AAI Lecture

Page 1 of 4

Vigilance & Ethics in workplace

I am very happy to be here today as a part of the Vigilance Week Programme of Airport Authority

of India, Kolkata. As I was introduced in detail just now, I am coming from Ramakrishna Mission

Shilpamandira, Belur Math. It is a Polytechnic College, one of the best in this part of the country. Today

morning I had been to Falta SEZ for a meeting with some industries there. I am coming here directly from

there.

I will speak to you about three ideas today: Excellence in work; Personal integrity; & Vision

sharing. I know that all day long you have discussed and deliberated in detail about corruption and ways

and means of checking it. I will not speak of corruption at all. Instead, I will speak of Excellence in work;

Personal integrity; & Vision sharing. The reason is something like this if someone is already corrupt, then

he doesnt need lectures; he needs punishment. He needs a good and sound system within the organization

that can identify him and punish him adequately. Suppose someone has a heart attack, he needs to be

hospitalized immediately. There is no use speaking to him about right lifestyle. There is no one of that

extreme category in this hall today. There are no people here who have a heart attack. There are however

people who need to know about the right kind of lifestyle that can avoid a heart attack in the prime of their

life. And these three ideas are just that. If you understand them, these ideas will burn themselves into your

mind and start re-orienting your life away from corruption.

I will speak to you about three ideas, which, if you can put it into practice even a little in your

workplace, you will have a beautiful workplace, a wonderful, fulfilling work experience. Doesnt it strike

you as surprising that we all start working thinking that we will find joy in it? And then a few years down

the line, we find that our work life is not satisfying us. Why is that? It is because we have a very vague idea

of the goal of our work. We think that we have to please our Boss. We think that we have to get a steady

raise in our salary. We think that we have to get a steady promotion. We hold that these are the milestones

for our happiness a happy boss, more money, more status and power to wield. The fun is, even if we fulfil

all these criteria, we find some kind of hollowness in ourselves! How to overcome that?

Before we engage in any activity, we need to have a clear conception of what the final outcome

will be. Once we have the conception clear as daylight, we will need to put in all our energies and achieve

that result in our work. If we fail, we need to start again and keep at it until we get that result. That is the

creative part of work and that is the only aspect of work that brings joy to us. Listen to a story:

A king once gave an order for an idol for the new temple he was building. The order was given to

a sculptor in his kingdom. The idol was supposed to be ready by a particular date six months later. On that

date, the king himself went to the sculptors studio to see the finished idol. When he went there he saw the

idol ready and kept near the work table and the sculptor was already working on another job. When he saw

the king, the sculptor said that he would need another six months since the first idol had developed a snag.

It is well known that a defective idol cannot be consecrated in a temple. The king checked the idol and said

that he couldnt find any defect in it. The sculptor said that when he was chiseling the inside of the nostril,

a small hairline crack had developed inside. The king said that no one could discern it and it was

preposterous to reject such a fine idol for such a flimsy reason. The sculptor said, But, your Majesty, I will

always know that the idol is defective!

That is what I mean by excellence in work. The person who works knows how it has turned out.

Others may or may not be able to judge. But the worker will be able to. And that standard must be high.

That high standard that one sets for oneself is what is meant by excellence in work.

AAI Lecture

Page 2 of 4

A small boy once entered a shop and wanted to use the pay-phone. But it was too high for him. So

he dragged a carton box and stood on it and started dialing a number. The owner of the shop, an elderly

person was observing what was happening. The boys call got connected.

Hello, am I speaking to Mrs. Adams? The old shop owner couldnt hear the other side of the

telephonic conversation. Listen, Mrs. Adams, I was wondering if you need a helping hand with your

lawn.. Oh! You already have a person coming over and doing your lawn. But I must tell you I am very

good at mowing lawns. Moreover, I will also clean and wax your car for free.. If you wish, I could also

paint the fence for you during summer if you hire me for the lawn. Are you sure you dont need a new

hand?. Fine talking to you Mrs. Adams; you have a good day.

With a smile the boy got down from the box. The old man called him near and said, I am impressed,

my boy. I could hire you. The boy said, No sir. I am already employed. In fact, I am the one working for

Mrs. Adams. I just wanted to find out if she was happy with my work.

That is excellence in work. Each of us can keep a track of the quality of our work. We do not need

any other person to tell us the quality of our work. And if the standard of work that we seek is very high,

then we have opened the faculty of excellence in ourselves. We all have some idea of how much capacity

we have. The idea is to always keep pushing it one step further! That is what is meant by excellence in

work.

How do we develop this faculty of excellence in ourselves? We need two things for that a sense

of pride in the work that we do; and high personal integrity. I will try to elaborate the idea of personal

integrity first and then will come to the topic of pride in the work we do.

You see, the thing is that under the public eye, we are all paragons of virtue. None of us do anything

wrong when the world is looking at us. The main question is what about the time when we are alone and

none is looking at us? How are we then? If you go to the established Religions such as Hinduism or Islam

or Christianity, they use terms such as Atman or God to denote this concept. The central idea is that within

each one of us is our own judge! One of the synonyms of Atman in Sanskrit is Manas-Sakshi or Witness

of our own mind. We may be able to cheat the whole world, but we cannot cheat our own inner witness.

That is the idea of personal integrity.

You may have heard of a story related to Kabir. His Guru was Ramadas. His Guru once called

Kabir and some other disciples and gave each a banana and instructed them to eat it in such a way that no

one can see them eating it. After sometime, the disciples come back and report where they went to eat it.

