The Indian tradition describes the supreme Guru Dakshinamurthy, as seated in front of his pupils in a profound silence that is itself the highest teaching (mouna vyakhya). Yet there are instances when silence is not golden. I was amused to read “Schumpeter’s” column in ‘The Economist’ (whose subscription was gifted by an old student) “Twilight of the gurus” (25
thApril 2015) claiming that ‘the management pundit industry is a shadow of its former self’. Indeed i assent vigorously and also wonder whether it is a good thing. Yet Schumpeter is too dismissive rather than trying to understand the phenomenon. This is a most loquacious industry trying to outshout other gurus quite like competing guru akharas in their grating microphones at the Kumbha Mela. Competing gurus might be in good humour analogous to management gurus in that they are voluble, mystically wooly, elliptical in quotation also economical with the truth of their research and methodology, giving away gyan to the great unwashed willing to buy their cure all snake oil panaceas. Yet not all gurus are quacks.
