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| Arvind Singhal: Change has to come to India | |
| MARKETMIND | | Arvind Singhal / New Delhi December 4, 2008, 1:02 IST | |
Can there be a silver lining to the horrific happenings of the week gone by? As we can all observe, these events have stoked near universal disgust and anger. Further, for most Indian citizens and the media at large, there is an increasing-by-the-day resolve to do whatever can be done to prevent India from being ravaged time and again by terrorists and other anti-national elements having different origins and nationalities — and from diverse occupations that sadly also include politics and bureaucracy. Can, therefore, all this anger and frustration and determination to do something constructive be channelized to bring a change to India too? Or do we continue to wait for our own Barack Obama to emerge from somewhere who can inspire us to believe that we Indians also can? If it is the latter, I am afraid the odds are not so good. Our own Mahatma Gandhi breathed his last more than 60 years ago, and since then, by an ironical quirk of fate, his surname has been abused by many pretenders for over 30 years. Beyond these squatters on the legacy of the one and only real Gandhi of the nation, we have only seen tin-plated rabble rousers, money-collecting self-appointed messiahs for underprivileged castes and communities, poets, page-3 regulars, and other oddballs.
At this time, of course, just about every Indian, barring our votes-driven political class and plum posting and post-retirement sinecure-driven bureaucratic class, has hundreds of ideas about what needs to be done. There are fewer ideas, though, on how to prioritize them and even fewer on how to implement them.
I believe we have to start by acknowledging our own share of blame for the situation we are in today. Those among us who are perceived to be a part of the Indian intelligentsia have generally limited our effort to mere arm-chair analysis and prescriptions. Many of us do participate in the electoral process by going out to vote but very few make a serious effort to engage in an active debate on the options being presented to us and to force the political parties to come up with more deserving candidates. We earned our independence through civil disobedience and at huge personal cost to the millions who actively participated in the freedom movement, but now our business leadership is more happy to curry favours even with discredited politicians and corrupt or ineffective bureaucrats by taking delegations to their offices, inviting them to meaningless leadership and other such titled summits, and according them more respect than many of them actually deserve by having them as trophy guests at occasions such as family weddings and achievement-recognition award functions. It has been one week since the Mumbai carnage began and yet most of our business and other non-political leadership in India has yet to come out in public in their individual capacity to voice their anger and frustration. Our chambers of commerce, by and large, have become more adept at organizing conferences, summits and exhibitions, and their leadership has become excellent in managing the allocation of their time to myriad TV channels and other media. They rarely find the time or inclination these days to direct their formidable clout to force the government and bureaucracy to also look at non-financial reforms such as those involving internal security.
Once we have acknowledged that each one of has a duty to exert some effort or influence in bringing about the requisite change in our country, we have to give a serious thought to what each one of us (or our organization) can do to make this change take place. Speaking out loud and clear — at times at some personal or business risk to oneself — against any wrong-doing or dereliction of duty/responsibility by our elected representatives and the appointed public servants and agencies is essential. Coming out of our offices and homes from time to time to show solidarity with each other and showing physical support to national causes is easily doable and should be done — merely relying on cyberspace and shooting out millions of text messages and e-mails is just not enough.
Those who have the privilege of being in leadership positions in public or private organizations should have no reservation or hesitation in using such privileges to disseminate the message and the proposed action plan — as deemed the most appropriate by each such leader — first to those who they can directly reach out and then to their extended business and social network. Beyond spreading the message, many of us are in a position to deploy some of our organizational or personal resources to build further momentum in the direction of the change being sought. In today's context, this should also be seen as a CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiative and like other successful CSR initiatives, it will bring satisfaction and recognition to those who undertake this and are able to make a positive impact on society at large. If a few thousand such initiatives are now initiated with a sense of urgency, India will win again as it did in 1947.
arvind.singhal@technopak.com
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