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Time for Teamwork

In school, we grew up on fables. Aesop held sway and my favourite tale was about this father who had five sons who always bickered and fought among themselves. As a result, the family became weaker and weaker. Till one day he called in all his sons and showed them a bunch of five sticks held tightly together and explained how it was impossible to break them as long as they stayed that way.. Then he took each stick apart and easily broke them one by one. The moral of the story was: United we stand, divided we fall.

This is the rationale behind all collective endeavour. No one can defeat those who stay and work together. As I watch the amazing achievements of Indians all over the world, this is the one thing that always strikes me. How much stronger we would have been as a nation if we all put our strengths together instead of walking our own lonely furrows of excellence.

There is no question that we are among the finest achievers in the world. We are amazingly hard working, very clever, good at studies. We understand money. We succeed in a highly competitive environment. We are enterprising, innovative, talented. But where we invariably fail is in our ability to work together as one cohesive team and, in some ways, as one cohesive nation.

Let us take a few examples. To begin with, our cricket team. Individually, we have some of the best players in the world. If you list the top eleven cricketers, you will be astonished to find that there are six Indians there. Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and the unlamented Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja. But look at us as a team. We are number six! We have now found some remarkable fresh talent: Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Vijay Dahiya.

Each one of them is outstanding but what we need to achieve is better integration of talent. That is the only way we can be the number one team. It has nothing to do with the killer instinct and all that. We must realise that optimal performance demands optimal integration. Take the example of the two run-outs that lost us the match against New Zealand in the recent ICC knockout final. They were unnecessary and Saurav, the captain and a brilliant batsman otherwise, must be clearly held responsible for both Sachin's and Rahul Dravid's exits. He played selfishly.

Our politics faces the same problem. The Congress has produced some very capable leaders but they are always bickering among themselves. That is why mediocre people like Rajiv Gandhi or Narasimha Rao or Sitaram Kesri or, for that matter, Sonia Gandhi rise to the top and the party is always in a sorry mess and ends up ruling India like a bunch of dolts. Now, with Jitendra Prasada raising the banner of revolt against the party's incumbent mafia, we have another war in the offing.

The BJP is going the same way. Two of its strongest leaders are in open conflict and all the jokers down the line, as well as its allies in government, are taking advantage of this internecine squabble to put forward their own agendas. Even a party like the CPI-M is now beginning to split. One of its grass roots leaders has broken away in West Bengal to join hands with a former Naxalite to create a new morcha while Ram Vilas Paswan has announced that he will now once again break the already much-broken Janata Dal to form his own political outfit. How can a Third Front seriously emerge in such a political climate?

Showbiz, the third corner of the fabled troika that rules our mind and senses, faces the same problem. It is getting more and more fragmented because every director thinks he can become a great producer while every cameraman believes he is a great director in the making. Even editors are now wielding the megaphone. There is nothing wrong with ambition but when we fail to forge outstanding teams of talent simply because anyone who has any skills wants to break away and do his or her own thing, India loses.

Those who are brave enough to persist with their own talents become legends. Like editor Renu Saluja or choreographer Saroj Khan. Subrata Mitra was, for many years, acclaimed as one of the world's greatest cameramen and he never strayed from his core competence. Like Tapas Sen never digressed from being a lighting whiz.

The best reporters in a newspaper or the smartest columnists do not necessarily become great editors. They furrow their own, individual trails to emerge as better reporters, better columnists while editors are those who know how to assemble talent and create great teamwork. That is their core skill. Not reporting; nor writing thoughtful columns. Like a good batsman or a good bowler need not become the captain of the team. A captain is a leader of men, someone who can inspire and motivate. You judge him by an entirely different set of criteria.

We need more such leaders. People capable of forging outstanding teams. We have excellent and highly individualistic performers, men and women of extraordinary ability and talent. We lack leaders who can piece together such talent and create outstanding companies, brilliant sporting teams, political parties that can deliver, cutting edge creative squads that can match the best in media and showbiz.

That is why India has never produced a great symphony orchestra. It has produced some of the greatest musicians of all time but the only orchestra it ever produced was the Maihar band which Allaudin Khan again ran all by himself. Which, in fact, died with him.

Pritish Nandy

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