In the beginning, there was just the primordial soup bubbling in the prehistoric oceans, in which a few big molecules, in an entirely chance event (or a couple of chance events) combined together to form the first living cells – then came the primaeval eukaryotes and later multicellular plants and animals. The animals had it tough (and so do they do still today) – fighting for survival – for the resources for living and growing – life in the wild was and is an existential struggle. Then, some furry little upstarts took the opportunity given by the death of the rampaging dinosaurs and started developing bigger and bigger brains – compared to their body size. From tiny lemurs, they went to the giant gorilla. One off shoot of this family started walking on two legs, developing a straight, far looking posture, and utilized the opposable thumb to shape the primitive tools, to tame fire, to hunt instead of being hunted. Yes, life kept on becoming more than a struggle for existence – humans (as the members of this off shoot were known as, eventually) found leisure, a meaning to life, a sense of enjoyment. The uncertainty of the next meal was countered by agriculture and husbandry, the uncertainty of the weather was nullified in effect by the dwellings built. In this way, the many uncertainties of life were done way with, and human life was made distinct from the general animal life. The life was now meant for enjoyment.
Or so it was, until some smart Alecs hijacked the whole agenda – and management literature became replete with ‘competitiveness’ – and competitiveness was made the ‘buzzword’ – how to make your organization competitive, how to out compete your competitors and all that. Well, they started by slashing prices, so that they, along with their ‘competitors’ bleed – which was good, as long as the competitor bled more gushingly. They started on a noble venture of giving customers what they asked for, then went for giving them what they had in mind, but did not ask for, and soon, they started pre-empting customer wants! Of course, they had to stay ahead of competition. And, thus through our own smart thinking, in the late twentieth century, we squandered one great thing our forefathers had achieved gradually from the time when they had toiled over flint stones to build the first fire, or shaped the first spear – peace of mind and exclusion from a struggle for existence.
Is competition a good thing – that is a question that should vary with the degree of competition involved – of course, it is good if the aim is to weed out the lethargic and useless. But sadly, once started, competition does not stop on its own, once the unworthy have been weeded out – as is said, everything is fair in love and war – so when you arouse competition, be prepared for anything. So if one starts working for 10 hours a day ( to weed out those useless 9 to 5 good for nothings), one’s competitor might start doing 11 hours a day. Third may respond with 12 hours – soon the hours start piling – you hire two or three sets of employees and start working 24 hours. When all are working 24 hours, and there are no more hours to put in, it may get down to setting up two shops, then three and so on. All very good – but we can see that the original purpose was to maintain a 10 hour working day – the norms might have been achieved in that much – the rest is the price of competition – it is like a fire you lit up to warm your room in the winter, and it ends up consuming your house – not a very good bargain. It becomes what my professor likes to call the ‘Red Queen Effect’ – you have to run very fast to stay at the same place! Is it good? Yeah, some power drunk corporate boss might say – we like to smash the unworthies to smithereens, and to win like a good sport. I object. I object seriously. This is not some bloody sport – this is a question of livelihood for people – and it is not about winning or losing, it is about living with dignity and pleasure. Rampant competition is different from back yard play – there, those incapable of playing generally stay away from play, and let the jocks struggle in the play. But there is no such thing in the business world – if they start the stampede, the small ones will get crushed, whether they like it or not. Human life is a journey, with death as a destination – so in the end, the destination is not what we are after, but the quality of journey. When your company, after all of scheming and aggressive techniques, do put a ‘competitor’ out of business, you are not scoring some Wayne Rooney goal on some cosmic scoreboard, but putting a few people away from their source of income – and do not for once think that you have done the customers a great service by the offering that proved to be the final nail in the coffin. The customer was satisfied (in most cases) good enough with the previous offers made by you and the slain. And do not give me that ‘just good ain’t good enough’. Of course, what do you think; can you rest of your laurels now? No, the others are behind you – ready to kick you out as you did to the dead. Where will it stop – God knows – and do not worry about the customer – his appetite is being whetted continuously, worry about yourself – you started off feeding a poodle and turned it into a rottweiler. If you stop feeding him, he might bite.
Well you might say that competition is good for the society at large – after all, where ever there is innovation, there is competition – well, again this is based on the implicit assumption that innovation is good – well let me clear the air here – airplane was an invention, and ‘Sensational’ journalism is an innovation – are both really good. I doubt so – spreading spicy misinformation does nobody except the owners of India TV any good. And does this innovation start competition – yes, it does – a previously respected news channel Aaj Tak is now giving India TV a run for its money, if not winning. Similarly we have many such ‘design’ innovations, and ‘pricing’ innovations and such many business innovations, accounts of which fill libraries of respected business schools. Well, they do not make life good for anybody – but do make our life more ‘competitive’.
What else can competition do – well, it can make us, and our organizations evolve into mean ‘competing’ machines – so that the prime task is not anything else but competition – in the perfect competitive scenario – we would first compete, then breathe, drink, eat and live in that order. Maruti will specialize in competition and making cars. The local barber would specialize in competition and mushroom cuts. You find that funny – well, if you do not believe me – just go to the Rajasthani city of Kota – here people are schooling in competition – at a time when half of them should be doing their High School education – they are doing that, but that is after they are done schooling in competition – and the result is good enough – kids who know how to solve the most complex numerical problem in thermodynamics, but have absolutely no physical idea of what enthalpy is! They know little, but can compete in the toughest engineering entrance examination. That is the result of a competitive evolution.
Still worse, competition can make us wiling to do anything to survive – be it fudging our resumes – or at least filling it with complete unadulterated ‘bull-business’ like – ‘I have done a certificate course on six sigma’ – which means nothing but what it says – still, that might be better than not having done a certificate course in six-sigma. And the less I say about six-sigma, the better. It can lead to leading business schools fudging the placement data, to inflate the average salary offered on campus placements, to a Ramalinga Raju inflating Satyam profit figures, to boost share prices. Survival is important for all, and if we, as a society make the legitimate survival too ‘competitive’ – we might push some people into doing the illegal.
And after all, this is not for free. Well, one might argue that the per capita income of the world has increased very high in the recent times. Well, are the people more happy today for it – I am not being philosophical here. Old timers may argue they were happier in the time of Auld Lang Syne, while youngster may not imagine a life without the modern day comforts of electronics and service industry. So, we can safely conclude that people are in general as happy now, as they were in the, say, 17th century. What has changed – the per capita consumption – we are eating our planet out – we are not getting anything from outside, for all our innovations, but simply getting ways to squander all we have got, at an increasing pace. The Earth might have enough for everybody’s need, but not everybody’s greed.
So what is the solution – the way out of this rat race – this rat ‘Olympiad’ if I must say? Well, in the
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