A cricket captain under whom India wins a world cup is bound to be celebrated in the country. But what’s unusual is the leadership quality for which Rohit Sharma is being saluted – niceness. Popular wisdom is that nice guys finish last. Because the common belief is that getting to the top takes a large dollop of jerk-ness.
Can one really beat the competition without being a bit of a brute and a bully? Without some crookedness? Actually, it all depends on how the rules of the game are laid out. On how these are framed, but also on how these are implemented. In football, for example, it used to be said that, to be successful one must be a bit nasty. Then, new rules and tech made the refereeing more just, and the play more honourable. And tough-tacklers stopped being heroes. Or consider British colonialism, which was just business by unequal means. Only once a rules-based global order levelled the playing field, could Indians start building their own commercial empires.
Today, sports to business to science, in almost every sphere there are many success stories of the Rohit bhaiya leadership style of agreeableness, positivity and even-temperedness. Politics alone maintains a big difference. There are two key elements to this. One, any attempt to regulate the aggro in the electoral field runs against the lakshman rekha defending free expression. Two, its incentives diverge a lot. People want business to deliver good products and services, and sportspersons to deliver wins. Only in politics are its ugliest moments often its most popular. It’s effectively as rules-free as voters will tolerate. So, it looks like a no-holds-barred fight in most countries, most of the time. Everyplace else, nice guys and gals can now finish first.
