BackRole cut out for india’s new prime minister
It is to be seen if the new prime minister can grasp the historic opportunity to forge a new Indian synthesis
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India is heading to the polls. Media around the world talk in admiring superlatives. India is staging the largest democratic event in the history of mankind, and should be proud of it. According to Mishal Husain of the BBC, the number of first-time Indian voters is double the size of the UK’s population. Or close to the entire number of voters in the 2008 elections in the US, the world’s second-largest democracy. India’s elections will be watched with both awe and suspicion in that other one-billion-people country next door, centrally administered China. But what do the elections mean for people’s conception of India and its soft power?
The dominant election theme is what former US president Bill Clinton used for his successful 1992 presidential campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid." Rather than a new tryst with destiny, India seems to demand a more efficient delivery of the fruits already envisioned by Jawaharlal Nehru on the eve of independence—arguably still India’s best political speech. Rather than food stamps and more redistribution, people seem to simply ask for basic, well-functioning public goods to help them take care of themselves. And despite the Congress having overseen most of the progress of the last 66 years and a decade of growth, India is rooting for a new man to deliver the tools they want. Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party is widely expected to win.
However, for the country as a whole, that is not the main issue in the long run. The bigger question may be whether the new prime minister—whoever it may be—can grasp the historic opportunity he or she seems to be given: to forge a new Indian synthesis. A purposeful integration of India’s magnificent antiquity on the one hand with strong economic growth on the other.
More than just better governance, more jobs and higher economic growth, a new development philosophy is needed. Independence unleashed the economic rebuilding of a nation that was the richest in the world (under Mughal rule) before the British East India Company took over. But the current generation never knew colonialism. To align the nation’s energies, a new guiding idea may be needed to allow India to finally meet its economic destiny without breaking the millennia-long continuity of its cultural history. India would not be the first country whose soul is dented through material progress and so far it almost seems it has hesitated to embrace its future for fear of losing its past. What could such synthesis look like?
It would at least contain two parts, in my view. The first, of course, is to make India work better like a modern country. That requires more than just building more roads, high-speed rail systems, schools and more accountable institutions. India should raise its level of consciousness in how to get things done. Both in the private and public sectors, rather than just copying products or slavish rule-following, the focus should be more on true mastery. Rather then just being focused on results, efficient and effective processes should be celebrated, too.
Japan is a great example of a country in which upgrading was accompanied by a broad rise in mastery. Japanese companies in the 1980s were often lambasted for copying Western technology. But what made Japan’s rise so compelling was that once copied, Japanese companies improved on these technologies and even went on to invent new systems of productivity improvement—like Total Quality and Just in Time. Japan did not just copy, it mastered the processes and enhanced them through its own improvements, which then were copied back by the West.
The second, however, is not explicitly demanded by India’s young voters, but is stipulated more by wisdom perhaps. For many observers, India is going through a materialistic phase. Put cynically, India is neglecting the best of its own cultural, spiritual and historical, intangible assets and instead is primarily focused on making bad copies of materialistic and consumerist inventions made by more developed countries. Moreover, there is the risk that in this process, power and wealth become further concentrated in a small number of hands and that the poor remain poor. Some call for a more centralized governance model for India, often advocated based on a sense of China envy, or an orange version of Pakistan as the answer. But are these practical solutions—apart from their moral implications—for India, given the way it has developed for millennia?
At several times in its long history, India has represented the highest levels of humanness and the noble values of civilization. Through iconic figures like Ashok, Akbar and Gandhi it pioneered, throughout history, the explicit co-existence of people of diverse walks of life, in ways by which India can still inspire the world. Can a new prime minister develop a deeply Indian philosophical underpinning for equal opportunity and integrate that into a sound economic policy framework? Is it possible to develop a grass-roots, bottom-up development agenda for India by which the overarching policy goals can be linked to the granular level?
There are successful examples of this in Maharashtra, which the central Planning Commission is aware of. Can such examples be used to make a virtue and a strength of India’s diversity, rather than only seeing it as a hindrance to development? And can economic development be done in a manner by which it supports society rather than link India’s ego to the world’s gross domestic product growth tables? After all, there are three life goals that make sense for each and all: dharma, kama and moksha—not just artha or prosperity.
India has moved in this direction for millennia and the nation’s most legendary leaders have actively worked with these forces. India’s stage of development could mean that its coming few prime ministers have the chance to not just become good leaders, but historic ones, by developing a purpose for India that also gives it a truly unique and valuable position on the world stage. It is a Herculean task, but one that will separate good from great leadership. One can only hope that destiny will produce the leader India needs and, above all, deserves. It is time.
Tjaco Walvis is the managing director of brand consulting
and advertising agency THEY India, and a speaker at the
Outstanding Speakers’ Bureau. He writes a fortnightly column on the softer cultural aspects of marketing that often tend to
be ignored by marketers.
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