A new beginning

Ok, so here it goes. I have been thinking, and thinking long and hard for the last year or so, and came to the conclusion that it is very easy to focus on negativity and talk about what is wrong with something, but it is altogether more challenging to talk about what do we need to do to fix it instead. Pessimism comes to humans in general and Indians in particular, naturally but optimism for most of us, we need to cultivate. So I have decided that I would rather talk about we can do to make India achieve its potential in this century, which is to become the greatest nation by the end of the century; and don't snicker, as I can see you doing very well, this is a true possibility and has probably a 50 percent chance of happening. Of course, unless in our infinite ‘desi’ wisdom (sorry for those who don’t know this word, it means innate Indian-ness), we muck it up as we have done so many times in the past. History repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. Are we strong enough to stop it? What will it take to make it happen? Well if these questions intrigue you, then read on.

Some facts first: the single biggest advantage and also potential disadvantage that India has is its demographic dividend. In layman’s term, it means more hands to work, earn and save and fewer unproductive mouths to feed. Now before you all run away to either make more babies or to bash any old person you see in the skull, here is the negative side of it – a demographic dividend can easily become an albatross if there aren’t enough of governance, education, employment and resources to feed this behemoth. Some of the older of us, not me of course, will remember the dire essays in our economics books that talked about the consequences of population explosion. Raise your hands if at some point in time in your life in India, you have participated in a ‘Population Explosion: Boon or Bane’ or similarly named debates and discussions. I am sure more than a few hands would have gone up. So that is the gist of it. By 2050, as per numerous recent studies, India may well surpass China and by end of the century become the most populous, which we probably always have been or thereabouts, but more importantly most prosperous country in the world. How exciting does that sound?

 
Now this definitely seems a great enough possibility to get all of us excited; if not for us then at least for our future generations. So how do we achieve it?

In my mind, four things, and I picked four as I love even numbers for some odd reason, and also because five would be too many and three too few. No other reason, I promise, and here they are:

1. Governance
2. Education
3. Opportunity
4. Resources & Infrastructure

And I will give it an acronym – how about OGRE – a cool one and easy to remember. Now all these four are intertwined and cannot work in isolation. Let us examine them one by one.
Governance: India has an advantage of a safety or pressure valve that we call democracy. And before some of you go gunning and claiming that the Chinese model is better, let me explain. China is a great country and nothing against it, but a governance system that is not built on a free and fair system, that doesn’t allow a free and fair access to opportunities and does not provide for its weaker sections in a free, fair and just manner, cannot sustain in the long run. History is full of examples of this but one should suffice. The enduring eminence of the western countries, highly democratic and just societies as compared to any other in existence, for the last few centuries, even with accelerating pace of change is a testament of this. You all will agree that we have seen more changes in last 300 years than in the last 3000 years and in my opinion the free, fair and just governance system that most of the western countries have embraced, is the key to their survival, growth and eminence. As the change of pace accelerates, by some estimates we may need to build more in next 40 years than we have built in the human history till now, only countries with a the right governance system will survive it.

Now what defines good governance – in my mind it is a combination of civic sense, sense of justice and empowerment, sense of equality and sense of cleanliness in public life. We need this form of governance from the grass roots to the top. When we have such a system in place – a sex exam of an unborn is to pick the color of the blankets and not to any devious purpose. When we have such governance, we don’t need to be outraged post the rape of a girl by a gang of maniacs, but we stop it from happening collectively in the first place. When we have such governance, corruption is a dirty word no matter how big or small, irrespective of who is involved and in all walks of life; when it becomes not an inanimate idea that others indulge in, but something that we all introspect to see within us and around us and help eradicate. Good governance manifests itself when a few residents are not allowed to hold a neighborhood to ransom by not letting roads and sewage taken care of because it may impact the encroachment that they have created. And how do we get there? I don’t think creating more institutions with super powers is the solution. And this is because an institution, no matter how noble the idea behind it, is only as good or as bad as the people staffing it.

At the turn of the 20th century, yes so long back, USA faced a similar dilemma. The chasm between the rich and the poor had grown. Conservation was fast becoming a dirty word due to the industrial growth and the power and sway of a few business conglomerates over the fate of country and its people were growing to unsustainable and dangerous levels. The JPMorgans, the Rockefellers and the Carnegies were ruling from their high perch. From this uncertain times emerged the first modern president, Theodore Roosevelt, who became the president only because the elected president, William McKinley, was shot dead. Using his charisma and an urgent sense to do what is best for the country, Roosevelt broke down monopolies, saved millions of acres of forests, took big business to task and put America on the path not only to become the most powerful and rich but also probably one of the most equitable societies in the world. And the American dream was truly bor. Now anyone with sheer hard work could reach the highest levels of society.

