HOW ARTHASHASTRA DESTROYED MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES: THE JANPADA HALLUCINATION

Hello World,

This time, we will discuss the term ‘Janpada’ that refers to the ‘citizens.’ Janpada is apparently being used as a ‘Secret of Modern Day Leadership.’ The idiotic Chanakya apparently has used this term to explain how leadership works. Here’s what this stupid theory has in terms of an interpretation for good governance:

The first thing that jumps out to me when I read this chapter of that book was that this dealt with too much idealism that would never work out. For instance, this idiot Chanakya says, “There are two people who don't have a personal life and they are the king and the teacher” And he tries to explain that, until every person in the kingdom is not happy and educated, both cannot take rest.

From an idealistic standpoint, this seems to be making a very strong statement, a statement of virtue. However this is crap. When we say the government is for the people, it has to be by the people then the very concept of ‘king’ is nonsense. I'm okay with that title ‘The King’ as long as it's a democratically derived position where someone gets chosen by the people. Unfortunately, using this wrong idealistic statement as a premise, Chanakya was just gently floating around the idea that it has to be a king that should rule and the king shouldn’t have a personal life. While kings ruled back then, we do know that they had a rather lavish personal lives. This means Chanakya’s neethi did not work even during those days, largely because the not many gave a rat’s ass about his ideologies. 

The moment we say government is for the people, the people have to choose it. And even when we say people, we're talking about humans and humans are animals. Just to bring back some reality, animals are not robots and the whole idea of a certain group of humans can't help their personal life or can’t take rest is just not realistically possible. Chanakya must have had access to the best drugs of the time that made him believe no-personal-life was a distinct possibility.

Even from a metaphorical angle this is nonsense to me and that's not how things work. People need to recharge and those who govern have to make a whole lot of decisions. Pretty much everything comes to their plate and it doesn't stay much longer and so they have to be quick, they have to be detailed and they have to be error free and all of this is impossible if they don't have a personal life. That is one profession where personal and professional lives are pretty much mixed just like in any other profession. 

However, the intensity of that mix of personal and professional lives is just so strong because the one who governs has to think on behalf of the people, for the benefit of the people and he has to put himself in the place of the people. So if he doesn't have a life of his own where he can see things as one of the people then there is no way he can govern those people. He's not fit. And fun fact, the kings didn't have to do this because they were given the luxury of the nonsense called dynastic politics. So an idiot would rule the world just because his tyrant father ruled that kingdom. And this would just continue and in essence all of the citizens were idiots who just patronised these fools and here was Chanakya, the greatest of the greatest idiot who documented this Arthashastra crap, making sure him and his group of sanskrit money launderers had the ‘Advisor’ role reserved for them at all times in the king’s court.

Let's move forward on the Janpada crap that this fellow had crafted. This book starts off with a Chanakya’s reference on this chapter talking about the citizens governance and it does try to draw an analogy with the modern business world with the customer being the most important stakeholder and then all the businesses being the kings’ and them considering their customers as citizens. Ideally, this seems to make sense, but if we just go into the details of it, we will discover so many versions of intergalactic nonsense. It's very hard to ignore that.

Here's one translation which says “In the happiness of the subjects lies the happiness of the King and what is beneficial to the subjects is his own benefit.” Please don't even waste any time trying to make sense of this as this is nonsense. Governance has to go on the basis of logic and reason not on the basis of popular opinion where someone will just blindly patronise others. People and ideas are very different entities and just because we like someone doesn't mean we have to believe and accept all the ideas from that person. And the same way just because we disagree with an idea, it doesn't mean we have to hate that person who gave that idea. That's not how things work and that part itself is against the very concept of logic and reason and this verse apparently comes from book 1, chapter 9, verse 34 of Arthashastra. I can’t believe they had a document of lies and the lies have an address. 

