Mardhuri  Gupta was arrested a few months ago by the concerned authorities for passing secretive and critical information to Pakistan. In this connection, this is what appeared in an article in outlook magazine-“. Madhuri Gupta, the IFS officer held for allegedly spying for Pakistan, is said to have told her interrogators that she passed on information to the Pakistani ISI willingly and without any financial benefit toteach a lesson to the Ministry of External Affairs and its arrogant Indian Foreign Service officers. Other articles mentioned specifically how she considered spying an an opportunity to get even with her bosses at the external affairs ministry-”. A charming ISI agent known by the name of Rana befriended her, exploiting her deep dislike of her bosses and the system.” I have both experienced and read about autocratic behavior of bosses. Though there are grave implications of such behavior, I never thought that spying against one’s country could be one of them.

Though one keeps reading off and on about how one should aspire to be a leader and not a boss, there are many people who enjoy bossing around. When it goes out of control, it becomes counterproductive as nobody likes to be rubbed the wrong way. It is also a well known fact that people leave bosses and not companies as one of the main causes of attrition is the relationship with the immediate boss. In extreme cases, the victim may face both physical and psychological symptoms such as Loss of Appetite, headaches, Insomnia, loss of confidence, Inability to concentrate, Anxiety attacks etc. When there is a cascading effect of bullying, for the organization as a whole, it can mean increased absenteeism, attrition and loss of productivity.

I have been fascinated with the subject of workplace bullying since the beginning of my career when I joined my father who had turned around a sick company and won a partnership on the strength of his management skills. Having trained in the command and control economy of the late sixties and the early seventies, he was used to talking rough with both subordinates, peers and  suppliers. To my mind, such behavior could be an exception in certain situations rather than the rule. Much before the concept of 360 feedback was introduced, out of curiosity when I asked for frank feedback from some of the employees and suppliers, they told me in no uncertain terms what they actually thought of him. It is a good thing that with proper HR systems in place, the present generation does not have to put up with that kind of behavior.

After working with my father, I had joined a washing machine company where I bumped into another similar character. He had joined as General Manager(works) after working for three decades in a well known tractor company in Faridabad. A week after he joined, he started behaving roughly with practically everybody except the three directors and even rubbished a couple of suppliers in a condescending manner in front of them. He would also hijack reports made by his subordinates and present them to the management. As I was executive assistant to the Managing Director, I used to face a lot of flak during lunch time and the kind of resentment expressed towards him from people of different departments had to be heard to be believed. Fortunately, better sense prevailed and after two and a half months, he was asked to leave. I could barely suppress my delight when I was asked to draft his resignation letter. According to some Psychologists, bullying and intimidation cannot thrive unless a company allows it. If the workplace bully is not checked, his overbearing personality could turn into a epidemic .,This in turn, could lead to volatile situations leading to a complete breakdown of operations  and profitability.

In my third company where I was working for the export division of a liquor company, I bumped into a colleague who would get three double promotions and rise from Assistant Manager to CEO in just one year and then go on to spawn several businesses of his own. However before all that spectacular performance, he had to face a lot of friction along the way. He had joined as Assistant Manager Exports and had to face some resistance from his immediate bosses until the time he was directly summoned by the chairman. After giving an extremely impressive presentation to the chairman he was told  to report to him directly. This again led to a covert resentment which did not come out explicitly because of his direct proximity to the top boss. During the course of the year, though some of his perks like cars were directly cleared by the chairman’s son, he had to struggle really hard at the lower levels to actually make all that fructify. Since he was extremely smart, the chairman allowed him access to different departments which again did not go down well with many people. The situation would be so bad at times that he would intercom to the chairman’s son directly from the concerned person’s office if he/she was not co-operating with him. This was more of harassment than outright bullying which brings out the fact that people with ulterior motives will behave the way they like if the opportunity presents itself. Since here the bullying was controlled because of his closeness to the top bosses, it shows that if the top management wants to prevent any kind of bullying, it should ensure transparency at all levels of operations.

One of the best books on workplace bullying that one can come across is “The no Asshole rule”. Before it became a book, an essay with the same title was written for the Harvard Business review. In the introduction to the book, this is what the author says,” I told the senior editor of HBR that HBR was too respectable, too distinguished and quite frankly too uptight to print their mild obscenity in their pages. I argued that censored and watered down variations like “The no jerk rule” or “The no bully rule” simply did not have the same ring of authenticity or emotional appeal, and I would be interested in writing an essay only if it could be printed under “The no Asshole rule”. HBR not only published that under their breakthrough ideas section in February 2004 but the word asshole was printed a total of eight times in that short essay. I had published four other HBR articles but the emails, telephone calls and press enquires on those were trivial compared to  the deluge provoked by the asshole essay. I received messages from people in all kinds of jobs from all over the world. “ What is written in the introduction itself gives an indication of what kind of resentment workplace bullying can provoke. The book itself gives an indication of how workplace bullying can become contagious if not checked and how harmful that can be both in personal and professional life.

Talking or personal life, it is not unnatural to come across covert bullying of  different types. The Khap Panchayats have been in news recently for coming in the way of young lovers who are not allowed to marry because of belonging to a different gotra and some of them have had to pay with their lives for taking the bold step of marrying.. Haryana’s youth are helping their own by organizing skits on social issues including the multi layered nexus between Panchayat, Khap, Police and authorities. They are doing all this to get across their point in an amiable manner as the elder generation cannot come to terms with the fact about youth asserting themselves. Though this may not represent bullying in the conventional sense, the fact remains that elder generation is trying to thrust its views down the throats of the younger generation. In the book “The double life of Ramalinga Raju”, the author states in the context of the Satyam scam that it is surprising that in such a huge company, not a single bright, young man came to know what was going on and have the guts to bring that to light. The author states further that perhaps this has to do with the blind respect for elders that is a part of the traditional Indian culture. Even if it is based on wrong tradition, it represents covert bullying of a kind. Former Managing Director of Proctor and Gamble, Mr Gurcharan Das says in his book on the Mahabharat how the entire war could have been averted had Yudhistir refused the invitation to gambling by Dhritrashtra. Yudhistir knew fully well that something fishy was being planned but could not say no to his elderly uncle. I am sure that a lot of minor Mahabharats would be happening all over India because of the blind respect accorded to elderly people. Having any discussion with an elderly person on a contentious issue can be like an accident between a vehicle owner and a pedestrian; even if the vehicle owner is not at all at fault, it is he who is made the scapegoat by the surrounding crowd. This kind of latent bullying is more of a culture issue and has to be tackled in a totally different manner.

Osho had once mentioned that a person who shouts continuously is actually hiding something. Management experts are also of the view that generally, bad managers tend to be bullies and bullying is a means to hide their own insecurities and inadequacies. It is a well known fact that respect has to be commanded and not demanded. There is a movie song which goes like this- “Pyaar kiya nahin jaata, ho jaata hai” . If the word pyaar is replaced by samaan or respect, it would be equally valid. Forced respect has no meaning or validity. That apart, some people are just looking for an excuse to let their base instincts come out, whether at the workplace or other places. The death of Aman Kachroo at the hands of his seniors in a medical college in Himachal Pradesh one and a half years ago is a case in point.In the name of ragging, it actually represents an extreme form of bullying. His father then took the initiative of creating a website for those students who could ask for help when being ragged/bullied. Whatever be the form, only transparency can prevent  bullying? Are the concerned authorities willing? Some companies tend to look the other way when their most talented people tend to get over aggressive but in the long run, this attitude and behavior is bound to prove regressive.