Foreman Leadership

I had observed a peculiar kind of leadership wherein the captives/disenfranchised/enslaved are led by one amongst themselves to the wishes and designs of the masters. No matter what the circumstance, the characteristics of the foreman leader were almost identical:

• He was larger in size than his fellow slaves/captives/disenfranchised.
• He was louder.
• He looked for his interest over all other things.
• Lied, deceived, bribed, cajoled, did everything possible to remain in control over the fellows and please the masters while maintaining his ostensible superiority.
• His strategy is always to pretend that he is superior to the fellow slaves/captives/disenfranchised and he was half way there to become a master himself.
• He would often do something to remind himself and others that he was still in charge.
• Took as his own that properly belonged to another and had no qualms about it.
• Would damage another to any extent, for his smallest of gains.

Now, interestingly, this meanest of the leaders epitomizes the traditional leader in traditional India and Pakistan and to a large extent the modern Pakistan, I have experienced. Now there are many aspects to this issue which can consume pages of research and writing.

However, for me the interesting issue is that if our typical leader is the foreman then does that mean that the masses are captives/disenfranchised and who then be the masters? To put it another way, does the fact that our leader has all the characteristics of the foreman leader, mean that we are a captive nation? Does our captive state explain why we keep on looking for these characteristics in our leaders? 

The list of questions is long and disturbing but it gives me something to ponder and I shudder to think how would we vote in the next elections: as captives or as free people!