Leadership, Guru, Broom

In a supplement of yesterday's ET, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev says that leaders need three Is - inspiration, integrity and insight. "Leaders essentially grapple with something larger than what others are willing to grapple with, which is what makes them leaders. They need inspiration to be able to do that, else they will get frustrated. The second component is integrity, which is a key element in building trust, without which you are never ever going to be a leader. Integrity is about coherence between what you say, do and think. It is in your actions, in the way you are, the way you carry yourself. [...] Life offers leader a perch higher than other people have. If leaders cannot see any better than others, they become objects of ridicule. They must have insight into situations, into problems and possible solutions."

The guru also offers an excellent explanation for the "drought of leadership at all levels of life in our country". He says, "Being an occupied nation for centuries, we have learnt to keep our heads down. If I get up and do something, I may get into trouble." I think he has really nailed that one - whether in politics or in the corporate world, we Indians have an in-built tendency to lie low and go with the flow. We know that anyone who dares to stand up and challenge the status quo is either cut down to size or forced out of the race. To break the monopoly of the leadership elite, you need to build up a certain escape velocity, for which you need to be very strong-willed and thick-skinned.

But that is what leadership is all about, isn't it? Breaking the shackles... As the guru further says, "Leadership is neither about you or me, it is about something that needs to be done. Leaders figure out how it can be made to happen and get ten or a million people to see that this is the way to do it." In the field of politics, Arvind Kejriwal is a good example of this. Although the existing political parties tried their best to derail his popular movement, AK managed to get millions of Indians hooked on to his simple but powerful message of demolishing corruption. The results are there for all to see. What remains to be seen is how far AK's movement goes towards its ultimate goal.

AK's inspiration, one can say, was the redoubtable Anna Hazare. His insight was the realization that no system can be changed from the outside - when the political parties scuttled his Jan Lokpal agitation, AK decided that "if you can't beat them, join them". He waded into the cesspool of politics wielding the broom of his own political party, to sweep away the entrenched resistance to change. Now we come to the guru's third point of integrity, which will be the toughest challenge yet for AK and his team. If they can't walk the anti-corruption talk in terms of their own behaviour, the very citizens who have empowered their broom will also sweep them out of existence.