Yuganta: End of an Epoch

A Srinivas Rao 

23rd August 2014

Dr Manesh L Shrikant

With a cockiness that only an unthinking youth could state, i said that the verse of the chariot analogy was from the Kathopanishad and not the Gita and that the Gita had borrowed it from there, as he had asserted. I wondered if that answer would have disqualified me at the admissions interview at an ungenial interest in obscure subjects to gain attention at my dimunitive frame. But then neither could i shake off a fascination with the questioner, a middle aged gentleman elegantly dressed and urbane despite the unmistakable Gujarati accent, rumored to be an industry tycoon with a strange interest in academics with a string of venerable degrees like trophies that crowned his thinning pate. I had heard some horror tales of his qualifications and his decimation of candidates in the anteroom as i waited for my turn at the admissions interview. Ever since then and for a very long time i shadowed his work and was charmed by this fascinating man consciously or unconsciously. I think I obsessively sought his approval which impelled me towards a standard of work and thought that he would regard as good. As his student i imagined that his classes were the most inspiring ones, that were remarkably insightful, creative, pointed, and unusual and indeed changed the course of my life. It left us breathless long after his lecture ruminating on the scattered lessons we gleaned from the rich learning. He instilled in us a confidence to question the thought of a remarkable array of thinkers, Gunnar Myrdal, Naisbitt, Porter, Mao Tse Tung, Roosevelt, Chester Barnard, Herbert Simon, Drucker (his favourite though our most dry thinker) apart from engaging case discussions on administrative issues which he thought as at the heart of management. His assignments were to me the most precious as  they were unusual and i sought his attention in strange ways. He wore his genius lightly though he never was quite recognised for his abilities in public. Few peers if any had the same combination of alacrity of intellect and managerial experience that he had that balanced the many softer aspects of administrative judgement. It is a pity that he was overlooked so often by so many. Having seen many such leaders of business schools some of who have been honoured by the Padma awards by the President and other such public recognition, he remains a towering giant amongst a gaggle of dwarves, known to a few and cherished by them all.

When i got the opportunity to work with him i jumped despite the caution, and entreaties by a host of people including my parents. Working with him at closer quarters was an even more fascinating experience knowing his abilities and understanding his thinking at closer quarters; yet a task that was Herculean. I  believe that the superficial glitter covered an even more amazing mind that was in many ways far far ahead of many of his peers and let us gasping and bewildered in fascination. Alas few saw or understood his vision. He had a remarkable ability to cut through complex ideas and issues to come to the utterly simple heart of a problem. If he picked up a balance sheet he would effortlessly point his finger at a number which he would casually remark was at the heart of the company’s woes, despite our battery of analysis. He was often right even when we tried to disprove his myth. He was also a master at communication, conjuring up unusual phrases that would point our mind in an entirely new direction that was resonant with a host of alternatives and pregnant meaning. He was the only light that really shone as a beacon among the faculty and the several of us who learned at his feet borrowed his light. We strove to emulate him, each in our own ways paying him his compliment by our varied imitations. I agree none came even remotely close, though we did have some good faculty. Unfortunately not many could learn from his genius and bring to bear his impress upon the pragmatic scholarship, or insightful turn of a case discussion, or even distill the essence of an argument in tersely simple terms. When we failed to appreciate him we parodied him, (not always without reason). His perfectionism in work wore us down and exasperated the best of us, whether it was the font size of a text in a presentation, or the colour of the covering page, the laboured attempts to further simplify to the basics, and few survived without licking the significant wounds in every engagement. Laconic and British like in humour we would recount his comments over Old Monk and beer and laugh our hearts out at how remarkable he was and how he wore us out with his unending demands. We could expect his calls early morning at 7.00 am and would haunt us all day even badgering us during a class. The meetings were endless and interminable (disdainfully called by some as durbars) where we kept looking at watches to prepare for class the next day hoping he would somehow get tired and go home for lunch and siesta and spare us the rest of the day to attend to our many administrative and academic responsibilities as we slogged unto the wee hours of the mornings to be rudely woken up by his call under muted curses.

His virtues were as many as his vices which is not what most people have. His genius was unmistakable even to the most dull people. First of all he brought forth a consciousness that the entire legacy of human thought regardless of antiquity or pedigree must be brought to impress upon the process of learning in the classroom. That was an unusual eclecticism that made him fascinating as he seamlessly wove diverse strands of thought to a fascinating insightful point that would leave the discerning gasping (alas few were discerning enough). He never entered a class without significant preparation (often involving our own labour and grumbling) which made him seem effortless and even cavalier though many students forgot to breathe as he spoke. He was relentless at questioning, challenging us who felt lazy enough, not to accept what he had to say. His classes on Business Policy or Strategy were inimitable and no one in my knowledge came even remotely close to that eccentric wizardry. Among his administrative accomplishments was the turnaround of the fledgling institution almost unknown and unsung from a loss making poor cousin among the Bhavan’s institutions to the most remarkable and profitable amongst them. Tackling administrative scepticism from many of us he goaded us against our academic orthodoxy on counterintuitive decisions and unpopular activities that salvaged the institute to generate cash flows that ensured the survival of the institution. He took the crucial and most important decision of his academic career to launch the Manufacturing Programme in 1992 partly out of faith in that sector and partly to wet his toes to check the opposition to launching a programme with no backing of the Bombay (then) University. With its success he went entirely autonomous that made his peers and contemporaries look aghast at what they thought was reckless adventurism. This was a man with an idea in a field of unremitting darkness. In 1997 he conceived of the Family Business Programme a first in the country at what many thought was folly. He disbanded the summer internship and replaced it was a socially oriented programme in a decision met with disbelief and enormous opposition against rocking a steady ship. His attempts to replace teaching with student based learning was unremitting though he deeply discounted the quality of faculty that it demanded. His attempts at curriculum innovation were not always successful and often were ill conceived but none can deny his urge at bringing in change. Some of us are yet dismissive at the ideas of DOCC, and their silly experiments that seem naive and ill conceived, at Abhyudaya (despite the GMAC award), and at such things as the Gita shibir in a secular institution that doesn’t extend its eclecticism in the domain of spirituality. But he strove constantly to bring forth change and boldly experimented than simply scoff. Eventually many have been ritualised into an SPJIMR identity which seems like a superflous ornament to some. Yet even the sceptics would agree that making the students responsible for running the institute was one of the best ideas in administration and governance that we have seen.

