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Management Fundamentals in Kautilya’s Arthashastra – I

Management is a subject that olved as a science starting mid-20th century. Peter Drucker crowned with the title of ther of Management’ and is also called a Management Philosopher. Today we find that ngers including ‘managent trainees’ are in high mand in the corporate world d it is the highest paid pro-sion across the globe. We can the large number of students o are racing to do MBAcourses from best possible institutes due to this demand. A company or a corporation today is much more than a busi­ness machine. They are employ­ment generators, wealth cre­ators and socially responsible entities. No doubt most of the Fortune 500 companies are ‘Semi-Governments’ by them­selves. They have a large say in decision making and policy for­mation at both national and international levels. Therefore Management and managershave direct and indirect import on our daily lives.

The quality of managers being produced at Management institutes and the output of managers in various organisa­tions is an essential area that we need to monitor on a regular basis. Countries are getting compressed and the world is becoming a global village. Only if our generation can generate value based and principle-centred leaders, can we look for­ward to a peaceful, co-operative and productive world which is the dream of great visionaries.
Good and effective managers are required in most fields and not just in business enterprises. The areas of politics, science, law, health, defence and even spiritual organisations are look­ing forward to good managers and to opinions and suggestions of management thinkers.
Indians are occupying top positions in some of the best companies across the globe. They are in high demand to run companies productively and efficiently. Many of them have also started companies which show tremendous growth rates year after year.

India has always been a country of ‘thinkers’. Bharat means a country that revels in
‘knowledge’. We have contri­buted some of the greatest theo­ries and concepts in all fields which had helped in the deve­lopment of human civilisation.

Today, most of the compa­nies are run, based on concepts that evolved from the West, mostly America, and Japan. Every country has its own unique culture and so its Man­agement style also has to be unique to fit into its own culture. Americans developed their own management system, so did the Japanese. So, what is the Indian Management System and how is it different from other systems and theories?
Do we have anything ‘unique’ to contribute to the evolving thought of Manage­ment research and study? This is an area of discussion in most of the Management forums, seminars and conferences.

When such questions criss­cross our minds, we need to ask ourselves a fundamental ques­tion – is Management just a 50-year-old science? What are the Management principles due to which India was such a pros­perous nation for over 5,000 years of history?
To understand this we need to look back into our ancient Scriptures. While digging thetreasures of knowledge our Rishis left for us, we come across a unique book called Kautilya’s Arthashastra.
Background of Arthashastra.

Kautilya’s Arthashastra is the oldest book on Management available to the world. It was written by Kautilya (also known as Chanakya and Vishnugupta) around 350 BC. When literally translated, it means ‘Scripture of Wealth’. The main focus of the book is on the creation and management of wealth.

However, the book is a mas­terpiece which covers a wide range of topics like statecraft, politics, military warfare, law, accounting systems, taxation, fiscal policies, civil rules, inter­nal and foreign trade etc. It also covers various technical subjects including medicine, gemmo-logy, metallurgy, measures of length, tables of weights and divisions of time, among many others.
No wonder scholars down the centuries have time and again described Kautilya as a rare mastermind who could be an expert in so many varied and specialised fields.Kautilya was responsible in bringing down the Nanda dynasty and establishing hisable student Chandragupta Maurya on the throne as the emperor. Hence he is called a ‘King Maker’. He is also cre­dited to have masterminded the defeat of Alexander in India when the latter was on his march to conquer the world.

As a political thinker, he was the first to visualise the concept of a ‘nation’ for the first time in human history. During his time India was split into various kingdoms. He brought all of them together under one cen­tral governance, thus creating a nation called ‘Aryavartha’, which later became India.

He documented his lifelong work in his book Kautilya’s Arthashastra. For ages, rulers across the world have referred to the Arthashastra for building a nation on sound economics, based on spiritual values. Emperor Ashoka is supposed to have built and expanded his kingdom on the principles described in this book. Shivaji, the ruler of Maharashtra, is said to have studied this book in order to plan and defeat the Mughals. The forts that he built and the navy he created stand till today as an example for all of us to be proud of.

