Rice farming can inspire a collaborative work culture

livemint.com:

Recently, I watched a chat with Lieutenant General Kanwal Jeet Singh Dhillon in which he described an unusual situation. His wife had heard of his death, mistakenly, not once but twice in his career. When it happened the second time, he was a commanding officer in Kashmir and his family lived in a military station near Ranikhet in Uttarakhand.

His wife heard the tragic news around midnight. The next morning, she knew that family members of other soldiers in the military station will come home to console her. But she was sure of one thing.

As the commanding officer’s wife, she did not want to be seen as a weak or shattered woman in front of family members of her husband’s junior colleagues. So in the morning, she combed her hair, dressed up and was ready to face visitors with a dignified demeanour. Since the covid pandemic days, there has been a lingering question in the corporate world.

Is work predominantly an individual activity or is it mainly a social activity? In this context, the above-mentioned video could serve to remind the corporate world what the fundamental nature of work is. This video is a reminder that in the Indian armed forces, work is very much a group activity. Not just fellow soldiers, but even their family members who live together in the cantonment area are an integral part of the larger work culture of the armed forces.

So Lieutenant General Singh’s wife knew even at the saddest moment of her life that she too had an onerous duty to perform: she had a responsibility to keep the morale high of an entire military station. Evolutionarily, work has never been an individual activity. For hundreds of millennia, hunting was the predominant work that humans undertook.