Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success by Lisa Endlich. Knopf, New York. Pages 305. Rs 888.

Wear Clean Underwear: Business Wisdom from Mom by Rhonda Abrams. Villard, New York. Pages 218. Rs 843.

Creating Wealth by Lester C. Thurow. Nicholas Brealey, New York. Pages 300.

The enemy within and without
by Jayant Vij

India Besieged by Thakur Kuldip S. Ludra. Published by the author from Chandigarh. Pages 379. Rs 1200.

THE technologically advanced countries have historically tried to control the geographical diffusion of technologies in a manner conducive to the perpetuation of their dominance. They have resorted to various strategies to prolong the stratification of the balance of technological forces. With the slow and controlled diffusion over a passage of time, the integrated technology loop is deliberately fragmented. Attempts to control the pace, direction and flow of nuclear technology to the developing countries should be viewed as a continuation of the earlier attempts to maintain hegemonistic controls over weaker nations.

The only way of ensuring peace in the world is through maintaining the balance of power between potential enemies. Every country would, therefore, be justified to grow militarily to the extent that it ensures such a balance. Unfortunately there are no set rules to this game of balancing power and there is much scope for rationalisation. Even those engaged in upsetting the balance do so in the name of maintaining it. The resultant involvement of peace-loving countries in the arms race is in fact only their struggle for existence and, therefore, fully justified.

To appreciate, however,what India is up against in safeguarding its national interests, it would be necessary to take into account the power politics in the Indian subcontinent. Here the main contestants are the USA, China and Pakistan. Normally it is very difficult to see through the game each one of them plays, but what happened in the Indian subcontinent last year was so sudden that it took the world by surprise and completely exposed the politics of the big powers. India has many lessons to learn from what has come to light. It is with this background, the author has gone about to pen his views in the book “India Besieged”.

When the British left, the subcontinent was partitioned into three geographical areas, which together formed two political units, India and Pakistan. The region, going by the name of India, had the potential of becoming a major power, politically as well as economically. Its size alone made it a country which could not be ignored. Despite all this, from day one of independence to the present, India has faced external as well as internal threats. In the early years, Pakistan’s intentions to seize Kashmir made it amply clear that it was going to be a long drawn out affair. Over the years Pakistan has made it evident, that it will spare no effort to ensure that the “pot” is kept boiling.

Soon China also took the liberty of engaging the Indian forces in the north and the north-east. Thereafter both these countries have gradually increased their influence in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri-Lanka. China has also made attempts to dominate the Indian Ocean assisted by Pakistan and other nations. This not only threatens Indian sea lanes but also our defence-oriented industry embedded in the South.

The author has discussed the key issues of the threat perception of India. By analysing the global scenario, he draws out the impending threat to India and its implications for the subcontinent. National security is a vast subject; therefore, the author has analysed the threats, direct and indirect, from not only Pakistan but also the USA and China.

Right in the beginning, the author emphasises the need to understand the various facets of national security. He laments that even today India does not have national security doctrine on which is based defence preparedness, keeping the strategic and national interests in view. The book brings out various reasons, which have triggered internal threats, which can be exploited by inimical forces. Having analysed the external and internal threats, the author has brought out the correlation between the two which explains how India stands besieged.

In a global survey, the author points out that a few developed nations are making an attempt to carve out for themselves spheres of influence for furthering their political, economic and defence interests in South Asia. There is sizeable information on the US economic and military interests in and around India. In American strategy Pakistan remains a key player and India plays a role as their reserve. The dual posture of America no doubt provides flexibility but can prove disastrous for both India and Pakistan.

The author maintains that the nuclear explosions by India are construed as a threat by the USA, China and Pakistan. The other reason why America would like to check India may be that it sees in India big power potential. This is perhaps not without justification. In any case, America’s indirect hostility towards India is likely to continue. It may have earned a little bit of Pakistan’s illwill but with Pakistan being in its grip from the beginning, it can afford it.

The Russian interests are just the opposite of the US interests. The Russians would like India to be strong for the same reason that the USA would not. China too realises India’s military potential and in India sees a serious challenge to its supremacy in Asia. The author points out that China’s interests somewhat coincide with those of the USA and that is the reason why the two nations want to make Pakistan strong enough to check India’s growth.

Dealing with internal threat the author brings to the fore that both China and Pakistan have been actively engaged in providing help to insurgency. It is high time we wrested the initiative and flung their weapon back at them. Insurgency has been covered in detail in all these affected states. The causes and reasons for its spread and the consequences have all received more than adequate attention.