Then comes within this book a subheading: ‘Democratic Attitude of the King’ What kind of nonsense is that???!!? Again, it’s a crappy subliminal message just pushing really good nonsense along with a popular idea and in the process exemplifying that nonsense into correctness. The very concept of king is crap. If it is a democratic attitude, why the king? It has to be a democratically elected head of the state. It could be a prime minister, it could be a president and it could as well be the king but then a democratically elected king, not a king who was just born to another king or the king who killed the king of his neighbouring kingdom. 

Here it talks about how the king should think democratically!!!! How cool is that???!!! If the king should think democratically, he should step down from the throne and before he does that, he should organise a democratic election where the people can choose the leader of their choice. That’s a king with a democratic attitude and anything else is just nonsense which is what this book covers largely. 

To those who are still struggling for a perspective, there are many books being published glorifying the idiot Chanakya as a a great strategist and using the crap he  documented as the reference for modern day decision making.

This book is about secrets of leadership and then it uses Chanakya’s writings as a reference apparently. This book is trying to give the idea that there existed the holiest of the holiest, from way back when nothing existed and then those were the times when the best things were written and that's part of our glorious history. The problem is, without validation, that material (completely out of context) is being used as a reference to define modern day leadership qualities. 

When our objective is to use something as a reference to define something, in this case something from history to define leadership in our modern day, then we should be talking about what the qualities of the leader should be. The perspective could be anything, but then is in this book within this chapter, the next heading is ‘Qualities of Good Citizens’. The book is about secrets of leadership and one of the chapters says ‘qualities of good citizens’. 

• What are good citizens? 
• Why should anyone even understand the qualities of good citizens? 

Citizens are citizens whether good, bad and ugly. These are highly subjective terms. Good citizens, bad citizens, ugly citizens, beautiful citizens of every colour; these are terms that vary from culture to culture and these are things that vary from time to time and from country to country. If something is legal in a country, citizens doing that act are not criminals. The same act might be illegal in a different country and then those citizens engaging in that act within that country would be termed as illegal outlaws. So good, bad and ugly are highly subjective terms. This book is about secrets of leadership and its trying to define what good citizens are. I'm just curious. Would I be insulting idiots all over the world if I call this book’s author an idiot?????

When I flip the page and go to the next page what I see here are the qualities of citizens. There are some bullet points:

• Strong position in center and frontiers.
• Sustainable in times of distress 
• Easy to protect.
• Providing excellent means of livelihood.
• Capable of bearing taxes and fines. 

Let's take it one by one;

Strong position in center and frontiers:- 

The author is trying to define the war strategy. Any leader is not a leader if he’s going to take his people into war unless and until such a circumstance is forced upon the country. And here qualities of the citizens include strong position in center and frontiers. In essence, what that implies here is that the citizens are supposed to be strong soldiers who follow the orders of the king and then there would enable the country establish strong borders and strong territories. 

Sounds ideal however it’s crap. Strong position at the centre and border is the consequence of good leadership. The leader should enable his citizens to achieve such strong borders. One can’t throw such criteria on the citizens saying “oh you are a citizen, you should be strong in the center and frontiers and you better protect the borders.” That's not how that happens. All they can do is to choose the leader of their choice and it's the leader’s responsibility. If it is going to involve citizens, it is the leader’s responsibility to train those citizens, not the other way around. If the citizens have the responsibility to protect their territory why the king? I think that question had been asked in real time and that's why we have democracy in so many countries now.

Sustainable in times of distress:- 

That’s an irony within the title. If it a time of distress, that itself indicates the system is not sustainable. It's hard for people during economic recession when businesses are out and the government doesn't have a lot of funding. Historically, when such circumstances prevailed, there wasn't much economic activity happening, people didn't have a lot of jobs and because of that they didn't make a lot of money and they were struggling for food. And then, the author here says ‘being sustainable in times of distress’ is a quality of a citizen. So what this idiot is implying is, if you have a recession, you better be resourceful. That means he's not referring to citizens, he's referring to investment bankers. Again that’s pure nonsense in every sense of the phrase.

