Here is what I wrote on March 9, 2009 in a post entitled “Middle India needs to come Together”:

Politicians and therefore the governments they form divide India into two distinct fragments. On one of them, governments and politicians lavish an amazing amount of attention, with the interest rising as the elections draw nearer. They feed this India to feed themselves. This is the India they are immersed in because it benefits them. This is an India they interfere with because it gives them their power. This is the India whose value lies in the votes that it offers. This is Meddle India – an India that the people in power love to meddle with, an India that cannot survive on its own, an India that is constantly on dole from one government scheme or another. This is an India that even after 60 years of our own government is kept poor because it keeps the politicians rich. This is an India that 60 years after the British left is still ruled.

Then, there is the other India. This is an India that our government and politicians broadly ignore. This is an India that doesn’t vote based on promises – because there are none. (In fact, this is an India that barely votes.) This is an India whose voice is not heard because it doesn’t talk. This is an India that can be found in the cities, but is lost because it has no leadership. This is an India that has dreams, but finds obstacles put at every step. This is the India we live in. This is Middle India – an India that can be the engine for growth but is denied power, an India that can be the workhorse for the world but is denied proper education, an India that can be the entrepreneurial capital of the world but is denied connectivity. This is an India that was born free, but is still held captive by a government that knows no better. This is an India that 60 years after the British left is still seeking not to be ruled but be led.

Every five years, there comes an opportunity for both Indias to speak up. Meddle India casts its vote based on transactional arrangements (free rice, free TV, and now free cash) because that has been the norm. Middle India either doesn’t cast its vote or is forced to choose the lesser of the evils at the ballot box, knowing fully well that it is an exercise in futility.

…Middle India can make a difference. We are 400 million of us. We may not have one voice, but we have a common dream – of an India with more economic freedom, of an India with more personal freedom, of an India where education matters, of an India where good governance is the norm rather than the exception. This time, our continued silence will not help us. We need to come together and make a choice that takes us forward and makes our dreams come true.

Continued tomorrow.

Here is what I wrote a year ago shortly after the results were announced:

The bright side of it is that the country will have a stable Congress-led UPA government for the next five years. I just hope that there is a positive development and good governance agenda that is pursued quickly because there are many unfinished things that we need to get done in India across various sectors.

…Every crisis presents an opportunity – and that is how the BJP must look at the national vote. Even though it may have only have lost a small number of seats and not lost much voteshare on a national basis, the results are way below what the expectations were. And as such, it requires a rethink at multiple levels to rebuild the party and regain the confidence of the nation.

A year later, all I can say is that both the government and the Opposition are still “work-in-progress.”

This week’s links:

•  The Enemy Within: from The Atlantic. “For the first time ever, the cyber-security elites of the world have joined forces in a high-tech game of cops and robbers, trying to find Conficker’s creators and defeat them. The cops are failing. And now the worm lies there, waiting …”
• Fence is not the border: by S Gurumurthy. “History testifies that shifts in ethnic or religious demography materially alter people’s identity, attitudes, nationality and even worldview…When will secular India realise that demography, not geography, is nation, and demography, not iron fence, is the border?”
• Two Theories of Change: by David Brooks (New York Times).  “People are born with natural desires to be admired and to be worthy of admiration. They are born with moral emotions, a sense of fair play and benevolence. They are also born with darker passions, like self-love and tribalism, which mar rationalist enterprises. We are emotional creatures first and foremost, and politics should not forget that.”
• Budgeting in a Growing Company: by Fred Wilson. “We are…going to talk about what happens to the budgeting process once revenues start coming in, headcount gets to between 50 and 100 employees, and you are now a full fledged high growth business.”
• ‘So’ Pushes to the Head of the Line:by Anand Giridharadas. Something different! “No longer con­tent to lurk in the mid­dle of sen­tences, [So] has jumped to the begin­ning, where it can por­tend many things: tran­si­tion, cer­ti­tude, logic, atten­tive­ness, a major insight.”

The hard and soft foundations will not only eliminate poverty but actually propel India to become a truly important participant in the global scene. To bring that about, India needs foresighted, intelligent, and dedicated leaders.

This kind political leadership exists in India. Such leaders are born once in a lifetime. India is fortunate to have a few such leaders. But they are not where they need to be.

Just to be clear: this leadership is not about photo-ops, but about getting things done. It is about working against the odds and delivering results. India has had many such leaders – but somehow they have been lost in the maze of cut-throat politics.

That is what Middle India’s change agents need to change. We need to ensure that these leaders can get to the top. We need to give them an environment for them to succeed. This is where the passionate few need to come together.

Continued next week.

Let us first think about the change India needs.

India needs political leadership of the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Lee Kuan Yew. From that leadership will flow policy changes that we need as a country. The hard and soft foundations of a nation has to be engineered. The soft foundation encompasses national interest, the elimination of corruption, the elimination of artificially created divisions of castes and communities (which are today being used as ‘vote banks’), the creation of a truly modern education system, real economic, personal and political freedom, efficient markets, and so on.

