For a man who was said to be incapable of subterfuge or even office politics, a skill in which Indians excel, Manmohan Singh thrived in public office. He had been governor of the Reserve Bank of India, India’s most famous finance minister and one of the country’s longest-serving prime ministers. And he could achieve all this not only because he had an economic vision, but chiefly because he was not politically extraordinary. His source of power was assured that he would always need them and that he would never develop another source.
Often, endurance is nature’s reward to a person who is not spectacular. This phenomenon can be seen in almost everything humans do.
This is why corporate bosses, even when they claim, “I only hire people who are smarter than me,” typically don’t do that at all, especially when that fact is too evident in the ‘smarter’ candidate. A nerd with narrow genius and no managerial prospects might fare well, but people whose presence or role is spectacular in a broad way do not go very far up the tapering hierarchy. Founders and entrepreneurs always pounce on super talent as they are at no threat of being eclipsed, but in a typical office, the calibre of a boss is often the upper limit for talent in his team.
The spectacular have to, sooner or later, quit the safety of their salaried jobs and take their chances in entrepreneurship, where they are dependent on ‘clients,’ who are usually salaried executives.
The way people celebrate the spectacular, it would appear as though they are wired to back the extraordinary. But the fact is they make life difficult for those who are special and cannot be tamed. What the world celebrates is success, as though it has a grudging admiration for the spectacular who managed to make it despite everything the ordinary threw at them. Usually, most spectacular people don’t make it very far.
In fact, when Manmohan Singh’s political career strayed into the spectacular it created an environment where he could not continue to lead the nation. He had unexpectedly trumped all the politicking satraps of the Congress party to become prime minister, not once, but twice. The satraps had had enough. His second term was tormented by the politicking of slyer colleagues who thought they deserved to be in his seat. Not just that, the Indian middle class, whose hero he had been for two decades, whom he had directly enriched, turned against him. They found tiring the very things that they had once found appealing. Particularly amusing was their lament that he did not stand up to party bosses. But then, that was probably their nature too, for that is the nature of the average person. That is how the ordinary survive and even thrive, by not taking on the bosses whose power favours them. At least Singh had the courage to pick his battles. In the end, he had survived for so long that he became formidable whether he liked to be so or not. And he was assailed by his own party.
Even in cricket, nature rewards the ordinary through a long career. Athletes like Sachin Tendulkar are rare. They endured for long in spite of their spectacular brilliance. Usually, people at that level shine bright for a few years and vanish, developing an injury or losing control of unhealthy habits. In cricket, they survive through the hyperbole of captaincy, which is the traditional refuge of middling batsmen or great batsmen who are past their prime. Mostly, the sort of batsmen who endure, who last long, are Test plodders—who do not take risks, who do not have too many strokes in them to increase their chance of getting out. As in most of life, so in cricket, the ordinary endure. Even the former greats endure through ordinariness.
Endurance is greatness for ordinary people; it is compensation for ordinariness. Can it then be that companies or even professions where people can endure for long are usually places and spheres in decay? Like, say, bureaucracy, where people last a lifetime?
Even in the animal world, endurance is a reward for not being spectacular. Animals in the zoo, for instance, outlive their feral relatives. Humans too have begun to endure because we do not have to do anything spectacular anymore. Once, being a spectacular human was to be a warrior or an athlete who took many risks. Now, the spectacular person is someone who wishes to enjoy the material life. Those who live less interesting lives are destined to endure. Even in recreational running, the trick to keep at it well into old age is to maintain a low average heart rate, which is done by mixing runs with short walks. While great sprinters eventually have to stop, steady-paced runners can keep going for years.
Singh was defeated by a politician known for spectacular politics, Narendra Modi, part of whose appeal was that he wasn’t Singh. And Modi has continued to use his popular charisma to strengthen his hold. And he, too, has endured. Though his case is as rare as Tendulkar’s. Before him, the last prime minister whose leadership was spectacular was Indira Gandhi, but in a time that was more conducive to the rise of such leaders.
An important quality, though, of modern spectacular leaders is that when they started off their careers, they were not so spectacular; or never showed that side.
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