Battle of Lakshmi and Saraswati
Battle of Lakshmi and Saraswati
Saraswati
by Devdutt Pattanaik
Published in Corporate
Dossier, ET, Septemeber
27, 2013
The word Saraswati stems from the Sanskrit root ‘saras’ which means that which is fluid
and can be either contained in a lake (sarovar) and made to flow as in a river (sarita). It
refers to imagination, the one faculty that separates man from beasts. Yes, one can
argue, dolphins do imagine, as do apes but nothing in the human scale.
Inherited wealth and lottery are the only cases where Lakshmi comes without
Saraswati. A rich uncle dies and leaves behind a fortune for us. This is luck. We win in a
casino. That is luck. We can call it the result of some past life karma or the grace of
God.
But in all other cases, we need Saraswati to get Lakshmi. Saraswati is all kinds of
knowledge and skills. The better knowledge you have, the better skills you have, the
more likelihood of you generating wealth. So the farmer grows food because he knows
how to farm. A craftsman creates valuable products because he has knowledge of a
craft.
Saraswati is needed not just to generate wealth but also to retain wealth. So unless the
farmer and the craftsmen have business acumen, they lose their generated wealth.
They need to have knowledge of marketing and sales. They need to develop financial
skills or have the knowledge of partnering with people with financial skills. A trader
needs Saraswati, a banker needs Saraswati, even a housewife needs Saraswati – the
knowledge and skill to distribute her money to satisfy all household needs and wants,
both short term and long term.
We narrow Saraswati to knowledge received in schools. But until the British came to
India we did not have schools in the modern sense of the term. We functioned using the
apprentice model. The potter passed on Saraswati of pottery to his sons, the mother
passed on Saraswati of cooking to her daughters. The better the Saraswati, the more
successful the potter and the housewife.
Saraswati thus has many forms – knowledge and skills that we can pass on through
schooling and apprenticeship is the most prominent of them. But the one form of
Saraswati that cannot be passed on is wisdom. Wisdom cannot be inherited or
bequeathed. It has to be generated through reflection or tapasya.
Absence of wisdom is evident when Lakshmi comes, and we don’t value Saraswati as
much. We feel we have magically generated wealth and it will stay with us magically.
Someone who is truly a student of Saraswati will know that fortunes are never
permanent and we have to work towards preparing for future crises. A famous software
company was so busy harvesting wealth from the market focussing on compliance that
it did not bother to create a talent pipeline and so naturally faced a leadership crises
when market conditions changed. A case of assuming there is a limit to Saraswati.
In fortune we don’t trust home grown knowledge and believe knowledge exists only in
formal schools and colleges, a common problem seen in small and medium sized family
businesses across India who are sending their children to Europe and America to earn
business degrees and find that the children either do not want to return home, or look
down upon their family business (not fortune) as full of terrible practices. They reject
family brick and mortar businesses and seek opportunities in the safe international
world of the internet.
There is a folk adage: in good times Lakshmi walks towards us and Saraswati moves
away from us while in bad times Saraswati walks towards us and Lakshmi moves away
from us. The trick is to focus on Saraswati at both times. In boom times, she teaches us
how to ensure sustainable growth. In bust time, she teaches us how to reverse our
situation and make our way from misfortune towards fortune. Lakshmi or no Lakshmi,
we always need Saraswati if we wish to survive or thrive.