Month: June 2011

We need to understand that change in India can only happen through the ballot box. We cannot think of overthrowing governments  through  coups like some of our neighbours have done in the past. We cannot have military intervention. We have only one instrument in our hands – our vote. That vote has been so far exercised without adequate thought or understanding of its power.  That is what needs to change.

Two elements need to be combined to change India’s political and policy future. The first is the need for awareness – people need to understand that we are on the wrong track. Some of this has started to seep into public consciousness, but the reasons and solutions are not clear. What is needed are neighbourhood “networks and conversations” to educate people. We don’t necessarily need mass media to support us – and they are unlikely to, since the government remains the richest advertiser.

The second element is to aggregate citizens together into votebanks. This is the idea of United Voters of India, proposed by Atanu Dey. Parties have their diehard supporters – we don’t need to bother about them. What we need to focus on are the ones in the centre (undecided) and those on the margins (less convinced supporters of specific political parties). This is the segment that can swing the election.

Continued tomorrow.

So, it is a difficult situation we find ourselves in. There are still many who care about the future, and who do not want British Raj 2.0 to continue. Change is always brought about by a few – an ordinary few who are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to do something they believe in.

25 years ago, India went through a similar sort of change on the same issue – corruption. VP Singh resigned from the Rajiv Gandhi government, launched a crusade on the single issue of corruption, got together the anti-Congress, left and right forces, and went on to become PM by 1989. The same Congress led by Rajiv Gandhi who in 1984 had got over 400 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha ended up with less than 200 in 1989.

Of course, corruption did not end with the election of 1989. If anything, it has become more brazen and multiplied in magnitude. The corrupt have also got smarter. Even as we talk about Swiss bank accounts, it will be most surprising if we find a single name in there from the people we know and who rank amongst the most corrupt. Only the naïve can expect that we will actually be able to corner to taint the corrupt.

Continued tomorrow.

I, like many others, believe that our economic policies are flawed. It is quite amazing how much damage these policies can do. For example, as Niranjan Rajadhyaksha explained in an article in Mint recently, NREGA has put Indian on an inflation treadmill. And the coming Food Security Bill is going to make the situation even worse. No one in the government seems to have an idea about what to do with inflation other than keep raising interest rates.

This situation is not new. We have been singularly unfortunate in our choice of leadership and the resulting economic policies since Independence. With most governments focused on extraction and exploitation of the economy and an electoral system which needs votes, it becomes quite clear that the maximum votes are with the poor. So, policies have generally been directed on short-term measures to give the poor some handouts so they vote and stay poor.

Talk to people in the know and they will tell you about the tens of thousands of crores amassed by our top politicians. Not surprisingly, that greed is insatiable. Politics intersects with many sectors of the economy given the deep government controls that still exist – and each control is an opportunity to extract rent and loot the economy.

For the most part, Middle India has not bothered. It doesn’t vote in large numbers, and it helps quite helpless in doing anything. And so, it is business as usual for those in the power ecosystem.

Continued tomorrow.

It is an interesting time to be in India and follow the political games that are being played out. The sentiment that is now on the increase is ABC – Anything But Congress. Luckily for the Congress, national elections are not due for another three years. At the same time, while this should have helped the BJP, the primary opposition party, the reality is that there doesn’t seem to be any sort of wave in its favour. We are in what I can only think of as a “None of the Above” situation.

With this background, it becomes easier to put in perspective what is happening. Since the BJP hasn’t been able to capitalise on the ABC environment, this has only emboldened the Congress because in India, the default vote for the most part stays with the Congress. As a result, instead of us getting into a positive feedback loop of improving governance, we are now in a negative spiral with complete lack of leadership and absolute silence.

2014 is still a long way out. Fasting for specific objectives seems to be in vogue, even though the efforts only result in failure. Corruption for the most part continues unabated. Decision-making has ground to a halt. The economy is running on auto-pilot. And in this, the 20^th year of liberalisation of the Indian economy, commentators have started talking of going back to the 1970s with the populist policies.

That this is not the way a country should be governed is quite clear. What is not so clear is how we get ourselves out of this situation.

Continued tomorrow.

I wrote this a couple years ago:

 During the elections, I was struck by the lack of databases and real-world linkages. Such tools could be great assets for both campaigning and direct marketing. I think of this as a “mirror world”– a virtual replica of the real world along multiple dimensions:

• start with maps
• add a layer of establishments (buildings, schools, retail outlets, roads, etc.)
• overlay this with the voter database that one can get from the Election Commissio. The voter database has names of people, their addresses, gender and age.
• add the actual voting numbers based on the data published from the EC post-election (can also incorporate historical data to get trends; need to take into account the delimitation)
• integrate the socio-demographic and development data that is available from census, various government sites (and collated by independent companies)
• finally, buy contacts lists of people with information of their digital identity (email IDs, mobile numbers)
• this database can then be continuously updated based on user interactions, thus enhancing people profiles

The work to be done needs to be done at 3 levels:

• data acquisition
• software development for ingesting the data
• creating analytics tools on the data for decision-making

Such a database would be a very powerful marketing tool. For example, a new multiplex can now reach out to people within a 5 kilometre radius via email or SMS (provided people are not registered on the Do Not Call registry). There are many such applications that I can think of.