Even though India and Indians never forgot theArthashastra, the study and practical application of the book lost its importance for quite a few centuries.
However, apart from being seen as a scholarly work, this book today needs to be once again presented to all, for prac­tical application in today’s world. The book has many prin­ciples and techniques, which once applied, can cause a tre­mendous improvement even in our day-to-day management of things and situations.

Kautilya’s Arthashatra:

We find the roots of Artha-shatra in the Rig Veda. The Artha-shastra deals primarily with Eco­nomics, Politics or Statecraft and Punishments; therefore it is also called Dandaniti. The Arthashas-tra is a book based on pure logic, Anveshiki. Most of our ancient Indian books start with the invocation of a deity before the writing of a book – in most cases, Ganesha, the Lord who removes obstacles, and Saras-wati, the Goddess of Know­ledge. However, in Arthashastra, we find that Kautilya begins by invoking Sukracharya and Brihaspati.

Om Namah Sukra-brihaspatibhyamOm. Salutations to Sukra and Brihaspati

There is an important insight we can get from this. Kautilya invokes the two great Acharyas (Gurus) of the Asuras and the Devatas. We find in the Puranas that the Asuras and the Devatas were enemies and hence had two different viewpoints. This means that, Kautilya has con­sidered both the differing view­points of the extremes before reaching any decision. Edward de-Bono, the world-renowned thinker of ‘Lateral Thinking’ said, “The most intelligent man is the one who can look at two different contradictory view­points at the same time and arrive at his own decision.” This is the quality that a leader has to develop when there are peo­ple coming to him with contra­dictory viewpoints. The book is based on logical discussions tak­ing into consideration all kinds of ideas of various Acharyas.The Arthashastra contains nearly 6000 sutras divided into 15 books, 150 chapters, and 180 sections. The 15 books contained in the Arthashastra can be clas­sified in the following manner: Book 1 on ‘Fundamentals of Management’, Book 2 dealing with ‘Economics’, Books 3, 4and 5 on ‘Law’, Books 6, 7 and 8 on Foreign Policies, and Books
9 to 14 dealing with ‘war’. Book 15 deals with the methodology and devices used in writing the Arthashastra.

Another interesting and note-worthy fact is that Kautil-ya’s Arthashastra is not the first Arthashastra. From a number of quotations and references in later works, we know that there were at least four distinct schools and thirteen individual teachers of Arthashastra before Kautilya. Throughout the book he makes references to these various Acharyas who include Bharadvaja, Visalaksa, Parasara, Manu, Pisuna and Kaunapa-danta, among others. The great­ness of Kautilya was that he made the principles contained in his Arthashastra so applicable that probably the previous Arthashatras got lost with pas­sage of time. The very reason that this book has come down to our generation after over 2200 years shows that he had really fine-tuned each concept in such a detailed manner that it sur­vived the test of time. This shows the farsightedness of Kautilya. He has worked on the psychology of the human mind that never changes with time.

Management Aspects:

Though the book covers vari­ous topics, in the following series of articles, we will be lim­iting ourselves to the Manage­ment areas in the Arthashsatra. Book 1, ‘Concerning the Topic of Training’, is taken up, as many aspects of the Fundamen­tals and Foundations of Man­agement are contained in it. It has 500 sutras, divided into 21 chapters and 18 sections. We will also be making a few refer­ences to the other books of Arthashatra where topics of Management have been dealt with.

The areas covered under Management include - training, management education, leader­ship skills, selection of employ­ees, consultation, crisis manage­ment, risk management, strate­gic management, corporate gov­ernance, information systems, intelligence network, competi­tion, mergers and acquisitions, etc. among many others.

We will be taking an overall view of all these topics in the following articles.
Some may ask, ‘Is this book written over 2200 years ago still applicable in today’s Manage­ment world?’ To this, great thinkers have responded, ‘TheArthashastra is a book about the management of the ‘human mind’, which has remained quite the same over the ages’. Who can benefit from the Management insights from the Arthashastra? They could be business leaders, managers, politicians, chartered accoun­tants, human resource person­nel, management trainers, man-agement consultants, intelli­gence agencies, public/civil ser­vants, government officials, military personnel, students of various fields, etc. In fact Kau-tilya’s Arthashastra is a must for every intelligent person irre­spective of which profession he belongs to.