All come back except Kabir. Kabir came back but he still had the banana in his hand. When Ramadas asked

him, Kabir replied, Wherever I went, I myself was there! Even though others may not be able to see me

eat it, I myself would always know! How could I fulfil your condition?

So, within each of us lies a power. This power was not instituted by any Government Order or

Statute. It is inherent in all of us. If we are aware of this power in us, we do not need any vigilance committee

to keep us upright. We ourselves know. Much before the SEBI or CAG found out, Ramalinga Raju himself

knew that he had not done the right thing. His own inner voice told him that at every step. He ignored it.

And look at the soup he got into! This inner eye, this inner voice, is the manifestation of the inherent power

we all have lodged in us. Awakening it is called Personal Integrity.

Do you know the problem we face today? Everyone does that! Why am I only singled out? This

is the attitude. I have a friend in Central Excise. His wife also works in some Central Government concern.

They have only one son. And as expected, that son is slowly losing the track. He told me with great sorrow.

AAI Lecture

Page 3 of 4

One day, when he gave his son some money, pocket money, you know, the son, I believe asked his father,

Dad, is this tainted money? My friend broke down when he told me this. And he then told me this sentence,

Look Ravi, everyone in the office does it. Why do I only have to suffer? What shall I say now? Everything

he did, he did for his only son. And one fine day, that very son asked him, Is this tainted money?

There is no way out except awakening this sense of personal integrity in ourselves. Only then will

we have peace of mind, peace in our family, peace in our workplace.

The other idea is the sense of pride in the work we do. Most of do humdrum activities; nothing

spectacular. But that need not stop us from being proud of the work we do. How can we do this? To the

extent we can connect our small activity to the larger picture, our small work starts becoming significant in

our own minds. It is all in our own mind. You may become the President of India tomorrow and your

untrained mind could denigrate it saying, Its only a poor, developing country like India that you are

heading, and not USA or Germany! It is very insignificant! On the other hand, if your mind is rightly

trained, even a small, insignificant LDCs work can become very meaningful to you. A certain line of

thought has to be developed for that. We lack that in our country. That is the concept of a shared vision.

The shared vision of a Nation. We Indians are notorious for the lack of this shared national vision. It is very

strange, you know.

There was a Swamiji called Swami Ranganathanandaji in Belur Math. He was the President of

Ramakrishna Math and Mission some years back. He used to say, Do a clerks job, but not with a clerks

mind. Do it with the mind of the President of India. Please think about this statement for a moment. How

wonderful it is! You see, as a clerk we have to process so many papers, put them up for our higher officials.

We are just typists. We feel we are nothing in the grand scheme of things here in AAI. But try to think like

the Director of AAI even when you work as a clerk in AAI and then the picture becomes clear. The file that

you just put up means a few hundred or thousand people will have a safe journey home. The file was perhaps

something related to the retirement benefits of the pilots and ground staff. If you did your small job well,

those people working there in the skies will be free of anxiety about their future and that will mean safe

journey for the hundreds and thousands of passengers using the Kolkata Airport. Something like that, you

know.

Pride in our job comes when we can connect our job with the larger picture. My office, my

company, my State, my Nation. Like that develops the larger picture. This sense we do not develop at all

in India. Whom to blame? I do not know. I am just pointing it out to you. Let me explain it more grossly so

that you can catch the idea better. Supposing you have promised your friend that you will meet him at 9 am

somewhere. You will be there. Else you will call him. If you dont make it and do not call him, all of us

understand that you have failed in your duty towards your friend. Suppose you are to come to the Office at

9am and come at 10am. Most of us can live with that without a second thought. Or, suppose a man had

borrowed a thousand rupees from his neighbor and did not repay it. All of us in India understand that he

has cheated. But if there is a false mediclaim bill submitted to the office for reimbursement, none of us

think it is wrong. We say it is wrong only if he gets caught. Do you see the fallacy in our conception?

Let me tell you an incident I heard from a close friend. He went to Japan for some work. He stayed

as a guest of a Japanese gentleman who happened to be his friend. This friend, he observed, used to work

two to three hours extra every day. Being an Indian, my friend concluded that this was some murky OT

business. He asked him. Do you know what that Japanese gentleman replied? He said, Every day, I work

from 8 to 5 because my company pays me for it. I also put in one hour extra before 8am and 2 hours extra

after 5pm for my country. I was thrilled when I heard this. This sense of Nation, and my relation to it, the

AAI Lecture

Page 4 of 4

interconnectedness of my small work and the well-being of the Nation this sense has to develop. This

idea is at the root of pride in our job. And this sense is also called Shared Vision.

I will end my lecture by relating to you a wonderful story I read long back. You have all heard of

NASA, the American organization that deals with its space programmes. Sometime in the 1960s, J F

Kennedy announced that NASA would put a man on the moon. That was the goal he gave. Once he was

visiting NASAs office. When he was walking down the corridor, he met a man. That man was the janitor,

whose job was to clean the toilets and corridors of NASA. He shook hands with that janitor and asked him

what he did in NASA. That janitor replied, Mr. President, I am putting a man on the moon. He didnt feel

I am an insignificant toilet cleaner in NASA. Instead he was able to identify himself with the mission of

the organization.

So, I have explained to you three ideas today: Excellence in the work we do; the idea of Personal

integrity; and the idea of shared vision.

I pray to Bhagawan Sri Ramakrishna that all of us here may be able to put these ideas to some

extent at least in our lives and feel fulfilled.

Thank you once again for including me in your Vigilance Week programme.

***********************************