But then he was a master at making a virtue out of a necessity and I have lost count of the number of times he did that often turning a crisis into opportunity. He exhausted us with constantly changing goalposts pushing us so hard that many broke. And alas in the pursuit of his vision he trod roughshod over even the best of us, disdaining the individual, sacrificing many a good faculty at the altar of institutional demands or worse, personal caprice. Besides there was no dignity for the faculty who were simply several helping hands in an organizational structure where he was supreme and everyone else at the next level way below. He was mistrustful of all staff and cruel to a fault.  We suffered from the highest faculty turnover in the country and anecdotes abound of the alleged contempt he held for faculty. He was late on the IT bus which he never understood nor tried to and never had strong people who would have capitalised on that revolution in making the institute piggy-back on that effervescent demand. The two programmes that were visionary in conception were soon buried in a morass of political scepticism. Unfortunately not all shared his enthusiasm for spirituality or Bhagavad Gita which i believe were not as brilliant as his teaching of administration and management (nor was the marriage of the two very insightful). It was an indulgence we tolerated if not disdained, not for the content of the Gita or Vedanta but having heard many more masters in those specialised fields where not intellect but an intuitive faith and special insight reigns (or in crude words 'the singer matters more than the song'). Over the last decade the nature of innovation for which most people respected him was just more of the same, social awareness, or spirituality or inconsequential tie ups with mofussil institutions in the West. The ill advised Virginia Tech programme folded up. The PhD programme with BITS though directed internally foundered and sputtered in just a couple of years. Research which is the insignia of an academic institution and its chief raison d' etre was vacuous if not entirely absent and faculty encouraged to post for the public that done elsewhere or at another time. The two research works the institute never fails to speak of were done in 1991 (which was the closest brush that the dean came to with the powers that be with the PM and FM; never to be replicated nor recognised.) and none came close to those in 23 years that followed his watch. This was a teaching shop with a difference. The attempt at globalisation catapulted the Jain family into a global success at their private venture using the SPJIMR brand name leaving the poor parent wondering in disbelief and dissociation.

Though he craved attention and adulation (probably affection-for he was much respected yet never loved) he was notoriously shy to be caught directly soliciting the same. He held uneasily a quaint mixture of Gujarati Bania values and those of American liberalism which fought within him. He improvised in keeping the institution which was by then synonymous with him, be in the limelight and resented anyone even remotely close to limelight. His improvisation at organisational design were always expedient and lacked the foresight needed for building a long term competence. Alas the faculty was the single biggest Achilles heel for the institute. His silly notions of distributed leadership were clever explanations hiding the elephant in the living room. His steadfast refusal to have a succession plan (though always stated and never carried out) was born of his refusal to see his own mortality even when seized by the dreadful Parkinsons disease. His guilt at not setting a cap on the service age limit meant that he succumbed to almost turning the faculty into a geriatric camp, often reeking of sycophancy. He bullied not just the faculty but badgered the governing council into submission. He courted controversy as few can and his decision ostensibly to go global by marrying a non profit institutional governance system with a profit venture started by the Jain family (who was the grandson of the founding donor) revealed the clay feet for all to see and probably will be a decision that would have what he would have chimed "unintended consequences of policy decisions".  A deeply troubled personal life where he even lost his teenage son in a cruel act of fate probably kept egging him to drown his loneliness in a sea of activity. Yet he never betrayed his loss or grief at work nor his palpable loneliness. He should have probably left a decade ago as I have felt, for he had a fulfilled life at a good institution. His were the genius and the pathologies of the entrepreneurial leader, almost like a textbook case written by someone like Prof Manfred Kets De Vries.

Despite his several failings he still remains to many a hero. Frail, rather incoherent and with a body that seemed to rebel against his mind he reminds us still what a fighter he can be and how indomitable a will he has. On September 9th this year according to some accounts this great man steps down marking the end of an epoch a Yuganta after 27 years that would be enshrined in the annals of SPJIMR as that of the greatest of her leaders(though she has had only two before him), outshining the donor’s name that still prefaces the institution. Many have copied his ideas without acknowledging his genius or even seizing credit for them, but they are lesser men who haven't seen the horizon of his vision. His name is known to all of us who humbly sat as his students. We have never been the same again after an engagement with him. Some of us acknowledge that the best in us was in many ways kindled by him. 

Salutations to MLS-The Dean.