A Tryst With Truth

 

A TRYST WITH TRUTH

 National Engineering is a large public sector company manufacturing electrical goods, equipments, and accessories. Its corporate office is located in the industrial suburb of  Bombay and it has fifteen regional sales and distribution units throughout the country. Each Regional Unit is headed by a Regional Director who reports to Shri R. Bhatia, the Chairman of  National Engineering.

 

Recently, the grapevine in National is abuzz with a rumour that Mr.Swaminathan, the Regional Director of the Company’s Bhopal Unit has been found involved in a financial irregularity and has been charged with misappropriation of the company’s money. The staff union of  National, sensing this to be a provocative anti-Management issue, has lost no time in littering the office wall with posters denouncing corruption within the organization and demanding the punishment of the guilty. The Officers Association of the Company has maintained “diplomatic silence” in this matter. However, some senior officers of the Corporate Office who were not particularly well disposed towards Swaminathan have been openly critical of his misdemeanour. Meanwhile, Swaminathan has been advised by the Corporate Personnel Director to proceed on leave as an enquiry is to be conducted against him on the basis of prima facie evidence.

 

Prior to all these incidents, Swaminathan had approved the sale of a large quantity of transformer laminations to AKW Company, a private sector firm, also based in Bombay. Immediately before the sales deal was struck, Swaminathan’s son-in-law, who was working at Bhopal, had joined AKW Company as Marketing Manager in Bombay. The government Auditor, on a visit to the National Unit in Bhopal, made out a case that Swaminathan had shown undue favor to AKW in the above sale transaction.

 

The case now came for examination to Mr. Gopal who was the Chief Auditor of the Bhopal Unit. On close scrutiny,  Gopal found that Swaminathan had not in fact flouted any rule or norm in this case and that it was a clean deal. Besides, there was a precedence of  National having purchased similar laminations.

  

from AKW earlier when they were in desperate need to stick to the delivery

schedule. It was fairly well known that AKW and National worked almost like

sister companies and often helped each other in crisis situations.

  

The personal equations between Gopal and Swaminathan were, however, far from cordial. Thanks to Swaminathan’s adverse reports, Gopal missed his much-deserved promotion the previous year. For some inexplicable reason, Swaminathan frequently took a hostile stand against Gopal and although Gopal was known to be an upright and trustworthy officer, his detractors in the  Internal Audit Department invariably found a sympathetic ear in Swaminathan. Only a fortnight back, the Regional Director made a note that one of Gopal's tour bills was rather inflated although there was nothing in the bill to suggest so. It was time for Gopal to pay Swaminathan back in his own coin.

 

 

In another development, the Deputy  Regional Director, Mr. Prasad, to whom Gopal reported, wanted to make use of this case to upstage Swaminathan.  Prasad sent feelers to Gopal that his promotion and posting will be taken care of if he ‘manufactured’ adverse comments on the Swaminathan case. It was true that Gopal’s comments as the chief Internal Auditor were crucial in this case as any adverse remarks by him, would mean the sealing of Swaminathan’s fate. Ram Kumar, a colleague of Gopal who also worked in the Internal Auditor Department whispered to him :

 

“ Gopal,  You know the auditor’s subtle art that can fix Swami. Let him lose his sleep.  After all, you also lost a year’s Promotion.”

 

 Gopal observed that the same Ramkumar fawned on Swaminathan when the latter was in power but was now beginning to demonstrate this allegiance to Mr. Prasad. Gopal then sighed to himself: “How things change? “  But he refused to be carried away by his colleague’s insinuations and said :

 

 “ I am no coward to fight shadows. I trust my professional competence and integrity. I shall not stab Swaminathan in the back “.

  

Thus, he wrote his fair comments, exonerating Swaminathan, and came home that evening happy and content at what he had done.

 

              This case subsequently traveled through various stages including the Parliamentary Sub-Committee and reached the Cabinet Minister for Industries. The minister referred the case back to National  Electricals once again. The Finance Director of the National, especially landed in Bhopal to know Gopal’s personal view on the case. Gopal stuck to his earlier ground and said :

 

“ I have already given my comments. I have no doubt that

   ‘S’ is innocent in this case”

 

The  Finance Director went back and the case was closed. Gopal’s boss Prasad became furious at the former’s Stubborn attitude and spoiled his confidential Report.  As a result , Gopal lost promotion for yet another year. He was extremely disappointed, and wrote a letter to the Chairman which ended with an  angry outburst :

 

“Is this the way you reward your honest employees?”

 

The Chairman acknowledge the receipt of Mr. Gopal’s letter but sent no reply.

  

A few months passed by without any further development in the Swaminathan episode. Gopal continued to work as the chief Auditor. Sometimes, taking a break from his hectic schedule, he would spend a few minutes all by himself to reflect on his life and carrier.

 

“ I have never opted for any undue advantage in my twenty years of service. I do not remember having spoken a lie nor did I harbour any ill will against any of my colleagues. I had to raise a family of three children, look after my old parents and marry off two of my sisters and managed to do all these by honest means…..”. he muttered to himself and the train of thought continued in his mind ………

 

 “ By God’s grace, all my three children have turned out to the brilliant. They have done very well in their professions and each one of them has inherited the qualities of honesty and hard work that my father and  I stood for. In  Neela,  I have found a caring and supportive wife.  What more could I have asked for in this life?  How much does the loss of a couple of promotions matter in comparison to a life lived for an ideal”.

 

As these words continued to buzz in his mind,  Gopal’s eyes fell on the glass top of his table where he had tucked in a piece of printed paper. It read:

  

“Success is not the aim of life. Perfection is."

 “That’s what my father would always tell me”, he whispered to himself and proceed to clear the next file on his table.

 

I add "Success is not the aim of life. Working for your aim is." The aim should be to serve others and create one welfare world without any major conflicts.

  

• Case prepared by Mr. Debashis Chatterjee, Research Fellow, Management Centre for Human Values, Indian Institute of  Management

Calcutta. It is meant for MML discussion only.

 

      *      The material for this case was supplied by Mr. V.S. Charlu.

                         **************************