India, more than a century later, is at the same crossroads. By no means the two countries face the same issues or can solve it in the same way, but at a higher level, the broad narrative is the same. And the solutions may be similar. We need a participative, vibrant, people driven democracy, which doesn’t stop at candlelit vigils but starts there and ends with forceful participation at all levels. It comes from not looking away when your family or your friend or you are benefitting from something that skews the level playing field. The majority has to find their moral compass and live to it. Idealism is not dead – it is thriving and we can make it work if we all become true to our own moral compass. That is the beauty and power of democracy. The moral compass that I am talking about doesn’t let me moralize on what clothes someone wears or what movies someone watches. It is tolerant, open, allows for multiple viewpoints and doesn’t judge. That is what makes us different and poised to achieve the potential we have.

Education: The second key thing to achieve our destiny is education – the quantity, the quality, the creativity and the access to it. We cannot build institutions overnight. It comes with patience, perseverance and investment. Why do I believe it is so important? It is important because it opens our mind to possibilities, to tolerance, to options and to my next key theme opportunities. The evolution of the human mind is a process and a journey. Our thoughts and beliefs are shaped by our background, our family, parents, siblings and friends. As we grow, we get exposed to more and more of these and by struggling through all of it, by reasoning and evolving is what makes us who we are as a person. This process cannot be wished away. A kid, who is denied an opportunity to learn, may as well be relegated to second tier citizenship for the rest of her life with no hope and no chance for the future.

How do we achieve success in this area as a nation? We have to focus on the quantity aspect first. The topic of education and the importance of it is so universally accepted that sometimes we don’t focus on it enough. Let me take a couple of examples as to why the progress we have made so far is not enough. First of all, education only servers its actual purpose when it is not used as a tool of indoctrination and secondly, the universal education model never works either through government decree or by charity. The onus is on the entrepreneurs and socially conscious folks to come up with a sustainable, profitable model for education and free it of the indoctrination of the government and religious education.

I would like to draw a parallel with the transportation industry. As long as the transportation industry was elitist and existed to serve only the privileged clients, it didn’t really become the agent of change and the global integrator of today. Only the advent of mass transportation for example, in the form of a cost conscious airline with a sustainable and profitable model such as a Southwest Airlines, it truly evolved into the force it is today. We need a similar explosion in education in India – of quantity and access – with some basic standards. The second point is equally important – think through our history – downfalls of vibrant civilizations have come about when education has become a tool for indoctrination. Be it the dark ages in Europe or the centuries that India spent under foreign rule, descent from a relatively prosperous heritage coincided with the subjugation of masses and deterioration of education as a tool of knowledge attainment. Nations that don’t have locally planned and morally neutral education system descend in chaos or waddle in mediocrity at best. Once we solve the access to and quantity of educational system come the problem of quality and creativity. Quality education is exhilarating, it sets us free. It is the feeling of elation that comes with reading say R. K. Narayan’s simplicity or Oscar Wilde’s beauty of prose or  Naipaul’s audacity of thought or Rushdie’s pompousness of scope. How many of us who went through the education system say 10-15 years back remember the teachers or the classes or the lessons. Invariably, the ones we remember are the eclectic bunch, who didn’t follow the prevailing paradigm. You may remember the one teacher who taught with emotion and persona, or one who told stories or the one who took us out of the classrooms to touch and feel and smell things. Be it a lesson in science being brought to life by using the finger as the object that transforms into any living thing or the history lesson intertwined with stories that we can relate to, is all that you remember. Not to deny the fact we also remember the eccentric ones or the pathetic ones. But the point I am trying to make is that unless we bring that delight back in the early years, we will create a conventional moralistic middle class. To break free of what is called the ‘middle class trap’, we need education to liberate, to challenge and to rebel. We need it to create the innovators, the agitators, the artists and the eccentrics. Remember, all ground breaking creativity is by an individual or a small group of people. Mass production never creates path breaking innovation. And that’s why we need to move out of this mass produced mediocrity and focus on individuality and creativity.