The sections under the main heading “Threat Within” need to be read in detail to get the full impact of what the political-bureaucratic nexus has done to the nation.

The external and internal threat scenario and perception has been systematically covered and lucidly presented.

Golden men of finance capital
by Chandra Mohan

Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success by Lisa Endlich. Knopf, New York. Pages 305. Rs 888.

A well researched story of the evolution of an organisation from its humble beginning 130 years ago to its emergence as the largest and most profitable house of financial services in the world, is bound to be an absorbing study in management. An added flavour comes from the evolution of modern global finance with all its fancy instruments and institutions. The final sparkle is added by its decision to remain a partnership in which personal liability of partners stretches to the last shirt. Unlimited liability is a tough responsibility in today’s turbulent world of global finance, and all its rivals have turned into corporates with limited liability.

Such a long journey is never smooth. The Great Depression of the thirties brought its first brush with demise. Fancy profits in the euphoria of the unending boom in stock markets of the twenties ended up in the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the long depression which followed. Similar brushes came in 1970 (bonds), 1981 (commodity, metals and stocks), 1988 (currency), 1990 (fixed-income bonds) and 1994 (blind involvement in Maxwell’s dream of a global publishing empire through cascade-leveraging which blew up with Maxwell’s suicide).

Almost every time the company’s capital was nearly wiped out, senior partners had to bring in fresh money to replenish not only their own capital accounts in the partnership but also cover losses of junior partners.

Long-drawn SEC investigations into insider trading and withholding information from investors and investors litigation had also to be faced. Even fines had to be paid. It goes to the credit of its leaders that long-term interests of investors and long-term relationships always dominated their actions. Every crisis also made them search their own organisation and remove weaknesses. Not only to build anew, but also add new dimensions.

The book extensively covers last two decades when global finance has moved into a complex web of financial instruments: futures, options, derivatives and hedge funds. Investments and profits thereon are off the balance-sheet and thus outside the purview of compulsory disclosures. The eternal quest is for quick and fast money.

The feeling of infallibility of judgement created by a continuing string of successes eventually ends in fancy risk-taking and gambling. Secrecy provides cover. Unfortunately bubbles burst. Misery always falls to the lot of the small investor carried away by dreams of quick profit. There are many Harshad Mehtas in the world.

The explosive growth of global economy and trade, instant communication, easy and instant flow of trillions of dollars across national boundaries facilitate the act. Some of the larger funds do control resources running into hundreds of billions and profits and losses in a single transaction some time also run into billions.

It speaks volumes of the quality of the Goldman Sachs leaders that two of their senior partners were called to join the Administration during economic crises which faced the USA. Weinberg, risen from a porter but with an astute sense of money and a sharp eye for talent, was called in by Roosevelt in the thirties and continued all the way through the post-war reconstruction with Truman.

Then again Robert Rubin was invited by Clinton when the US economy was collapsing under the weight of mounting debt. The contribution of the two professionals was outstanding.

The crux of the leadership lay in long-term client relationship, loyalty to partners, delayered management and grooming of new entrants and tough standards for elevation to partnership. They also stuck to sound basics. In mergers and acquisitions (M&A) they never joined the hostile side; they were always the White Knights. They led the resurrection of troubled banks in times of national crises.

Seizing opportunity ahead of others is an ingrained culture. Openness of their structure was demonstrated by their intense and repeated internal exercises and debate on whether to corporatise or not in the nineties. The leaders themselves had raised the issue. Their decision to continue as a partnership was of the house and was changed only a couple of months ago, again by consensus.

A fascinating journey crisply narrated to grip minds.

* * *

Wear Clean Underwear: Business Wisdom from Mom by Rhonda Abrams. Villard, New York. Pages 218. Rs 843.

A very unusual title for a management book which made me pick it up. Contents are even more original. It is the first time that one sees a parallel being drawn between key management principles and the admonitionwhich every child receives from his mother in childhood, day in and day out. Look into your own childhood and you would find every parallel true.

Mom’s language is universal. It is unfortunate that we forget it as the time comes for its application in our own work.

Isn’t there a ring of familiarity in remarks like:

Dining table: “How do you know you don’t like it unless you try it?” Room after a party: “I don’t care who made this mess. Just clean it up all of you.” Finding friends: “Don’t judge a friend by his looks. Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

Translated into managerial lessons, these would read as:

(a) How can you reject a suggestion outright? Doesn’t it deserve trial and experimentation? (b) Stop passing the buck. All of you get your act together and clean up the mess that we are in, and (c) Don’t get carried away by exterior looks when selecting partners. Get deeper into their intrinsic qualities before deciding.

