What’s Wrong With Paytm CEO’s Chest-Thumping?

On Tuesday, a video of Vijay Shekhar Sharma, CEO of Paytm, went viral. It captures him at Paytm’s annual bash, celebrating the company’s success post-demonetisation, complete with cuss words, a nasty speech taunting his competitors, (actual) fist-pumping and (figurative) chest-thumping.

Yes, Paytm has profited from demonetisation, a widely-criticised move that has caused all kinds of chaos, ranging from deaths and jobs being lost to massive national, professional and personal inconvenience and loss – especially for the poor. Soon after demonetisation, the company launched an ad campaign that was criticised for being opportunistic – not to mention having Prime Minister Modi’s face on some of its ads. And now its CEO seems to be following suit with his utter disregard for the tragedies befalling the financially “unserved and under-served” Indians whom he claims he wants to reach out to, and the connection between those tragedies and his own success.

The main problem here is not that Sharma’s behavior was bad – although it was bad –  it’s that he was irresponsible. When you’re celebrating success, you thank your customers, you thank your employees, instead of taunting your rivals. You don’t use language that your women employees might not be comfortable with – although a fuller version of the video shows no women in the audience, which makes one wonder if this is a boys-only party. (And if so, why?)

And that’s just the beginning. Because Sharma has imbued an extremely serious matter – demonetisation, its shoddy implementation, the too-high price paid by the economically vulnerable, the violation of our right to access our own money and spend it in the way we want – with dangerously testosterone-charged rhetoric. Machismo and jingoism have quite naturally attached themselves to demonetisation in people’s narratives – remember the “Don’t complain about standing in an ATM queue, think of the BSF jawans standing on the border” line, and PM Modi indirectly mocking people in ATM queues by saying that black money holders now had to stand in queues for Rs 4,000, in his attempt to insult Rahul Gandhi.

Who are these people who have taken over our sensitive financial lives? Why are they posturing with such hypermasculine rhetoric? We desperately need sobriety of speech and focus on service at this time. What we don’t need in such a volatile, unpredictable time is this kind of recklessly jeering, baiting, childish tone. If demonetisation is a pissing contest to Sharma (quite literally – he says his competitors will wet their pants), then we need to seriously worry about who is in charge here, and where they’re taking us. Right?

But that’s not been the reaction from the media – many news articles, though not all, have presented the video in an indulgent light –  or from Sharma’s peers. OML’s founder and CEO Vijay Nair applauded what he called a “teetotaller’s high” and “khushi ka aggression” on Twitter, using the oh-so-bro trope of “a plain speaking, straight shooting guy” to compliment Sharma, contrasting him to “tedXstandyspeaker- motivational quote spewing- jargon-ulti-fellows”. And he’s not the only one. Nikhil Pahwa, founder of news site Medianama, when asked if Sharma was high, supportively attributed his behaviour to “mad passion and competitiveness”.

Yes, it’s not important for CEOs to be ubercool and classy – it doesn’t truly matter if they come off as sophisticated and refined or rough-mannered and gauche. That binary set out by Nair is not the important one – the important one is between responsibility (in narrative, in policy, in action) and the lack thereof. And when passion and competitiveness go “mad” – Pahwa’s inadvertently appropriate word – a mockery is made of people’s lives and livelihoods, as Sharma just showed us. Throwing a big bash, praising Paytm, giving a speech about the great year he had, being extra loud, enthusiastic and energetic in all this, jumping and dancing – these could be seen as insensitive acts considering the havoc wreaked by demonetisation; but really, no one expects Paytm, a for-profit company, to maintain a saintly image after a windfall. So let’s turn a blind eye to that part for just a split second. But. To then use cuss words, taunts and insulting language, making a bigger, extremely difficult context with many players and factors all about you – that is an insult to current and future customers, going by Paytm’s own capitalistic logic, and quite possibly an insult to Paytm employees too.

Contrast this to Axis Bank CEO Shikha Sharma’s letter of apology to customers when a branch in Noida was raided by the Income Tax Department post-demonetisation and fake accounts to the tune crores of rupees were found. Very different situation, yes. But she began the letter by talking about demonetisation:

On behalf of my colleagues at Axis Bank, I write to thank you for your support and understanding since the demonetisation initiative began, it has been a challenging time and we have tried our level best to make it easier for you. During this period, we have been overwhelmed by the care and understanding customers such as you have shown us, from bringing food for our branch staff to the instant appreciation for a job well done.

Sharma kind of behaviour, on the other hand, belongs to a particularly chest-thumping, testosterone-fuelled, patriarchal culture that threatens to overwhelm workspaces and seats of state power. And the word “testosterone” here is no metaphor. A quick Google of “Wall Street testosterone” reveals that the hormone testosterone not only contributes to irresponsible risk-taking in male-dominated stockbroker culture, but is also actually used as a form of “therapy” to maintain one’s competitive edge in such a workplace, because it makes one overconfident and overly optimistic. Questions have even been raised about whether such a hypermasculine culture might have contributed to the excessive risk-taking that led to the financial crisis of 2008.

And that, Paytm, is why hypermasculine posturing and responsible service cannot be friends.