In the Police, some people are MBAs, the real thing, i.e., Masters of Business Administration, not the Married But Available types. Since popular wisdom is that for civil servants, life begins on the day one joins the service, some of these are born MBAs (i.e., already MBAs when they join), some attain MBAhood (they go for a mid-career course to “improve” their skill-set) and some have MBAhood thrust upon them (they resort to a study programme to tide over some inconvenient chapter in their careers while retaining the government quarters and perks). I happened to belong to the first category but soon realised how an MBA programme truly ill-equips you for a career in Policing.

Almost at the beginning of the MBA course the teachers tell us about the virtues of being Y type managers and how vile the X type managers are. Essentially, Type X Managers believe that employees need to be coerced, controlled and micro-managed with the threat of punishment to ensure that adequate effort is put towards achieving the business goals. Type Y Managers believe that employees being motivated at work is innate. People will accept, and even seek, taking on responsibility under the right conditions. So, one should be nice to one’s staff and believe in them. So I behaved as though any subordinate was a brother from another mother and used to address them as “Dada.” One day, a Sub Inspector fair shouted at me telling me to stop this nonsense. He said all those fancy stuff is for the books. In a uniformed service, I was destroying the whole hierarchy and discipline. That was sabak no. 1.

I thought I was a public servant, the public was my client and client was God. As a part of training, when I was assigned to do vehicle checking, I applied the Y theory and was gently waving at trucks to stop so that I could check their papers. All the trucks were just zooming past when my trainer Sub Inspector shouted, “Kya kar rahen hain Dash saab, aise koi rukega kya! Ek ko do danda lagaiye, sab apne aap rukenge. And he proceeded to put his words to action and was immediately and phenomenally effective. So, that was the end of X type and Y type for me.

Then, there was this beautiful concept of MBO, Management By Objectives. One was supposed to set the targets jointly with the subordinates so that their involvement and buy-in would be greater. However, when I tried it, all that happened was abysmally low targets and one thousand and one excuses. Meanwhile, my boss held one Crime Conference, suspended a few laggards and transferred a few others and everything fell in place. Thus ended my flirtation with that theory.

However, one theory did seem to apply – with some modifications. I found that officers do follow some sort of Maslow’s hierarchy in their evolution in the career.

I don’t think, when he joins the service, any officer is already evil personified. In fact, almost all the officers, when they join, are fired with idealism to change the world and leave the society a better place. So, the initial stage of the officer can be characterised as, “I shall do no wrong; I shall also not let anyone do anything wrong.” ISDNW, ISANLADAW. Wherever the officer sees any wrongdoing, he tends to jump in like a greyhound dog and tear at it, sometimes at great cost to himself.

As time goes by, the officer finds that the system is just too big and too daunting and he is just ending up tilting at windmills and getting bloody and bruised without a scintilla of difference to the environment. Then maturity starts seeping in. Now, he modifies the paradigm to, “Okay, I shall do nothing wrong; let others do what they want to.” ISDNW, LODWTWT.

A little later, a little more maturity. What happens is, the officer finds that as he is sticking to his principles, or whatever is left of it; the world has been moving on. His no-longer-dear colleagues who trod a different path have been going from plum posting to plum posting while he has been rotting in the backwaters with unheard-of, un-remembered, un-sung, barely-there assignments like Rules & Manuals, Vehicle Licensing, and so on. Now the questioning starts and he asks, “What is right and what is wrong?” WIRAWIW.

This question leads, with an elegant inevitability, to the fourth phase and the GREAT REALISATION, “No, what was earlier right was actually wrong; what was wrong was actually right!” WWERWAW, WWWWAR.

While the fourth phase comes with certain (may be a lot of) benefits, internally, the officer is never at an easy place. As time goes by and he goes further and further down that slippery slope, he also gets more and more aware of the price and futility of it all. Finally, corresponding to the self-actualisation acme of Maslow, he attains the pinnacle of “DO NOTHING!” and retires. DN.

This is too complicated, really. A colleague once put it more succinctly:

“Pehle pehle sahab log garam rehta hai; kuchh din ke baad naram hota hai; aur, akhir mein … besharam ho jaata hai.”