There are many more similes of this type. Live examples from success stories in management illustrate each homily.

Very readable and true in its lessons.

***

Creating Wealth by Lester C. Thurow. Nicholas Brealey, New York. Pages 300.

One could never imagine that the US dollar note once carried a very meaningful and unusual picture: a pyramid unfinished at top under the gaze of gods. Below it is a Latin inscription novus ordo seclorum (a new order of wealth). This picture was incorporated at the instance of Franklin Roosevelt in 1935 at the height of the Depression when the future looked bleak. The unfinished pyramid symbolised the unfinished task which lay ahead. FDR was seeking heavenly blessings for a new order of prosperity, which he was exhorting US society to build.

It is long-term builders who create civilisations and wealth. They sacrifice current consumption; they invest their knowledge and savings and, finally, put in labour. In that process they also take all the risks for creating long-term wealth. Societies also flourish only as long as they nurture such builders, creators of new knowledge and men who deploy this knowledge for the benefit of their societies.

Tracing through history of civilisations for last 5000 years, the author goes over the rise and fall of the mighty Egyptian empire which rose to build the pyramids and the sun temples at Aswan; the Roman empire which built the highly engineered system of acquaducts and fountains to supply drinking water and cool Rome; the British who ushered in the industrial revolution in the 19th century; and more recently the USA which launched the assembly-line and mass production to bring prosperity to the common man.

Civilisations rose so long as they created and nurtured builders for the long-term. Decline began as soon as they lost that focus in the glory of their success and current consumption started taking priority over investment for the future. Societies and nations only progress so long as they invest to nurture creators and those who deploy new knowledge. The author illustrates this with the reasons behind the current problems facing some nations; Germans who are excellent at creating new knowledge but poor at its efficient deployment and Japanese who are efficient at deployment but poor at creation.

The earlier civilisations and their wealth were based on exploitation of natural resources. Wealth was based on the possession of physical assets: land, cattle, mines, factories. The paradigm has changed in the past 20 years. Knowledge has become the new wealth. Bill Gates is the wealthiest, not a Rockefeller or a Morgan or a Ford. To keep ahead in the 21st century, societies will have to consciously invest in nurturing the creation of new knowledge and then the tools to deploy it for creating long-term wealth.

With deep and original insight into the future, the writer clearly brings out that wealth in the next century will belong only to those societies which invest in creation of new knowledge and entrepreneurs who create new tools to deploy new knowledge. In the age of brutal global competition keeping ahead is not easy. Fortunately fast and easy access to knowledge and new areas of services, bio-chemistry and electronic gadgetry have brought creativity within the reach of the small firm. But then what is needed is for such firms to grow fast to span the globe and become Microsofts and Home Depots. Their success will obviously depend on infrastructure, creation of which is again the responsibility of society.

The book is a wake up call for our present-day decision-makers at a time when investment for long-term creation of wealth is being sacrificed at the altar of current consumption. We are in any case well-known for the slow speed and risk-aversion of our decision-making.

The eternal search for India’s soul
by Kuldip Dhiman

Father India by Jeffery Paine. Penguin Books, New Delhi. Pages 404. Rs 295.

When on his way to Benares, Carl Jung landed in hospital with dysentery, he said jokingly: “I got dysentery because I could not digest India.” There were many before him and many after him who came here and were either shocked or surprised by what they experienced. Some come here for seeing the natural wonders and they are rewarded; some come here to get away and they find an ideal escape and relief as E.M. Forster did and found no European within 20 miles. Then there are others who come here looking for answers and it is usually this variety of traveller who loses his way, for the answers are not available at the airport bookshops or in the temples and caves where holy men reside.

Jeffery Paine, a contributing editor who has been writing for the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and many other publications, tries to analyse the predicament of people to whom India is the ultimate destination. “Father India” — a rather uninspiring title of this otherwise excellent book — was chosen “to evoke a little of these travellers’ disorientation and surprise when they discovered that tradition, and everything else, were not what they were supposed to be.”

Paine revolves his story around three main characters — Lord Curzon, Mrs Annie Besant and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, because these three in his opinion embodied in their person the battle for the soul of India. The others who have a comparatively small but important role to play in this metaphorical oriental voyage are Madame Blavatsky, Aurobindo Ghosh, Mirra Richard, E.M. Forster, Christopher Isherwood, W.B. Yeats, Herman Hesse, Carl Jung, Martin Luther King Jr and so on.