Opportunity: As I had stated earlier, all this potential will remain so unless we find the right opportunity for our creatively educated and well governed youngsters. When I talk about opportunity, my focus is not just on jobs creation or careers. That is just a part of it. Opportunity for me means that every individual has the courage, conviction and security to be able to fail. It means that failure is not looked down upon but encouraged and applauded and so is risk taking. This may hit home with a lot of you, I think. How many of you feel the itch to do something beyond what you are doing, feel the urge to go out and try something different – and how many of you have done so? Majority of folks I have known over the years, and I have had the privilege of knowing some incredibly smart and driven individuals, are still what I call in a conventional career. Now there is nothing wrong with that if that is what you love and enjoy and are good at. But if you are not then this fear of the unknown creates the lack of opportunity and stops us from being the history shapers of the world. Unless we have the culture of entrepreneurship across the board, formal economy with large businesses is not going to solve the problem of opportunity. Another reason for this is as technology improves, productivity at large factories will improve dramatically, meaning fewer humans will be needed to do the same amount of work. Now trying to prevent it is the stupidest choice we can make – remember the movie Naya Daur with Dilip Kumar and Vyjanthi Mala? Wal-Mart’s efficiency and low prices have done more to bring poor folks in USA into middle class than anything that the governments have collectively done over the last 40 years. What we need to do is create opportunities outside the mainstream. To give an example, just how many folks the IPL has helped employ, which wasn’t even around till a few years back. Private profit making healthcare services, educational services, small scale specialized manufacturing, and research & innovation are the areas that a mature economy and society move to. We will always have the opportunities and need for people in the traditional economy but to provide our creative, educated working age people, the right outlets to showcase what they have to offer, the right avenues for trying what they are best at and the right structure to let them fail is the single most important factor. We are seeing some of this happening already but for a country as large as India, to truly achieve its potential, we need to create a massive engine. A few steps I can think of that will help is universal social security, mandatory health insurance, easily accessible funding and efficient, transparent and reliable financial system – this will create the framework that encourages and institutionalizes this behavior. If you look at the developed world, majority of private employment comes from the small to medium enterprises, the local bakery shop, the local barber shop and the farmers market to name a few. We already have some of it in India – we need to elevate their image and provide a security net around it.

Resource & Infrastructure: What provides the basis for everything we talked about to succeed. It is the appropriate management of resources and providing the infrastructure to make everything work. There are five aspects to it in my opinion – conservation, energy, transportation, housing and civic amenities. I know all of you may have heard and read about Jairam Ramesh’s frequent observations about the lack of restrooms in India, especially for women. Though I don’t agree with all his policies and all his ideas, this is one where Ramesh has it 100 percent right. Just getting adequate toilets for women across India will do more to make their lives better than all other incentives the government provides right now. I will actually go out on a limb and even say that this investment will increase our productivity at least by 30-40% as a nation. And I will not stop at that. Core amenities such as sewage, garbage disposals, parks etc. create the fabric of a society and make us a little more accommodating, cooperating  and improves everyone’s life. I am not talking about the elitist apartment complexes and the housing societies that are coming but the availability of basic amenities for the masses in the lower strata.

Conservation is equally if not more important. With a country of our size, diversity and population, it is especially important for us to live and breathe nature and conserve it. It does not stop at being green or recycling but becomes a habit in our daily life. Water conservation, energy conservation and conservation of the eco system around us as a daily part of our life is what will make a true difference and leave a world to our next generations that will make them marvel at our foresight and intelligence. Conservation of the brand preached by the politicians is the worst form of what I have in mind. It cannot be a tool to stop progress, to stop industrialization. It is rather a model that creates a balance between all elements of our society and consequently between us and nature.

The other three – energy, transportation and housing – go together. These are the three critical elements of the infrastructure that allows free movement of people and goods, creating more opportunities and helping everyone reap the benefits of capitalism. With the increasing urbanization of our country, by some estimates urban share of our population may become 50-55% over the next 20 years, these five aspects become even more critical. But India as a country cannot copy either the suburban model of the USA, because we don’t have the same natural resources, or the inequitable urbanization model of China, which is not sustainable in the long run. We need to come up with our own solution to this and we need to come up with it quickly as some of the urban centers are already seeing the sprawl, Bangalore being a prime example. We need to customize the solution to housing, infrastructure and energy issues by creating self-sustaining townships that use land and other resources optimally – through a combination of high rises for both residential and business purposes and all amenities such as education, banking, shopping etc. contained in the township within a walking distance or a short ride on mass transportation systems.

To summarize, I believe, what I have laid out above is a starting point of a grand plan to achieve our potential as a nation and be the beacon of hope for the rest of the world. We are at a very critical juncture in the history of our nation and our civilization. Failure is not an option as we will not only fail ourselves but our next generation and mankind as a whole. And unless we find another earth that we can easily relocate to, this is as important as it can be. Till the next one, keep humming.