A. Srinivas Rao
Icarus in Greek mythology was given a pair of wings by his father the first great engineer Daedalus in attempting to simulate flight. Daedalus also put on his pair of wings and they began with level flight off a cliff on the Agean coast. Daeldalus however cautioned Icarus not to soar too high as his wings were designed only for a limited range. Iracus despite the warning tries to reach for the sun which melts his waxen wings and hurtles to his death. Our abilities and our equipment enable us to perform some of our tasks very well and meet their limitations beyond a certain point. Often success in one field or enterprise is no guarantee of a midas touch elsewhere.
Overreach was a term used when a horse struck his front hoof with the back hoof. It also means trying to defeat one’s own self by trying to do too much. Now you have all kinds of overreaches these days. This is the flavour of the season. Overreach is a kind of boundary bashing (across functions, domains, areas, geographies, disciplines) and claiming competence in another person’s area of work and then actually believing what you say. Earlier in organisations, bosses used to overreach the levels to pull up people and get work done; just that the guys who were responsible stopped after a while as they believed that they had no authority. Likewise judicial over reach, the civil society overreach etc. It is the subversion of institutional mechanisms, not by intelligent and participative dialogue to examine the problem and work through a solution. It is when we believe that we can reform the system from the ‘outside’ and not respect constitutional mechanisms and cavalierly ignore all caution. It is what the NAC does, it is what the so-called civil society does, and it is what Ramdevji does. But then this is also the age of impatience where we think that to do anything we must have “dus ka dum”.
Icarus in Greek mythology was given a pair of wings by his father the first great engineer Daedalus in attempting to simulate flight. Daedalus also put on his pair of wings and they began with level flight off a cliff on the Agean coast. Daeldalus however cautioned Icarus not to soar too high as his wings were designed only for a limited range. Iracus despite the warning tries to reach for the sun which melts his waxen wings and hurtles to his death. Our abilities and our equipment enable us to perform some of our tasks very well and meet their limitations beyond a certain point. Often success in one field or enterprise is no guarantee of a midas touch elsewhere.
Overreach was a term used when a horse struck his front hoof with the back hoof. It also means trying to defeat one’s own self by trying to do too much. Now you have all kinds of overreaches these days. This is the flavour of the season. Overreach is a kind of boundary bashing (across functions, domains, areas, geographies, disciplines) and claiming competence in another person’s area of work and then actually believing what you say. Earlier in organisations, bosses used to overreach the levels to pull up people and get work done; just that the guys who were responsible stopped after a while as they believed that they had no authority. Likewise judicial over reach, the civil society overreach etc. It is the subversion of institutional mechanisms, not by intelligent and participative dialogue to examine the problem and work through a solution. It is when we believe that we can reform the system from the ‘outside’ and not respect constitutional mechanisms and cavalierly ignore all caution. It is what the NAC does, it is what the so-called civil society does, and it is what Ramdevji does. But then this is also the age of impatience where we think that to do anything we must have “dus ka dum”.
