Manju's death should not go waste

Manju, a year senior to me at IIM Lucknow was shot dead for doing his job on saturday. By now the news has been taken up by the national media and pressure is being applied in different ways to ensure his killers do not go free & his family gets adequate compensation.

While I applaud the efforts, I also see that the efforts to make his death count are really feeble so far. Gaurav was among the first people to link the incident with the murder of Satyendra Dubey, and though people have started saying that the real culprit is the process of 'allotting' petrol pumps rather than people earning the right to set them up through a process of transparent selection, its unlikely anything will happen unless we make enough noise about it.

There needs to be a 'Tehelka' like expose on the entire scam of allotting petrol pumps. There have been mini-exposes in the past on petrol pumps like those on former Petroleum Ministers Capt. Satish Sharma & Ram Naik.

This is also exactly the kind of case that the Supreme Court should take suo moto cognizance of and ensure the Petroleum Ministry gets its act right for once & for all and ensure not one more honest officer needs to sacrifice his life like Manju did to do his job right.

In all the support that has been flowing in on various blogs and on IIM groups, one thing that has been oft-mentioned is that Manju chose to work in a PSU & stood up despite his knowledge of the dangers involved. What has been glossed over is the fact that there are many other people (including IIM-grads) who face similar challenges to their value-systems at their workplaces (including nice MNCs) often without similar dangers involved to their lives. That most of us do not have the courage to take the principled stand that Manju did despite the danger speaks volumes on the exceptional steel in Manju's character.

Gaurav in his blog talks about his days at IBM & the process of selection of channel partners & their dealings that were so much fairer. While he is mostly right, there were occasions where 'extraneuos factors' influenced decisions, as I witnessed during my days at IBM, especially in my division. The problem clearly is not just with the public sector or political influence. Wherever influence can be used subjectively, human nature & the choices that an individual is ready to make are of paramount importance. I was one of those with moderate value-systems and chose to quit, and not only because of those reasons. Manju, quite clearly, was made of sterner stuff.

It is the responsibility of all of us to make enough noise to make sure the cause Manju died for is taken to its logical conclusion.