42 THE WEEK • JULY 21, 2019
SCHIZO-NATION
ANUJA CHAUHAN[email protected]D
avid Ogilvy, arguably the “father of adver-
tising”, used to send all new office heads
a Matryoshka doll from Gorky on their
first day on the job. If the new appointee had the
curiosity to open the doll, and keep opening till he
came to the inside of the smallest doll, he would
find this message:“If each of us hires people
who are smaller than we are, we shall become a
company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people
who are bigger than we are, we shall become a
company of giants.”
It is easier said than done, of course. Only
people with genuine smarts, high self-esteem, an
appetite for healthy competition and a hunger for
achievement can follow this policy. The Mughal
emperor Akbar did it. He was
an unlettered, unschooled
man, but he surrounded
himself with brilliant men.
His nine jewels included
an economist, a general, an
administrator, wits, poets
and philosophers. They
spoke truth to power without
fear or intimidation, and the
general public profited from
their combined wisdom.
But lazy, mediocre, enti-
tled people are always too
insecure to empower anybody who can become a
“threat” to them. They tend to systematically weed
out high-profile performers, and favour people
with talents and passion inferior to their own. It
is a policy that hollows out the organisation and
inevitably ends with dumb, dumber and dumb-
est monkeys dangling at the bottom of the food
chain, a phenomena economists describe rather
piquantly as a bozo explosion, the kind that is
currently plaguing the Congress party.
Does Rahul Gandhi have the appetite to be an
Akbar or an Ogilvy? Will he be able to look past
the bozos and genuinely empower a Sachin Pilot,
a Jyotiraditya Scindia, or a Shashi Tharoor—a
youngish, dynamic, well spoken, popular leader?Sometimes I think he actually will. And if he does,
it will be an amazingly courageous, unselfish and
patriotic act on his part, one that will pay rich
dividends to the party, and in the long term, even
to him.
Or, will he do what everybody is pretty much
expecting him to do, and place some nameless,
faceless, no-threat cipher in the top job? It is
ironic that while Ayodhya is a Camelot of the BJP,
it is the Congress which has been playing out so
many scenes from the Ramleela lately. We have
got righteous Prince Rama swearing he will go
into exile, we have got everybody moaning and
breast-beating trying to get him to stop.
Just like loyal brother Bharat, we have got any
number of loyal lieuten-
ants vowing that they are
unworthy to rule, and will
do so only in big brother’s
name, with his sandals on
the singhasan, and devout
obedience in their hearts.
We have even got a swelling
band of loyal Laxman/Sita
types who have resigned in
solidarity with big brother
and are all set to ‘go into
exile’ themselves! The whole
thing stinks of sycophancy
and it is pathetic.
Let us hope Rahul is zen enough to be the
smallest Matryoshka doll—the one that goes on to
father giants. He certainly seems to be talking the
talk; it is time to see if he will walk the walk.
And to the ‘faithful’ within the party, I would
advice a little less Ramayana-style toadying, and
a little more Mughal swag, please. An old-fash-
ioned, bloody war of succession where little
brothers take on big brothers for the throne is the
need of the hour. The time for timidity, modesty
and pehle aap is past. Please step up and stake
your claim strongly. Because we, the people of
India, are holding auditions for future leaders, too.
And our eyes are on you.Akbarnama, for abdication drama
ILLUSTRATION BHASKARAN