Saturday, March 03, 2007

Organisational Terrorism

That day I was hearing a FM jockey say that explosions happen, people die and yet nothing changes. No steps are taken to prevent such recurrences. After the Mumbai Train Explosions RPF strength was found to be miserably low and so it was decided to be strengthened with additional manpower and it was expected that it would be done on top priority. But nothing happened and then Samjhauta Explosion happened. So people of India must learn to get habituated with all such explosions and acts of Terrorism around us. “Adat Dalna Parega”. Whatever wrong happens around us from acts of Terrorism to rape and murder to anti-social activities, nothing will ever improve, nobody will do anything about them; so people of India better learn to live with these and make it a habit so that these acts do not surprise them anymore. Once we are habituated with all such negativism around us we will be happy and will not ask for change and improvement. Once Terrorism around us becomes a habit we will just keep on walking past the dying around us who are victims of such acts till we either die or be lucky enough not to. Habit makes us accept the situation as the situation itself is now a habit for us.

We all have heard of International Terrorism. The phrase evolved after Regional or Domestic Terrorism crosses national or regional boundaries by joining hands with each other in different countries, Funds flowing across national borders through backdoors, and with the acts of Terrorism being perpetrated in countries other than where the planners are. We all know what this word means. We think we know what this word means. After all we read about Terrorism nearly every day in newspapers.

We all know that Terrorists thrive on muscle power, want to remain in power, perennially seeks to achieve power and benefits for self and therefore terrorises the people around them to achieve all this. It is a habit for them to do so. The Terrorist does not love anybody else or any entity but himself or herself even though they may be under the misapprehension that they do so; they may think they love their families or their country of choice or the cause they say they stand for. Actually they love only themselves and that is why they can perform the acts of Terrorism in which they can easily kill and maim thousands without batting an eyelid. If we study their past and present we can easily see that they are full of arrogance, egotism, ruthlessness, greed for power and disdain for others who dare to stand up against them. They also live in a world of their own created by their “strength” where they think they are king and therefore right and all the others are wrong.

Having dissected the anatomy of a Terrorist, I have now come to the conclusion that Terrorism exists around us all the time in different forms and strength. Terrorism exists in the form of the school bully. We must all have either gone through this ourselves or seen others going through this depending on how strong or how weak we have been and how lucky we have been or not to meet a bully in our own lives. The Bully was the Terrorist when we were in schools.

Then there are Terrorists in families. The father or the husband can be a terror if he is rude, a drunkard, always beating up his children and wife and terrifying them all the time. There are people like this too around us. He is nothing but a bully who has to prove his power over his family through his acts of terror. And so he is a Terrorist too for his family.

The distinguishing characteristic of a Terrorist is that he will be perceived as being strong vis-à-vis those whom he terrorizes. He thrives on creating such an appearance for himself. He will go all out to create such an impression of his strength and power in the mind of his potential victims by using everything in his means so that the others show obeisance to him.

Thus a terrorist may be physically strong as in the case of the school bully who will use this physical strength on others to assert his superiority or he may be strong by position of power as in the case of the Father or Husband on whom the family depends and so have to submit to his Terrorism. Each Terrorist will thus have some source of power which he will use to Terrorise.

In the case of the Political Terrorist his power is derived from his weapons and his being untraceable/ hidden. Secrecy & his weapons give power and makes him strong. The day the Terrorist is caught with his pants down (without weapons and outside his hiding he is powerless and subdued immediately by the other side. You take away his power source and he ceases to remain a Terrorist. This is the secret of fighting a Terrorist. So when a father becomes old and weak he ceases to be a Terrorist because now he has to depend on his wife and children who are stronger.

Thus we see the bully on the road. This Terrorist on the Road can be anybody with a vehicle- need not be a car or Blueline Bus driver as we see on the Roads of Delhi, it can be a 2–wheeler driver too. Yes sometimes a 2-wheeler driver also terrorises a 4-wheeler driver by the knowledge that in the event of an accident the 4-wheeler will be held more guilty since his was a bigger vehicle in a court of law and also sometimes the knowledge that a 4-wheeler driver will be from a respectable background and may not have the will and desire to fight with a 2-wheeler driver who may be a person of the streets. Thus here we see two types of Terrorist on the road. In the case of a 4-wheeler driver his source of power is his bigger vehicle; in case of the 2-wheeler driver the source is derived from his position (his having a smaller vehicle gives him a stronger Position in Law) or his position in society (he being a street man compared to the educated man in the car who cannot physically fight with him).

If you apply my definition and logic of what a Terrorist is you will find them all around us in different guises and in different areas. I think Terrorists exist everywhere around us and yes certainly in organisations too. The bully who is your boss is also a Terrorist. A management Person can also be a Terrorist. The person who is in Management is in a position of power and so his seat is the source of his power. Anybody misusing his seat of power is also a Terrorist. I call him an Organisational Terrorist.

I think there are examples of them in any organisation and if we look deeply we may find some around us too. Those who think they have the right to threaten people because they are under them & powerless because of their positions, bully them by shouting at them because the other cannot shout back, by giving them low ratings even after they have worked hard all year long because the other cannot rate him back, using harsh words when they do not really deserve it because the other is polite enough not to retort and prevented by disciplinary rules if he wants to, threatening them with dire action and sometimes even taking these actions on his victim are all Terrorists of the Corporate world. The Corporate or Organisational Terrorist’s gun is his seat.

Yes I have come to conclude that there are Terrorists all around us from Kashmir to inside our houses to the roads to our own organisations. I thank the Radio Jockey for her innocuous comment which I heard that day while driving to office and which started me on my thinking which I am sharing with you all here.

The silver lining in this is as I stated above. You take away the source of power that a Terrorist has which he uses against others and he or she becomes zero. The only way to fight a Terrorist as I said is by isolating them &.taking away their sources of power. Whether this happens by force or by natural process of ageing, death or retirement is another story. But when it happens as it always happen, then they are nothing but zero just like the old husband who after a lifelong beating of his wife becomes an arthritis bound pound of pitiful flesh deserving and getting nothing but pity from his wife on whom he now has to depend upon; or the Political Terrorist who has to rot in jail or the Retired management Person whose seat is no longer there to give him his perceived power and who then becomes just like any other person among the teeming millions on the roads who will have to depend on nothing but courtesy and politeness to get work out of others so that he can survive the remaining period of his ordinary life.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Stupidosaur said...

Very true thought! I agree! BTW was your boss key person in inspiring this too? ;) (esp looking at labels!)

Wednesday 19 January 2011 at 20:16:00 GMT+5:30  
Blogger ShantanuDas said...

hi
i had forgotten that I had written this!! So much so that I was wondering whether I have plagiarised this from somewhere!! Blv it or not!! But then the year and the delhi road- reference and the organisational reference does seem to show it is mine!! LOL !! Yes.. there was one such.. a top notch one!! Board Director.

Wednesday 19 January 2011 at 23:33:00 GMT+5:30  

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