The tragedy of commons

T

Please do not confuse the title with the ecologist Garrett Hardin's theory of precedence of individual self-interest over social interest. I opted for the title because I wanted to highlight one of the basic flaws of the policy making. Be it the policy making in the corporate world or be it the policy formulation in the high offices of the government. There is only one victim that is the common man. Despite the constitutional mandate, political prudence, and corporate value of uplifting the people at the bottom of the pyramid, our policies result in the maximum damage to this section of society.

I recently had a chance of conversing with my educated, modern, good-looking, tie-wearing, suited-booted friends of who have completed their education from some of the esteemed management institutes of India like IIM. It was a really disappointing conversation.We were talking about demonetization and to my utter disappointment, most of my friends failed to even recognize the problems of people at the bottom of the pyramid. It seemed like, for them, India is just the upper-middle-class urban-centered smartphone-equipped group of people. We may differ in our assessment of the intensity of the problems and we may agree to the point that such problems are like labor pain. From the womb of this time of the history, a new and stronger India will emerge. But rejecting and denying the fact that people at the grass root are facing any such problem only reflects the high degree of indifference, elitism, narrowmindedness and failure of management education. In my opinion, IIMs' should be renamed as IIIM i.e. Indian institute of indifference and management.

No wonder, their views reminded me of Ralph Miliband idea that management education is the fountainhead of the bourgeois class. And possibly for the same reason, engineering education despite being technically more intensive, is much cheaper than the management education. These management graduates sit at the helm of big corporates and design policies for the corporate. Obviously, one who can not even notice the problem of the people of common man will fail to find any solution for their plights. The the whole corporate world becomes a middle-class and upper-class centric phenomenon where the profit margins are extracted by exploiting the cheap labor of the lower class.

Further to this direction, such corporates form an important cog in the wheel of the military-industry-politician complex. The politicians win the election using the funds provided by big industrial houses therefore, their full effort is invested in ensuring the profitability of such people. The ultimate tragedy in this whole calculus is the common man.

I wish the bureaucracy brings the corrective influence and our education system focuses more on the development of the multi-dimensional thinking of the management graduates. Until that happens, the tragedy of commons will continue to occur.