The Impatient Manager by Vieira Walter

Author:Vieira, Walter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sage Publications India Pvt, Ltd -- eBooks

THE CHALLENGE OF AMORALITY

Perhaps the biggest challenge we face in India—and it would be true for many other parts of the world—is the challenge of “amorality.” Many are losing the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, between black and white. It is all shades of gray. It would seem to follow the old dictum, “There is no right, there is no wrong, but thinking makes it so.” If most people in the country feel like this and then act on such decisions, it will be like a ship without a compass—a sailing ship that sails whichever way the wind blows because it does not know where it is going. It can go anywhere.

The garage mechanic who repairs the car requested me to pay him the 7,000 I owe him by cash. “Won't a cheque do?” I asked him. He explained to me that he plans to buy a house in Mumbai and a house in Mumbai needs to be paid for with forty percent cash. So he was collecting the cash, not giving receipts so he can rustle up the forty percent that he needed to pay. He knew he was wrong, but justified his deed with the plea that he has no choice. It is a shade of gray, not black.

The medical doctor takes commissions from the pathology labs, from radiologists, and from consultants to whom he may refer patients. Is this a right thing to do? Is this system of commissions or kickbacks covered by a disclosure to patients? Certainly not!

A doctor explained to me that he has paid 60 lakhs to buy the premises for his dispensary. It is a lot of money in addition to the 15 lakhs that his education has cost him. Now the question is: how and when is he going to recover this large investment? Can he do this without a supplementary income from these commissions? Otherwise, he can only recover the investment by the time he is seventy-five. The end justifies the means and again we have the shades of gray.

If you stand in the queue for the bus at Mumbai Flora Fountain, you will find that the queue dissolves as soon as the bus arrives. Then, it is free for all. The able-bodied push their way from the rear of the queue to the front. There is a little consideration for the elderly and for women. One of them told me that it takes two hours to reach his Andheri home from Flora Fountain and, therefore, there is no time for niceties and etiquette. He saw nothing wrong in what he does every evening as he muscles his way into the bus. He had become “amoral.”

If this contagion spreads and if our young people are not imbued with a sense of morality in the home and in the school, India will one day collapse as a nation. A whole proud civilization would come to an end in the same way as earlier civilizations, like the Roman, came to a sorry end with a corrosion of the country's moral fiber.

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