1857: The Company Memos

True, about a third of India ruled by maharajahs never did outsource, but no, you wouldn't want a company run by a boss who declared holiday the day his favourite dog mated, or where a thousand flowers bloomed only for Mr Maharajah to deflower them.

Sure, there were some pretty lousy and corrupt managers from time to time from that cadre. Chap called Dalhousie was caught smuggling diamonds to head office, and it's unfortunate that headquarters did not proceed against him, as they did against that delinquent Dyer, though he never did face the murder charge. And questions were raised about conduct with the Begums of Avadh. But in all this too there were management lessons; to be forever courteous unless it interferes with profitability, and to call in security only when you absolutely have to.

And it's in this new management culture that we really got our money's worth. The new managers sorted out the whole appointments procedure. Once the last of managers from headquarters left, the top management was no longer something to be inherited, though there have been some suspect hangovers of old ways. Everyone became a stakeholder in the company. And we found infrastructural gains, even if they weren't then fond of such long words; from tangas we stepped into trains, from pigeons to posts and telegraph. They got us a civil, now 'administrative' service, to serve us. That these servants sometimes act like masters is another matter, some things we must sort out on our own.

Our appointed managers were so much better than many others in Europe who stayed home and kept to themselves. And we didn't even have to go headhunting for them, they just turned up at the door and offered their services so very insistently, and then went for expansion so aggressively. True, they disregarded many notices to finally leave. So finally, we had one Mr M.K. Gandhi who trained at their headquarters to use some of their own ways of getting rid of them. And another of our chaps by the name of J.L. Nehru trained at their headquarters to take over management after also doing his bit to get rid of them. As they might have said at headquarters, quite extraordinary.

Today a couple of million from India have taken positions at the old head office. They have now twice their per capita share of the now downsized Britain Plc, and chaps from India now own the biggest British steelmaking, and flagship car companies. So now they outsource to us. Between us, we began to globalise generations before someone created that word.

They continue to globalise, but aren't quite management consultants on the loose the way they were then. They stick mostly to their own office back home. And let's not worry too much about contracts that are now over. They came in when we invited them, they left not long after we firmly asked them to. This is the stuff of employment, not empire. We do get our words mixed up, never mind, it wasn't our language to begin with. And talking language, it does seem (and this will take only minor changes to our annual stationery) that Independence Day should be celebrated now as Interdependence Day.

We might even be grateful to them for overstaying, and inducing us to sack them rather than go the way of decent departure. We appointed the British firm individually, and sacked them collectively, and in the collective sacking we found, and founded, our own company. They taught us the business of sacking. By now we've become quite good at sacking managers actually.