Aided by an evocative prose, the author manages to bring Curzon and other figures to life. Curzon’s second great ambition was to become Prime Minister of England; which was the first? Elementary! It was to become Viceroy of India. And when he arrived in India in 1899, he had a specific purpose in mind. “He recognized,” Paine observes, “that India sometimes served as a combination spa-mental hospital-penal colony, where England deposited its mentally and morally enfeebled sons. In Britain’s Indian Civil Service (ICS) many a dullard and incompetent found a place, but they were not the worse. Vicious, sadistic officers — possibly not so many in number, but not many were needed to do untold harm — viewed the native populace as a semihuman species, whose understanding was limited to a boot in their arse.” Curzon wanted to change that and do more good for the Indians than they could do for themselves. A tall order indeed, but Curzon nearly measured up to it.

For instance, Curzon wished to cancel the Coronation Durbar of Prince Edward in 1903, because he felt it could be better celebrated by reducing the unfair salt tax that Indians paid. “Curzon liked his position not so much for its magnificence as for its hardships. He inspected disease-ravaged slums and cholera hospitals and relief kitchens, where titled Englishmen never trod ...” He was also one of the first to advocate colour-blind justice.

But it was not a smooth sailing for him here. He did have his moments of frustration. “Nothing has been done hitherto [in] six months,” he complained to an old friend. “When I suggest six weeks, the attitude is one of pained surprise; if six days, one of pathetic protest; if six hours, one of stupefied resignation.” Not much has changed since your time, Lord Curzon.

But like most great men, Curzon made some fatal miscalculations in his life. One was the decision to partition Bengal, and the other to appoint Horatio Herbert Kitchener as head of the army in India. And this move was the instrument of Curzon’s downfall.

Paine then turns his attention to Annie Besant, the rationalist’s rationalist, the “militant Annie”. Not many appreciate the fact that this firebrand woman asserted her identity long before the word “feminism” was coined. She had the guts to take on the intellectuals of her time and the guts to take on the mighty Empire. “To know Annie Besant’s stance on anything concerning India,” Paine writes, “is simply to flip Curzon’s position on its head. The decayed, backward Indian civilization Curzon found in such need of English restoration and repairs, Annie acclaimed as on a par with, and in many ways superior to, Europe’s own.”

Annie Besant’s initial flirtation with spirituality followed by its acceptance mainly due to her friendship with the ubiquitous Madame Blavatsky shocked many in England. It was a time in history when science was finally coming into its own. Darwin had changed the way we thought, and within a few years man would learn to fly. At this juncture, when everybody was awed by the brilliance of science, there was Mrs Besant going in the other direction. And although she is very well remembered in India, it is surprising that she doesn’t find mention in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Paine should have dwelt a little longer on the coming that went wrong, in other words the refusal of Jiddu Krishnamurty to play Messiah, or World Teacher — a dream dearly cherished by Annie Besant. She and her other colleagues had invested so much in Krishnamurty, that the Theosophists went into a tailspin by Krishnamurty’s refusal. Surely it is not as simple as saying no. It requires great courage to say no to such a tempting proposal of having the world at your feet. Years later when Krishnamurty was asked what would have happened if Mrs Besant had not adopted him, he replied characteristically that he would have died of tuberculosis.

While others came here for salvation or seeing the splendour of culture, E.M. Forster came here to cure himself of his massive writer’s block. And he chose the small principality of Dewas, but he was “determined not to have a small or provincial experience of it. He used it as a microcosm, placing it as it were under a magnifying glass, to reveal something large both about India and about himself”. He had his reasons, and so did W. B. Yeats and Christopher Isherwood. “India’s religious appeal to people like Yeats and Isherwood,” Paine observes, “was exactly this, that experience in it appeared organised and categorised in ways different from the West at large. Christian theology categorises one as either orthodox or heretical, but in India Madame Blavatsky could be happily both and neither.”

When Gandhi entered the political arena, the British were totally unprepared for him. They “knew how to deal with an insurrectionist armed to the teeth but not with someone claiming the weapon he carried was his love for them. Indeed, what is any westerner schooled in Locke and Jefferson to make of Gandhi’s claim that his political activities merely furthered his quest for religious salvation?”

One person who the author should definitely have included is Sir Richard Burton, the eternal traveller who knew more Indian languages than most of us know, who translated Kamasutra, and who was so successful in disguising himself as an oriental that he was perhaps the first and only non-Muslim to enter Mecca.

