This diagram shown below, circulated in certain regions of the SSO for the supposed illumination of its members, is ideal for prolonging or creating complete confusion about how it actually operates.
If it is, as it seems, intended to 'explain' how the lines of communications and/or command operate in the SSO, it instead succeeds in explaining nothing and creating confusion. It is a truly amateur attempt at graphic presentation, for the only arrow which is explained is the one labelled ‘Channel of Communication’. This ensures that one must take all directives issuing via the Central Committee Prashanthi Nilayam (which means via the International Chairman, Indulal Shah) and only these, as communications from SB. All the other arrows give an impression of some contact or relationship, but none are given any function or validity within the Sathya Sai Organisation. They are clearly illusory lines, unexplained and left to the imagination of anyone, especially the gullible and the unschooled devotees. It seems to try to give an impression that feedback from 'lower echelons' actually plays some role or credible function (though in reality they never do). In reality the only line that is real runs top-down from (or perhaps via) Shah. So the chart looks more like another attempt at disinformation... though probably whoever made it up was also confused about the actual lines of communication and command.
By putting the National Councils at the bottom of the diagram,
a lowly status is suggested for them, whereas in fact they are supposed
to stand between the International Chairman and the members in the top-down
line of command. The “Principal Servant – Central Coordinator” is made to
look like an important meeting point for feedback, as a target for all the
arrows… but there is no arrow FROM them to anyone else. Their function is
the opposite of accepting feedback (if, indeed, that is what these undefined,
useless arrows should represent) is the opposite of what they do in actual
fact. They issue directions to national committees, centres and members
and – as the downward arrow from Shah shows, they are largely only ineffectual
intermediaries between him and the lower ranks who get their orders from
above and which they try to impose on the membership. They also get ideas
from the members on how this best can be achieved… sometimes a small allowance
to popular feeling is made so as to gain greater support.
