Damage of I

If Bryan Adams practices in word and spirit what he sang once upon a time, I would instantly quit my job not only to worship him but to also preach and spread Bryanism throughout the world. I am referring to his blockbuster number 'Everything I do I do it for you', brought in during my generation's teenage heydays. Ever since, I have added many years of observation only to discover the hard hitting realism 'Everything I do I do it for I' 

The most recent example being the fiasco conceptualized, structured and executed by Satyam founder Mr Ramalinga Raju together with his near and dear ones to quench their avarice for power and pelf. Closely preceded in time was the profound self-interest displayed by a cadre of investment bankers leading to curtains being drawn on the epoch of standalone investment banks. 

Either of the above are unprecedented instances of paramount damage incurred by a bright mind's obsession with 'I'. It can put to shame the most dreadful of terrorist organizations. Rather all the prevalent terrorist outfits should perish into oblivion with utter shame and disgust. Not even in their wildest dreams can they dare render 15 million people jobless, lead an entire nation into bankruptcy or at the least wipe off trillions of dollars worth of market capitalization from international bourses.

Shockingly, the civilized society miserably fails to comprehend this simple fact. It continues to blow the likes of Mr Osama Bin Laden out of proportion altogether ignoring the contribution of Mr Raju and birds of similar feather. Needless to say, even an astonishing sleeping beauty without brains, like Mr H D Deve Gowda, can point out the stark gaps inherent in the performance of either parties. Why then this blatant inequity in performance evaluation and subsequent skewed recognition by the human society? Why is the global performance appraisal system so fundamentally flawed?

Unlike slumdog millionaire, I do not have the answers. But what I do have now is the realization and graceful acceptance of discrepancies prevalent in corporate performance appraisal system. All said and nothing done, it is but an offshoot of the above mentioned global appraisal system. Tout ensemble, a loosely coupled machinery victimized 24 by 7 to achieve the end objective of self gratification. Interestingly, the end objective is fairly well tolerated by certain economic dogmas.

In his book 'The Wealth of Nations', Adam Smith has metaphorically referred to this pursuance of self-gratification as the 'invisible hand' to broadcast the concept of 'free markets'. He argued that in an attempt to pursue one's own self interest, people tend to promote the welfare of the community at large. Though a brilliant conceptualization, history has repeatedly exposed the prime caveat of this theory. It's oversight in factoring the adverse impact of 'diseconomies of scale'. In alternate words, having too many invisible hands at work would result in a spoilt, unsavory, stale soup.