Crack open the gated communities of bureaucrats

When a certain section of people build walls around their society and restrict access to the general public, it develops into a ‘gated community’. The Indian bureaucrats have been one such restricted society that they have lost touch with the ordinary people. The legacy of this elite group goes back to 1774 when Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of India, created special institutions to train the civil servants for his administration in India. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the first Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of India, recreated the same civil service by just changing the name to Indian Administrative Service. The independent India inherited the ‘steel frame’ of the British Empire without changing its mission from rulers to administrators. Even today after 62 years of independence, these little rulers of India are oblivious of the needs of the governed. The District Magistrates are these little ‘Rajas’ of India.

Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda, better known as Dr Sam Pitroda cracked open this gated community in 1984 when he was invited by Rajiv Gandhi to join the Indian government and revolutionize the telecommunications sector. He established the Center for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) and the rest is history. India, where it took 10-15 years to get a telephone connection, is today the second largest mobile-phone user in the world. Nandan Nilekani is another high-powered outsider just drafted by Dr Manmohan Singh to radically change the social security system in India. It took India 25 years to enlist another entrepreneur to invade the still powerful gated community of Indian bureaucrats. Just like Sam Pitroda in 1980s, Nandan Nilekani would face tremendous pressure from the ‘little rajas’ of India to leave them alone. My wife and I have some shocking experiences with these IAS, IPS and IFS officers who shamed India at the Syracuse University, New York.

Enlisting Nandan Nilekani should only be the first step…

There is no excuse left for the Government of India not to do what it needs to do. Dr Manmohan Singh is no Indira Gandhi; he has a very fine brain. Sonia Gandhi is no Indira Gandhi; she lets others use their brain. Rahul Gandhi is no Indira Gandhi either, he actually uses his brains. The Government always had Montek Singh Ahluwalia, then they got Kapil Sibal in the cabinet and then Shashi Tharoor in the Ministry of External Affairs. Now that the Government of India has also enlisted Nandan Nilekani to head the department of Unique Identification Authority of India, there is no reason why India should not leap-frog to the next level of development. It has the required brain-power to articulate the vision for a new India! Shweta Rajpal Kohli of NDTV spoke to Nandan Nilekani on Monday August 24, 2009, on his appointment as a full cabinet rank minister by Dr Manmohan Singh to streamline the identification card system. Nandan underplays the appointment and compares himself to a plumber who is assigned a job to create a pipeline to the consumers. This is a huge statement and he is exactly right. What India needs is a set of good implementers who can make things happen. Just THINK about his statement!

There are always some very good ideas available to the Government of India but it never had the resources to implement them. Now that they have the money to do the things that have been discussing for decades, the communists and their ‘Left Front’ became the cog-in-the-wheel. That problem has also been solved by a sophisticated Indian voter early this year. What remains to be seen is if this government has the backbone to stand-up to the entrenched interests and implement the much touted reforms. Nandan Nilekani has been extremely articulate in his book ‘Imagining India’ about the problems India faces and some simple solutions to those impediments. The Unique Identification Card system is one such solution. Nilekani believes that once the remote consumer is identified and given a tamper-proof ID card, they could then access any product or service directed towards them by the government or any other agency. The problem that I see with this very exciting proposal is that how do you guarantee that the consumer got the service and that he or she was able to retain it? Take for example cash transfer, the remote consumer could be in debt and the creditor could be waiting alongside the recipient to strip him/her off the money. In this case the identified recipient would be left high and dry. How would the government guarantee that the aid or any other service is received by the needy and used to achieve the objective? I hope Nandan has an answer to that!

Thomas Friedman has become a global citizen!

Tom Friedman was in Bangalore, India promoting his new book, ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’. He joined Nandan Nilekani, author of Imagining India, at the Taj Residency in Bangalore on Monday February 9, 2009 for a discussion sponsored by Penguin Allen Lane. The stimulating discussion was anchored by NDTV editor Barkha Dutt. Tom was in his full element and the audience lapped-up his wit and humor as if he was one of our own ‘desis’. Friedman probably did the same in China before coming to India. We hope Tom Friedman does stand his ground this time!

