Reading the CEOs

Thanks to the Left, whose conscience substitutes as its brain, the mythology has been fostered that businessmen, businesswomen and mangers are incapable of thinking about the four most important things in society:  Ethics, equity, justice and an altar other than political and religious texts to hang our moral coats on. 

The truth, however, is absolutely the opposite. So it’s good to see some highly successful managers prove it.

I refer here to only four such men. But doubtless there are more, perhaps even women, of whom I am as yet unaware. 

The four are Gurcharan Das, Arun Maira, R Gopalakrishnan and Jaitirth Rao. In the last few years, all four have written books that show two things quite conclusively. All have been CEOs. 

One, that it is possible to discuss concepts from philosophy without the accompanying jargon-doused salad dressing that academics serve up. And, two, eruditely talking sense is inversely related to verbal pomposity that is thrown like a collapsed tent over ignorance. 

Thus, Gurcharan Das has written often about dharma and has been challenged and debated often. But the other three are new. 

R Gopalakrishnan has written about justice amongst other things; more recently, Arun Maira has written about ethics; and, most recently, Jaitirth Rao has written about conservative thought in India.  All ask questions that need asking, namely, how do we make Indian society better and replete with the characteristics mentioned above.

Two of these books, by Messrs Maira and Rao, are new. All four books are available online and can be bought for less than Rs 2,500.

It’s money well spent because the Left, in its eagerness to give the State preeminence, has simply never grappled with these things as it believes that the State is the embodiment of all virtue. In Latin this method is called ipsi dixit, ie because I say so. 

Oddly enough, the Right also thinks so, which is why I despise intellectuals from both sides. They think smugness is the perfect substitute for wisdom and the State is the panacea for all ills. 

Jaitirth Rao has dealt with a subject that India has never really bothered with much: conservative thought. He provides a very loose definition of it, as a preference for tradition and gradualism — or something thereabouts. 

As such it’s not a complete definition but it will do to begin with for a very important reason: It reduces the emotional content of recent Indian thinking on social issues by injecting some cerebral dye into it. 

The need for this cannot be underemphasised. It’s the brain that should do the thinking, not the heart. 

That said there are two other themes the book should attempt. They can only extend the boundaries of conservative thought in India. 

One is to discuss how conservative thought approaches the problem of using tradition to justify coercion within families and communities. The other is the problem of balancing what I call the Impossible Social Trilemma: Equity between groups, justice for individuals and efficiency for the economy. 

I should point out here that the Chanakya/Kautilya type of reasoning is not very helpful when the State is up for grabs in democratic competition because at that time sovereignty didn’t reside in the people but in the King or Queen. 

Marx said the State would do it. But since he didn’t spell out the details, Stalin ran off with the ball after silencing his rivals. His rule cost the Russians around 2.5 million lives. 

Arun Maira has written an equally thoughtful book about an ethical toolkit for the world. Of particular philosophical interest is his question about how we will deal with society when it is going to be dominated by artificial intelligence (AI), and to lesser extent by social media. How do you programme a machine so that it can differentiate between right and wrong?

The book is rich in questions of this sort. His basic point is crystal clear: How do you arrive at an optimal trade-off between two good social choices? By regulation or trial and error? Despite a few thousand years of trying we are no closer to a universally acceptable answer. 

This leads straight to the question of justice which Gopalakrishnan has discussed in his book. He asks a simple question: Why is justice not a fundamental right? I can’t recall a single jurist or political science professor asking this question. 

Let me end by asking if any B-Schools offer courses in philosophy. If they don’t because they don’t know who will teach it, they can start with any or all of the four former CEOs above.