Easy to protect:- 

I don’t know what kind of Marijuana or crack-cocaine the author and Chanakya were high on. But then ‘easy to protect’ is a quality of a citizen. Even a computer program with a dictionary gone wrong wouldn't compile these three words together as a quality for a citizen. In essence what Chanakya is implying is that the citizen should make it easy for the King.

And that's the reason these kinds of idiots, this holy religion based cunning ass-holes played the advisor role for kingdoms across the world and across the cultures. It was the religious monks and their slaves who held the Kings and the ruling class within that perception in the name of being their advisor. These are the kind of ideas they impressed the kings with and they had convinced the kings this is how it should be, since they have written that and the world needs to follow that. It's just a hoax that used publication very strongly and all they did was write all this crap and then convinced people who were ruling saying if you follow this crap and make your people follow this crap you will continue to rule. And the Kings fell for it. As it turns out, that's not true and that didn't work out either or else we would have a lot of kings by now and we won’t have democracies. Because the Kings fell for the nonsense from the religious idiots, the kingdoms fell. The ruling class failed to protect all the people and then one way or the other within each kingdom all the people created their own means to choose the leader of their choice and that's when democracy was born. Therefore Arthashastra did not work and using that nonsense as reference for modern day decision making is beyond stupid.

Providing excellent means of livelihood:- 

Is providing excellent means of livelihood is the quality of a citizen??? I don't know where to start.  Providing excellent means of livelihood is the king's job, that's the job of the leader; not that of the citizen. Becoming eligible for the livelihood or becoming eligible for a job might be floated as a requirement for a citizen. However creating those opportunities or excellent means of livelihood is the responsibility of a leader, the king and not the other way around. Again it’s devoid of logic and reason, typical of the idiot Chanakya. The modern day fool believing his crap is not so surprising.

Capable of bearing taxes and fines:-

This is the most hilarious one from my perspective. So Chanakya, the idiot is implying that citizens should be able to bear taxes and fines. In other words he's saying there are going to be taxes, there are going to be fines and you better be prepared to bear those. So the very concept of imposing expenditure on the people is against the people. Asking the people to be prepared to bear the expense is tyrannic. If someone would do that then he's not fit for leadership of any kind, even the worst one. But then there is an idea that says the leader should do that and that this being documented in to a scripture called Arthashastra which is in an essence is the science of finance and then that is being used as a reference for principles of management and that is being used by an author in today’s time as a reference for Seven Secrets of leadership. This is how kings made all the money; the country didn’t flourish (it never did) and they just forced people to pay and then they enjoy all the wealth. 

When I read this crap I understand how they managed to do that because they had someone who documented this crap and floated it around in the name of God and then people who just blindly believed it, followed it.

I'm glad that I wasn't born in the medieval times. I would have been severely punished for making all these comments to say the least. But then I would have gladly taken up the punishment than accepting this crap as right. It’s just hard to be an idiot with conciousness.  

The next part says: Leadership in Action- taking care of citizens. And then it just goes on through Dana, Danda and Bheda.  Dana means benefits. Danda means showing the rod or been strict. Bheda means elimination. It's a different word to define what is otherwise known as carrot and stick approach- Dana, Danda and Bheda. So in essence if you throw something at people, they will fall for greed and when they don't fall for greed, show them the stick and have them experience fear so that they succumb to fear and accept to your conditions. And when they don't fall for greed or fear, eliminate them, take them out and this was written as principles of management and Kings have followed it. 

It clearly says here; Dana, Danda and Bheda- benefits, being strict and elimination. 

• If someone accepts, pay them well. 
• If someone rejects, threaten them.  
• If they don't accept out of fear, eliminate them and end their existence.

No wonder democracy came into practice.  This is not how any leader should do. You know that Arthashastra is crap and someone uses this crap from a thousand years back to create new crap and that’s nothing but the percolation of nonsense through our society over time.

Coming back to Janpada; the third Secret for Leadership within a modern book, inspired from the awesome crap from idiot Chanakya covers the qualities of citizens. The very idea of defining the qualities of the citizens is unrealistic but the assumption of the idea being a ‘secret of leadership’ is pure hallucination.

Best regards,