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response and so they should, I believed, respond positively. In the draft of the Directors' Annual Report for that year I mentioned this new path and its importance in a few words. Every year my draft of such report used to be approved without any change. I expected the same that year. It did not happen. Directors' Report is a document which Directors send to shareholders and it is considered as officially important document by investors, Shareholders, Bankers, Lenders, Government and other regulatory authorities. It is Official publication and has value as historical record of Company. Every year I used to prepare this draft and so it was done that year. I had noted this new non-violent, non-destructive but effective form of protest with positive approval. The members of the Board deleted this reference from my draft. There was not much discussion on it also. I had to obey, as I was only a draftsman and they were the authors. The said reference was dropped. In my estimation the value and significance of our experience of the nonconfrontational approach and our positive response were unique. This basic change and its value were not appreciated by the Board. I saw a different Truth in action. The members of the Board, my fellow officers, were all highly educated, honest and well-meaning and absolutely production -oriented individuals. But they did not see or grasp the significance of this new path taken or pioneered by the workers; they continued to believe in the routine way of tid-for-tat responses including strike, breakages and other anti-production methods as measures of pressure. Gandhi's way of non-violence was also rated by his contemporaries as an ineffective way of a simpleton in political struggle. Indian Managers have to traverse many such difficult ways in their careers. Adhyay 16 I had seen my mother engaging seasonal daily labour for our farming operations. This labour was remunerated in two ways. One was money wages with mid-day meal and the other was all wages on cash basis. The rates of pay in both cases were obviously different. My mother used to look after the property of my maternal uncles and as long as my elder maternal uncle was there she used to hire this labour on this mealsand-cash basis. My mother used to cook food for them. When my younger maternal uncle came and settled in the village he was always finding it difficult to get manual help. He was paying wages promptly but on all-cash basis. For the same work when my mother was hiring the workers they would get less money but a full meal at the mid-day. She used to get as many labourers as she wanted. She was often not in a position to pay cash component of the wages on time. Still my maternal uncle was not getting the labour with any certainty. There used to be a lot of discussion on this issue when I used to come home from the school at weekend. What I have 68
