Success: Role of strategy and tactics

In his treatise, ‘The Art of War’, Sun Tzu, a Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher, in the period 771 to 256 BC, wrote, “All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved,” illustrating the principle that, while tactics are more concrete and easier to see, an overarching strategy is not easy to see and is equally important.

The word ‘tactic’ derives its origin from the ancient Greek term ‘taktike’, meaning ‘art of arrangement,’ on the skill of dealing or handling difficult situations to achieve a specific goal, and is a process that integrates all resources such as men, material, and money, to cope with changing situations. A strategy, on the other hand, is a plan of action, through artful means, aimed at achieving a long-term aim.

Strategy and tactics help in planning, and executing, initiatives in a manner consistent with goals. They help identify opportunities and threats, strategies and tactics play a significant role is in theatres of wars. Military forces, first workout strategies, in relation to their objectives, and then use tactics to achieve them by planning offensives economising on force and exploiting the advantage of the elements of surprise, unity of command and simplicity of manoeuvers.

I had the first-hand experience of watching Gen. N C Vij, a former Chief of Army Staff of India, practising, with consummate ease, and insouciance, the art of formulating strategies and implementing them through tactics while serving as a member in the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). He brought to bear, upon his functions as Vice Chairman of NDMA, the qualities of leadership responsible for his rising to the top. He not only mastered the subject of disaster management, in a surprisingly short period, but was also adept at managing people. All the members were vastly experienced with distinguished backgrounds, no need for advice on their fields of specialisations. Vij built excellent relationships, on a one-to-one basis, with every one of them. We were once proceeding to attend Governing Body of NDMA a meeting to be proceeded over by the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh as the Chairman. We were travelling in the same car, and abruptly, Vij turned to me and asked me to make a certain presentation in the meeting. I was a bit taken aback, as that was not my subject according to the distribution of domains in the Authority. When I protested, pointing that out, he smiled at me indulgently, and said “please allow me the privilege of exercising the right to decide, which weapon to use, in which situation.” Clearly a tactic, that fell right into place, within the overall framework of his strategy!

I understood the import of the words strategy and tactics in greater depth during the process of formulating, implementing and monitoring government programmes at the national and state level in different sectors of development and regulatory administration.

On the development side, programmes are formulated to realise the objectives of the policies of the governments, in various sectors, such as education, health, development of infrastructure and welfare measures meant mainly for the underprivileged sections. They are conceived, in an overarching scaffolding of a holistic strategy, to reach destinations defined in terms of preset and quantified deliverable outcomes. Roads leading to those destinations are traversed by means of a series of steps, which comprise the tactics.

The Left Wing Extremism (LWE) movement in India, otherwise, known as naxalism, originated in Naxalbari district of West Bengal, state in the early 60s. In those days, the youth had romantic illusions about Maoism, largely on account of an incomplete understanding of that ideology, which advocated violence and glorified it as the primary means of overwhelming existing socio-economic and political structures.

When N Janardan Reddy was the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, I was the Secretary dealing with Economic Coordination in the Chief Minister’s Office. Janardan Reddy took the bold and daring step of banning LWE activities and, parallelly, opened up an avenue of dialogue with the extremists, using a group of mediators, led by the legendary S R Sankaran, to initiate a dialogue which was expected to lead to a rapprochement. That twin-pronged strategy delivered positive results, the impact of which is in evidence, even till today, years later.

The approach followed, during my tenure as the Chief Secretary of the government of the (then Andhra Pradesh) state, in later years, was one of combining and understanding the LWE phenomenon as one that required tackling, both as a law order issue, and as a development concern. On one hand, social and economic infrastructure was strengthened, through starting new schools and hospitals, and improving existing ones, and laying roads to open up the infested areas. On the other, measures, such as combing operations, and frequent raids of suspected hideouts, to flush out the extremists, were taken.

The central government has adopted a holistic approach, in the relatively more affected areas, covering areas such as security, development, ensuring rights and entitlements of local communities, improvement in governance and public perception management; In other words, an integrated approach. Three main schemes are under implementation, namely the “Special Central Assistance” (SCA) scheme, “Security Related Expenditure” (SRE) scheme, and “Special Infrastructure Scheme” (SIS)

Strategy and tactics come into play, in quite a literal sense, in the arena of sports and games too. In the game of chess, for instance, strategy refers to the ability to imagine, in advance, a specific arrangement of positions which the pieces on the board must occupy, several moves later. Tactics are the acts of moving those pieces into, those positions.

While not a very good player of the game myself, I did follow, with keen interest, the brilliant approaches which great Chess Grand Masters, such as Bobby Fischer, Vishwanathan Anand and Satish Aaron, adopted. The game of cricket also offers an excellent opportunity to understand the value of strategy and tactics.

While my enthusiasm for the game far exceeded my expertise, I did enjoy a fairly close relationship with it as the President of the Hyderabad Cricket Association, for several years, a relationship which, incidentally, began at the request of the great Ghulam Ahmed, one of my childhood heroes. I remain a keen aficionado of the game and share the feeling, with some of its close observers, that Ricky Ponting, of Australia, and MS Dhoni, of India, were probably among the best strategists that led international teams in the world. Dhoni, famously called Mr. Cool for his calm, and unflappable, temperament, was easily among the most successful captains of the India team. Likewise, Ricky Ponting was respected for his passionate devotion to the game, and his burning desire to win.

To bring to a close this rather heavy discussion on lighter note, I would like to share with the readers my rather amusing relationship with the subject of disasters, not really professionally but also personally in my daily life. So accident-prone was I as a young man, and continues to be today at the age of 78, that my father used to say, “Look for Mohan, he cannot have been very far away,” whenever there was news of an accident somewhere in the city! To this day, I live in close proximity to danger, even while performing such a simple act, of daily routine, as shaving! In fact, on one occasion, upon seeing my face after I had shaved, a friend remarked that I had, perhaps, been attempting to commit suicide!

(The writer is formerly Chief Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh)