When I was still in school, one of the sports idol I used to follow was Bobby Fischer, the famous world chess champion from USA. He was one such player who resigned from active sports at the helm of his career. Later he remained an erratic personality and he even supported Osama Bin Laden towards the fag end of his life. Resignations, retirements and returning awards are probably at its peak in this season. Particular types of people who claim to be to be hurt by the current political scenario are putting an interesting show in the media. People in the creative field are considered as highly emotional people. Unfortunately in the modern times creativity is also very much linked with politics and religion. Without analyzing the background and reasoning given by such returners, let me put forth my perspective with an experience from my own journey of life. Those days I had just started my career in a public sector company. Annual DPC was the time which everyone used to wait quite anxiously. The term DPC, which expanded to departmental promotion committee was the way in our organisation to give promotions or increments etc.
I was a newly appointed officer, but as one of my first assignment I had to distribute DPC letters to people in my group, just because the Group Head was on leave. I started calling the staff one by one, gave them letters and started congratulating them on their promotions, merit increments or awards. I thought that it was the noblest work, I was lucky to have as my first assignment. But somehow, as the people started coming and going, I could feel that there is something grossly wrong somewhere. Most faces were either blank or upset. Rarely anyone was happy after receiving the letter of promotion, increment or award. Very soon I got the answer. Two people who were given awards came to me and declared that they want to return their letter of awards. When I enquired, I came to know that since some of their colleague has got a merit increment, they are unhappy with the fixed amount award. Similarly if someone had got promotion, he was not happy with the new salary he was fixed on as compared to someone else. Discomfort to everyone was invariably related to comparison with someone else in the department. So the lesson of human resource handling became clear to me in my very first year. First one is; A manager needs to act in a way that comparison can be avoided and the second one is; whatever effort or fairness is exercised while taking people related decisions, comparison based discomforts will always be there. When I apply the same lesson to the current scenario, I attribute such things to intolerance and discomfort amongst a section of people towards their decision maker. When the decision maker changes the set of people in this intolerant group also change. Anyway, if I need to oppose a decision or may be indecision, I would do it by using the skills I have. It could be either by writing or by making a film or by giving a new scientific theory or by mobilizing the people. Skill of returning awards I do not have, so no one will care about my voice, as would be raising it without using my right skills.
Dr. Sunil Ji Garg
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