This book is not a cold narration of historical figures and events; it is rather a passionate study of the dramatis personae presented. More than the historical accounts, what makes it a pleasure to read is the masterly flourishes that the author adds in his narrative; the way he delves into a character’s psyche, the way he compares and contrasts one figure with another, the way he weaves anecdotes, personal accounts, and his own analysis to present the reader rounded characters rather than frozen figures from the pages of history. His characters are not like the wax images of Madame Tussaude’s museum; they seem to breathe.

A doctor in Aids city
by Harjinder Singh

My Own Country by Abraham Verghese. Penguin, New Delhi. Pages 432. Rs 315.

WHAT makes a work of literature worth reading? A 400-page book is not easy to read. It must contain sufficiently interesting and perhaps significant material for a modern reader to take time off from the busy schedule of today’s life.

A number of novels have appeared in English written by people of Indian origin in the past few decades. Most of these are not worth the hype they receive. There are a few, however, which stand apart. “My Own Country” is outstanding. It is good not only because it is good literature, but also because it is based on the first- hand experiences of a kind-hearted doctor dealing with one of the most serious issues of our times.

AIDS — acquired immune deficiency syndrome — or infection by the HIV virus is, undoubtedly, a not completely solved serious problem of human civilisation. As the publisher’s blurb says in the back cover, “Dr Verghese became by necessity the local AIDS expert” in a hospital in a small town called Johnson City in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee. This is the same Tennessee state that has Nashville, the mountains well-known for their natural beauty and where the world trade fair was held a few years back.

Our man Abraham, currently a professor of medicine and chief of Infectious Diseases at Texas Health Sciences Centre, El Paso, Texas, lands there as a medical researcher (“a rookie doctor in 1980”) and is soon led into being among the first in the country to deal with the newly emerging area of AIDS.

Since its first appearance in the early eighties, a large number of popular books have appeared on the subject. These are written mostly by those who are somehow or other related to one or more patients. Verghese is the first one to write as a doctor.

Literary works by active professionals and inspired by characters and subject from within their own areas of work are rarely so good. One can count such works, a landmark being the novel “Cantor’s Dilemma” by the Nobel winning chemistry professor Carl Djerassi. Another was the famous Bengali novelist Banaphool.

Like the works of these earlier masters, “My Own Country” is also written in a style that flows lucidly from climax to climax that anyone can feel intimately. The plus point about “My Own Country” is that it is an autobiography and yet it is written with a tenderness that real stories often lack.

The book begins like a typical novel. A young man from NewYork is driving anxiously to reach his parents in Tennessee. Fate overtakes the young man and he is brought to the local hospital where Verghese is the infectious disease man. Panic spreads as the patient is identified as the first AIDS patient in Johnson City.

Later, contrary to the expectations of most people, more such cases appear and Abraham grows to learn the nature of human desires and inclinations. It has an effect on his own personal life and he struggles to survive “in climates of extreme fear and emotion”.

A sensitive writer, Verghese portrays Nature beautifully. A cardinal would appear as a necessary part of togetherness with a patient. Since his life is hectic, every moment he spends with Nature is so precious. He certainly values it and makes the reader intensely aware of it.

“My Own Country” is much more than a work of literature. It will remain a document of our times, with ethics, social justice and human desires at crossroads. It is also a limited but fair portrayal of a white collar community of Indian immigrants, especially medical and engineering professsionals, and their social life.

The little India in the US countryside has its own traditions: “By long-standing...Indian tradition — a token concession to years of oppression — the men would serve themselves after the women” and of course, “The teenage girls buzzed together and whispered together, staying in their one geographic spot all night. The teenage boys stood sullen together, on the men’s side of the room. They looked displeased at being made to come to these functions.”

As a reader lives through Abraham’s life of togetherness with deteriorating bodies and their caretakers, he is destined to think above and beyond the mundane. Abraham helps every once in a while: “.....I have come to believe that human life is fast and fleeting, and that our moments of true safety are rare.” He reflects thus while leaving Johnson City towards yet another town and with newer challenges and uncertainties.

A purely graceful, tender account, seeking moral strength within us, reconciling with the unexplored corners of our mind and thoughts — this could be a good description of “My Own Country.” Abraham comes out as a great human and one wishes to be a patient with a serious illness just to be under his care and to feel his touch.

Of course, this should not be taken as a light comment on AIDS. In spite of millions of dollars poured in on AIDS research, no complete cure is available. Over the past 15 years, dramatic improvements in treatment of the disease have certainly occurred and a much better understanding of the mechanism of how HIV works is now with us.

With the rapid spread of this problem in India and a growing need for appropriate education, Verghese’s book should be of great value to health workers and other socially conscious persons. It can dispel many fears and bring the desired rational outlook about the disease in the reader’s mind.