The  hard foundation is about infrastructure that will ensure the urbanisation of India:  modern high-speed nationwide rail network, sufficient power generation capacity to meet the needs of an industrializing economy, ubiquitous affordable broadband access, efficient ports and airports, etc.

Continued tomorrow.

Middle class India can be safely assumed to not be agents of change. But as history has shown repeatedly, change usually comes from a few. In the words of Margaret Mead, “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Middle class India has many more people than the few required for change. These are the people who are frustrated with the state of affairs, and are willing to do something about it. They genuinely want to see a successful India, an India that they and their descendants would be proud of.

But these few feel disheartened. They feel isolated and alone. The task appears to be too immense compared to their numbers. They are forced to accept that the change they want is beyond their reach. They accept the unpalatable reality much like the poor accept poverty because constantly fighting to get out of poverty and failing is worse.

With a clear direction, the right leadership and a deeper understanding of the change that is needed, a small group of us can indeed change the country’s future.

Continued tomorrow.

In any country, the only segment of the population that can bring about radical change is the middle class. The people at the top of the heap are too invested in the status quo and too comfortable where they are to risk upsetting the great deal they have by trying to change things. They correctly do not want to fix something that they don’t believe is broken.

Those at the bottom of the heap, the unwashed huddled masses, are too busy keeping body and soul together. All their energies are focused on getting two meals a day.

That leaves only the middle class.

The middle class in India has been historically disinclined to help bring about change. That’s one of the reasons why it took so long for India to rid of a few thousand Britishers ruling the country. It was not some great revolutionary action that made the British to leave. They left because they had finished with looting the country and it was time for them to leave. (However, that is not what we were taught in school.)

Continued tomorrow.

The final three books give us inputs on the “how” – how to make ideas sticky, how to bring about change, and how to leverage the power of social networks.

• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath: In the coming battle of ideas, how do we ensure our ideas win? The book’s SUCCES formula shows us the way. From the book’s description:  “Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures)-the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of “the Mother Teresa Effect”; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas-and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.”

• Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath: The second book by the Heath brothers is about how to bring about change – which is what we will have to do going ahead.  From the review in Publisher’s Weekly: “Change is not inherently frightening, but our ability to alter our habits can be complicated by the disjunction between our rational and irrational minds: the self that wants to be swimsuit-season ready and the self that acquiesces to another slice of cake anyway. The trick is to find the balance between our powerful drives and our reason. The authors’ lessons are backed up by anecdotes that deal with such things as new methods used to reform abusive parents, the revitalization of a dying South Dakota town, and the rebranding of megastore Target. Through these lively examples, the Heaths speak energetically and encouragingly on how to modify our behaviors and businesses. This clever discussion is an entertaining and educational must-read for executives and for ordinary citizens looking to get out of a rut.”

• Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler: We are connected with many others in many different ways. If we are going to bring about change in the next few years, we will have to use our social networks to diffuse ideas and drive action. This books gives many examples of how it can be done.  From the book’s description: “In CONNECTED, the authors explain why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, CONNECTED overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm-that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives.

There are many other books. But armed with this starting library, we will have the motivation and the approach to start working towards bringing about political and policy change in India – by 2014.

Continued tomorrow.

A note from nearly a decade ago on a software stack for SMEs:

Whole Solution: What the SME needs is a whole solution. The SME software stack takes just that approach by offering a complete package of the applications needed, thus minimising the number of vendors that the SME needs to interact with.

Smart Integration: One of the critical success factors (besides price) is the ability to integrate data across the various silos, such that an SME needs to enter data only once. This is the integration that is offered (very expensively) by the enterprise software packages of companies like SAP and Oracle. Integration is the key building block for the “real-time enterprise”, which is what SMEs should aspire to be.

Intelligent Cloning: SMEs do not need the complete feature set that is available in the high-end enterprise applications that are available today. What is needed during development is the ability to intelligent pick and choose the subset of features that are going to be most important for SMEs. This not only speeds up the development process but also eliminates the “feature overkill” bane of many packages.

This week’s links:

• India’s 3G Auctions: from India Knowledge@Wharton. Has a few quotes from me. “The voice ARPU has an upper threshold, so if the operators have to generate higher revenues, it has to come from data and other value-added services.”
• Why Startups should train their people: by Ben Horowitz. “Ironically, the biggest inhibitor to putting a training program in place is the perception that it will take too much time.”
• Mobile OSes and Browsers: by Jason Grigsby. “From two operating systems to many. From many browsers to one. We have two core mobile technologies headed in opposite directions.”
• When the Customer is in the Neighbourhood: from The Wall Street Journal. “Franchisers have a host of new ways to drive business to individual stores, thanks largely to the explosion in recent years of technologies that recognize a user’s location.”
• India’s Delhi Metro: from the The New York Times. “India’s romance with the village, which Mahatma Gandhi believed was the most suitable environment for human development, is partly to blame for the decrepitude of Indian cities.”