If b-schools are temples of Capitalism, we, its constituents are its ardent monks, training to skilled priests, preparing ourselves to serve the market which with its invisible hand does indeed work in mysterious ways.
While learning to serve this ever so powerful entity, lest we see its wrath unfold, we are made to stop and think if all that we do benefits, everyone, that it should. We are taught that the means to the goal are sometimes more important than the goal itself and this is where the concepts of responsibility, inclusion and ethics come into the picture.
This article is about one such class that changed the way I looked at the concept of inclusion, the rhetoric of power and the distrust that hampers the former. Why was this important, you ask? I have always believed that people’s ability to bifurcate life based on the roles they perform in inherently flawed and that the person’s beliefs and values, the constants, find application in every bifurcation.
The rhetoric we were discussing in class that day was about the paradox between the rhetoric of power and inclusion. We have always seen the former as the path to the latter when it is vested in the right hands but do we see that happening? The example the professor used explains the blurred lines between the parts of us and how they all come together to make us whole. We discussed the inherent distrust that people in a majority of the Indian households have against their domestic help, something that most of us can connect with us. Why is this?
The professor went on to argue that this is because we inherently know that we haven’t them treated them right and the lack of trust is nothing but our fear of an uprising, a reversal of role where we might be the ones wronged. Difficult to grasp? Think about how some of your houses might have separate cutlery for the help. How they are not allowed to use the washrooms in the house. How we pay them way below what their labour demands simply because the wages are unregulated. And yet, we feel like their personal saviours who help them avoid destitution, but is that all they desire and deserve?
This one class help me reimage the rhetoric of inclusion in all spheres of life. What can be done to bridge the gap between power and inclusion? Tell stories. Stories unadulterated by what the powerful believe to be true, would do for the powerful what the class did for me. Where can I use this, you ask? This doesn’t help sell products or manoeuvre the vagaries of the market but it helps explain a lot about the what constitutes that invisible force we like to call the market-the people, the stakeholders. Just as there is no religion without the believers and unless inclusion is preached and practised the powerful will continue to look at the market in awe, missing the key ingredient to unravel its ‘mysterious ways’.
Which ABG company would you want to work for and why?
I would love to work for Aditya Birla Fashion Retail for a number of reasons. Firstly, fashion as an industry allows a marketing professional to try and find the right balance between international trends and domestic traits and who better to give one the opportunity to master it other than the largest fashion retailer in the country. Secondly, ABFRL offers an opportunity to learn and design experiences for customers which are just as important as the creations and here again the sheer size and influence of ABFRL help one understand the nuances of experience creation in a country as diverse as India.
- Ritika Kohli
