industrial enterprise.

 

Bereft of such figures, the fate of humanity is left in the hands of thousands of men of straws who have before them limited objectives to attain, missing completely the holistic approach that is discussed so much and followed so little and needed so badly.

 

The result of being led by the crop of time-serving, country-serving and self-serving pigmies is evident from the numerous crises binds that we are getting into, with little understanding of how and when we will come out of them. If the Dooms Day clock is constantly getting pushed back, it is largely owing to this universal crisis of leadership.

 

The pertinent question to ask is why are we now not getting the kind of exemplary, visionary leaders the pre-industrial and industrial eras produced who changed the course of their time — for the better. The answer perhaps lies in the all-powerful, all-crushing, assembly line reductive system, which is now on its own evolutionary course and cannot be stopped, even if the implications are disastrous.

 

The Frankenstein was ironically created by the greatest-ever industry futurist Henry Ford, who demonstrated to the world the effectiveness of automation and the assembly-line production process. The Ford model of production got replicated across the board globally in every area of human enterprise — from industry to all institutions. The emphasis was on well-synced micro processes that combined harmoniously to produce the final market product. While this accounted for enhanced and efficient productivity, it, on the flip side, saw the gradual systematization of all human efforts for operational conveniences and single-point management. The system left no room for outgrowing the predefined roles. Everyone was needed to do the little bit for the bigger thing at the delivery-end of the system. This worked wonders in terms of productivity, but led to the dwarfing of the individual. Reduced to a cog in the machine, people learnt to function within tightly prescribed parameters. So, if the age doesn’t produce colossus figures, it’s this dominant assembly line in all walks of life that is to blame. The varying forms of the old Ford system need robotic, reduced, assembly line-fit humans and that is what it is getting. How can you with this system get great leaders? Managers yes, leaders no. That’s the damage the Ford system has done despite the many benefits it has ensured.

 

I am reminded here of what I had read in my childhood about Guru Rabindranath Tagore. While at the better of the then assembly line school of Shanti Niketan, he was one day sitting in the classroom. Bored by the class-room proceedings, he was soulfully engrossed watching the rains drench the vegetation outside the window. The class-room manager — the teacher — seeing him get distracted by nature asked him to get up and leave the class. Ravindranath Tagore happily obliged the teacher and he went out to enjoy the rains. We all know Tagore later dropped out of school to pursue his passions. Had he continued, perhaps we wouldn’t have known Guru Tagore the way we know him today. The system would have beaten him down for the assembly line. He revolted, refused and went ahead, guided by his passion to become the greatest literary leader India has known.

 

So you have today more managers and politicians than leaders. Can the world count on these men of straws to pull them from the dead-end we appear set to hit on so many fronts? The dangers are real, the crises are real but those at helm are unreal or are too blinkered by narrow system needs to have the holistic vision and provide the leadership of the saviour.

 

Who has the guts to break free and lead? The world needs you.