Last time when Friedman wrote, ‘The World is Flat’ in 2005, he faced such a back-lash from the rednecks back home that he had to release a revised edition in 2006 and again in 2007. These revisions alienated his primary audience in China and India. Now that he has once again found his natural voice, he must show some spine and hit-back at jingoes like Matt Taibbi and his profanities. These losers are not going anywhere and might agree with the ‘Islamic Jihadis’ in the near future. Tom Friedman might also face a rebuke from his liberal (now Obama) world!

I share Nandan Nilekani’s optimism…

Why is Tom Friedman sounding the alarm?

Globalization my ass…

World is anything but flat!

World is anything but flat!

What happened? It was supposed to be flat when Tom Friedman saw it! Well, he didn’t really see it himself; he was told by Nandan Nilekani of Infosys Technologies that “the world is flat”. Tom Friedman had no reason not to believe a successful entrepreneur like Nandan Nilekani. Tom was visiting China and India in 2004 probably expecting to see torture chambers and ‘jhopad pattis’ respectively. Instead, he saw the high-risers of Shanghai and Bangalore. He was being hosted by the billionaires of the two emerging economies. What more did he need for proof? Tom Friedman decided to write a book “The World Is Flat”, projecting China and India as the emerging super-powers at the cost of The United States of America. His book became an instant best-seller and Tom was a celebrity again! Well, it did not sit well with the ‘nationalists’ in America. I am talking about the ‘working class people of America’, you know, people like ‘Joe the plumber’. Tom Friedman was becoming controversial and he is too patriotic for that label. He decided to re-publish the same book with amendments. This is the time I fell off his train! I could no longer drink his ‘coolaid’. Tom has a fine brain but he is sounding too political these days.

Last night, Tom Friedman was the guest on ‘Charlie Rose Show’ for the whole hour. Obviously, he had come to promote his new book, ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’ but landed up discussing America’s foreign policy options for the incoming administration. Tom’s ideas on the ‘war on terror’ sounded naive and off-handed. It wouldn’t have mattered but for the fact that the current President and the President-elect, both have read his books and do consider Tom’s opinions as matured and well-founded. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tom is very Jewish in his analysis. He has a very one-sided view of the Muslim culture and their aspirations. If Barack Obama was to rely on Tom Friedman’s opinions, we would be in for a very rocky time. Tom wants Obama to reduce America’s foot-print in Afghanistan which is understandable. What is frightening is Friedman’s statement that the ‘Afghanistan War’ is the secondary front. He believes that the United States needs to focus on the Iraq war and try and negotiate a desirable outcome and bring the war to an end. Tom is convinced that the heart of Middle East i.e. Iraq would eventually bring peace to the whole region. He forgot where the 9/11 attack was planned and by whom!

The Other Side of Outsourcing

Thomas Friedman Sums Up the Iraq War: “Suck. On. This.”

The Madness Of Tom Friedman

I share Nandan Nilekani’s optimism…

Nandan Nilekani appeared on NDTV (New Delhi TeleVision) in front of a live audience to debate his ideas compiled in a 500 page book, ‘Imagining India‘. The debate was moderated by Barkha Dutt, Managing Editor of NDTV 24×7. This was like a dream come true for people like us who left India 20 years back. Not because a corporate executive has finally written a book. There were many like Gurcharan Das who had written books and promoted them in front of select audiences. Those were pretentious days of pseudo intellectuals and meant nothing to the real India. Nandan Nilekani is the son of the soil. He is grounded, deals with real people and has aspirations for millions of ordinary Indians. In addition to all the excitement about the book, Barkha Dutt’s casual style of moderating the event was warm and engrossing. When we left India, there was Doordarshan and Chitrahaar and some wooden faced hosts. India has come a long way in communication technologies!

‘Imagining India’ has probably been released in India but is not yet available in the United States. Once we have it available here, I plan to buy one. What has excited me is Nandan’s outlook towards India. He tends to look at the brighter side of the issues. He even called the destructive Raj Thackeray a “political entrepreneur”. Nilekani explains that in absence of a positive political dialog, emerging politicians tend to fill in the vacuum and create their own narrow narrative. In other words, if the urban middle class wants better political leaders they have to change the agenda and the dialog. He suggests that instead of just criticizing the politicians we need to engage them in a meaningful discourse. Television and other forms of media could help in a big way. This line of thinking is very promising and I hope more business entrepreneurs like Nandan Nilekani would come forward and change the direction of our political debate. India has a large urban vote bank to change this paradigm!

Davos Annual Meeting 2007 – Asia’s New Business Giants