M.O.D.E.L.: the return of the employee by Mukul Deva
Response, N. Delhi. Pages: 227. Price: Rs. 270/-.
How does one slot this humorous page-turner? Self-improvement? Nah, the tone, tenor and content are neither preachy nor pompous enough. Corporate management? Ah, but where’s the systematic development of concepts backed with well researched data, cogently argued theses or new ideas pertaining to administration, production and distribution processes? Deva has invented a collection of ten new age corporate parables that elucidate ten new age commandments. The protagonist, Model, is a social misfit with uncertain professional future. Academically brilliant but a rather irritating character, he is a highly opinionated prude, prone to egotism and whingeing. Friends suffer him and put up with his ceaseless whining only because they haven’t mastered the art of avoiding him, but his employers have.
One day Model disappears and nobody really misses him. But in due course he returns a transformed man. Not only has he become top honcho of a MNC but also a much quieter, wiser and dignified person. How did this come about? This is where the author introduces an ingenious narrative device: There were two sets of Ten Commandments in the hard disk of God’s computer. Only one of them survived a disk crash, otherwise “Mr. Moses” would’ve been the first ever beneficiary of both the sets of divine precepts. However, when the Lord retrieved the second set He chose Model as medium to convey the Ten Commandments–II to the humanity that’s running the soul-sapping corporate gauntlet.
The narrative has too many clichéd adages, viz., ‘no gain without pain; spruced up to the nines’ etc. Moreover, usage of double adverbs like “really smartly” and “really sharply” could’ve been avoided. Am I whingeing?
Since the parables may benefit employees this can be a valuable handbook for HRD managers. Ha, at last I’ve slotted this one!
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