This week’s links:

• The Leader’s Checklist: A new book by Michael Useem, “presents a collection of 15 principles that can help leaders navigate successfully through even the most difficult circumstances.” A Knowledge@Wharton interview.
• Apple could buy the mobile industry: A short piece on asymco but with a remarkable insight on how the industry has been transformed by Apple and Android. “The more remarkable thing is that as market values of phone vendors continue to decline, Apple’s cash will continue to grow dramatically. Indeed, a time may soon come when Apple’s cash will be worth more than the entire phone industry.”
• Return to rent-seeking: An edit in Mint. “India needs economic reforms as never before. They are unlikely anytime soon.”
• Interview with US historian David McCullough: in WSJ. Much of what he says applies to India also. He says “textbooks have become “so politically correct as to be comic.”
• R Chandrashekhar Interview: He is India’s Secretary, Department of Telecom & Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication & Information Technology. “Mobile is the only medium which can reach out to 850 million people.”

One of the evenings recently, I ended up watching “Rang De Basanti” on TV. I had watched it after it was released, but watching the movie in the current political context of corruption and middle class frustration with the political class created a new setting. While the solution advocated at the end is not the right one, the points made by the movie are worth thinking through.

In the past few weeks, even the most loyal supporters of the government have been exasperated by the silence and inaction. When I talk to people in the know, they mention the complete paralysis of policy making in the government. This has to change.

The challenges we face on multiple fronts are immense, but without the vision and will to tackle them, we can end up digging ourselves into a hole. If ever there was a time that an Indian politician needed to seize this moment in time and rise as a leader, this is it.

A friend recently asked me why the only I do on Twitter and Facebook is repost by blog posts. Why didn’t I do more? Why wasn’t I more active?

There are three reasons. First, I like to write slightly longer posts. Second, I like to take my time thinking through what I write. Third, given the nature of my work, I like uninterrupted periods of time. Let me explain all the points.

Twitter’s 140-char limit and real-time interaction has terrific advantages. But for me, I like my reactions to be a bit more measured. The blog, for me, gives me the time and space to write how I feel. Like I have said below, I write the blog to help myself think better. If others benefit from it, that is great. For me, writing has always been something which has made me more attentive and thoughtful. The blog gives me the room I need to clarify my own thought processes in a way Twitter cannot.

Also, in today’s world, where there is a near constant spate of interruptions, we are not getting enough chunky amounts of thinking time.  Thinking is very critical for what I need to do – both in NetCore and for the political ideas. That needs less interruption and more continuous stretches of time. Email and SMS anyways beckon regularly. I don’t want to, at least for now, add tweets and Facebook status updates and news feeds to that list.

Every once in a while, I come across a bookshop that is made for a book lover. Strand Bookshop in Mumbai is one such shop. I wrote recently about Manohar’s in Delhi for India books. Another such shop is Manney’s in Pune. (Disclosure: Manney’s owner’s daughter is married to my cousin.)

There is no better pleasure than browsing through such a bookshop and discovering books that one would never easily find on an online store. Standing there amidst the shelves, picking up a book that makes one’s heart leap, thumbing through it, reading a para or two, and then deciding on whether to buy or not — this is what a click can never replicate.

A book shop like this is a labour of love – for it is built by selection of a person who knows both customers and books. There is no better way to spend an hour or two on a lazy afternoon than in a shop made by and for book lovers.

I wrote about this last year, but I just cannot help writing about it again. It is unbelievable that a major railhead like Bandra in Mumbai can have such pathetic access by road. The terminus has been around for many years, and little seems to have changed. Come the rains, whatever little of the road is there is also covered with potholes and puddles. Isn’t anyone even bothered?

It has been just a couple weeks of rain, and already many of the roads are in a pathetic situation. It is the same story every year. Hundreds of crores will again be ‘spent’ fixing the roads after the monsoon. So much for our anti-corruption battle, when the outcomes are right under our wheels every kilometre we drive.

In the case of Bandra Terminus, it is quite unbelievable that we created such a critical component of infrastructure without even bothering about proper integration with the rest of the city. And the silence of passengers makes us all complicit in the tragedy that unfolds.