Whither cantonments?

 Cantonments, scattered all over India, are reminders of the British Raj and I have fond memories of them.

Nagpur's Sudder Bazar area was spacious with well laid- out roads. The main city areas of Mahal and Itwari on the other hand, were very congested.

Pune has not one but three cantonments - Pune, Kirkee and Dehu road - attached to it. A lot of history is attached to the east (Pune cantonment) and west (Pune city and Deccan Gymkhana) divide in Pune. Without knowing it, we landed in the eastern part of Pune fifty years ago and we have absorbed the camp - that is how Pune cantonment is known - culture.

The ethos of camp is best captured in Farrokh Dhondi's 'Poona Company'. Gambling, betting, taking pot shots at the nationalistically minded denizens of the city, making money in trading and small business, sticking to the knitting of one's close community - Parsees, Irani's, Jews, Anglo-Indians and Goanese Christians, Muslims including Moghuls, Sindhis, Gujrati's and Jains - were the features of this ethos. St. Vincent's School and its Jesuit priests, Gulati hall with its few cultural programmes and later Nehru Memorial Hall defined the (little) intellectual core of this culture. Sports were more important than studies.

Parsees, Christians and Muslims looked down upon Jains and Marwari's as spineless, sissy people and Marathi people were all 'Ghatis'. This narrow culture flowered against the backdrop of posh areas like Main Street, East Street, Cahun road, race course, Empress Garden and Koregaon Park. Camp culture gave importance to money-making rather than intellectual and cultural pursuits. However, it is cosmopolitan and at the level of everyday activities, this culture is helpful and welcoming.

Main Street had shops like Regal Stores and Marz-o-Rin. At one end of the street was the charming West End theatre and then Dorabjee's - the first departmental stores - (It is actually a superstore.) in Pune, a stone's throw away. After the departure of the British, the Indian army, steeped in the British discipline, dominated the camp as the head quarters of the Southern Command. So there was discipline and cleanliness. English was widely spoken and understood.

Some parts of Camp and Kirkee are simply beautiful. They instantaneously evoke the past. Sudhir Patwardhan has immortalized parts of Kirkee in his paintings.

Residents of Pune Camp were very proud of their heritage.

Alas! Time has not been kind to the cantonments.

Pune has grown by leaps and bounds while the boundaries of cantonments have remained fixed. Cantonment boards sustain themselves on grants from the central government and on their own, they have a measly Entry tax on vehicles and property tax for revenue. The central government has reduced the grants after GST became operational and there are frequent delays in getting the money. PMC, on the other hand, makes good money through property tax because its boundaries are expanding and there is new construction everywhere. New construction is restricted in cantonments.

Thus Pune camp is today a shadow of its past. The Shivaji market which was gutted has not been fully restored. All roads are full of ditches. Shops on Main Street are closing down. There is double way parking everywhere. Residents have fanned out to Fatima Nagar, Wanowrie, Kondhwa, Hadapsar and Yerawada. Footpaths have been encroached upon and cantonment board people ignore complaints of residents.

Toxic work culture

 

Toxic work culture

Literature on people/ human resource management is full of platitudes. It is also very upbeat and positive, overly so. My own experience about people management is that it is very demanding work and one has to be truthful and honest while dealing with others, no matter what the short run compulsions are. I also found that it is better to restrict one’s interactions to a small group.

On the backdrop of a lot of motivational goodness in the literature, a recent article about toxicity at the workplace caught my eye. (The Times of India, Pune, 1 Feb 23: ‘Productivity got boost from WFH, but toxicity grew too’ by Sujaya Banerjee)

The article states that toxic work cultures are disrespectful, abusive, unethical, non-inclusive and very competitive. Their features are:

·       Lack of freedom to speak up, to experiment

·       Poor communication in the organization

·       Micromanagement by seniors

·       Lack of trust and

·       Poor experience at the workplace.

It was a short article but it caught my eye. It resonated with my experience absolutely.

My own work experience is pretty limited. I began my career in a large, professional manufacturing organization when I was singularly ill equipped to work. Instead of acting on this realization and quitting quickly, I hung on for three and a half years. Then I was in a semi-government organization for donkey’s years. It is the latter that I am talking about.

I taught in a college, funded by the state government but run by a private trust whose life members constituted the management. The college had a nice, compact campus at a very good location and its staff and students were cosmopolitan. A number of institutions ran their show in the campus and my college was the newest member.

I had to spend a lot of time to get tenure in the college. By then drift had set in. Students stopped taking the examinations seriously and they also stopped attending lectures which were pretty boring. The subjects of Commerce were also very boring and were taught mechanically, without any explanation of their background and forward, sideways linkages.

Students’ absence was something nobody talked about. Instead, ostrich-like, the faculty looked inward and concentrated on backbiting and watching each other’s moves for career progression. Progress was never defined in academic terms. It was only administrative i.e., taking over office work, examination work and finally becoming Principal.

Due to government regulations and reservation rules, the faculty got divided into 2 groups, a handful of tenured teachers, surrounded by a large group of temporary teachers, part-timers, leave vacancy teachers etc. The latter were made to slog in the hope of getting tenure but just a few could manage to. Because there was no accountability to students, permanent faculty had plenty of time on hand and it resorted to groupism. Reserved versus general category teachers was the basic divide to which were added more angles of subjects, departments, facility with languages, general outlook etc. etc.

The salary scale was meagre but it was periodically revised as per successive pay commission rules and the positions were pensionable. So there was plenty going for these tenured jobs. There were few separations. People dug their heels in and tried to sabotage working from within. As the first principal of the college retired, there was dilution in the effective power in the hands of subsequent principals.

I only concentrated on teaching and I was attracted to research. It did not take long for the established group to keep me at an arm’s length because my motives were not understood. Each of the features of toxicity mentioned above was experienced by me. I felt suffocated, alienated in the college. I found the culture non-inclusive, closed and discriminatory.

My part-time post-doctoral research fellowship was the last straw for the in-group and because of it, I was made to feel like a pariah. I retaliated by totally ignoring the group. I got isolated but I did not mind. I concentrated on my own work. There was another, younger teacher who excelled in teaching. He too, quit in sheer disgust.

In the college, I could work on my own. In corporate jobs, people cannot and they cannot afford to be shunted. So, they take to copying their seniors and that makes the workplace even more toxic.

Given the highly competitive nature of corporate workplaces and given human psychology (highly educated, experienced persons can also be very mean!), inclusion of these negative but crucial aspects of working, will make human resource management literature more realistic.