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This is a lightly edited transcript of the Higher Education Conference speech I gave in early May 2012.

Before we start off on the main theme, I thought I  would   give a couple of suggestions on how we can make conferences very interesting.   We have been doing conferences probably the same way we have been doing it for the last 20 years.

We have two screens here, and I have tried this idea out at conferences which I have helped organise in Bombay and they have made a world of difference. One screen could actually be used to show real-time feedback from speakers.   Everyone’s got a computer, mobile phone;. So they can send an sms, tweet, email or go to a web page and leave a comment. I can tell you, it completely changes the dynamic of the  conference.

We have got some great  inputs today morning. As we think about them sitting in the audience, we also get a number of ideas. These go away since there is no way to give them back linked to the context. By enabling people to provide real-time feedback, we can make them more engaged and create a richer interaction.

Here is a second idea. I attended the DEMO in Santa Clara recently.  Six minutes was the time limit  given to every presenter. There were  company launches, product launches. It is amazing what can be said in six minutes. I tried the same at my company yesterday morning.  Normally these presentations would be 15-20 minutes long and go on –  rambling stuff. It’s amazing the focus which came in because I’d put a time limit-hard limit – six minutes. You enforce that limit by having a timer out here, a countdown timer. Again, these things are done abroad, and I think it’s time we got some of these things so the speaker knows exactly how much time is left.

Hopefully we can do some of these things in the future. The point to think is how do you reinvent and start innovating with the flow of the conference itself.

I wrote this series a year ago:

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.

This week’s links:

• Rise of the Enterprise “Toys”: by Aaron Levie. “Who would have thought that something as simple as status messages shared between colleagues would evolve to become such an important strategic product for Microsoft and the enterprise?”
• Mobile is where the growth is: by Fred Wilson. “There is a significant shift going on this year, much more significant than we saw last year, from web to mobile. It is most noticeable in games, social networking, music, and news, but it is happening across the board and it presents both great opportunity and great challenges.”
• Science’s great leap forward: The Economist on the discovery of the Higgs boson particle. “Without the Higgs there would be no mass. And without mass, there would be no stars, no planets and no atoms. And certainly no human beings. Indeed, there would be no history.”
• It takes a city: by Edward Glaeser. “The future of India lies in its cities, not in its villages, and that fact creates both enormous opportunities and significant challenges.”
• India’s dire states: by Pratap Bhanu Mehta. “Despite some manifest successes, most states have been unable to tackle certain fundamental challenges holding India back.”

To summarise:    to transform India,    it requires us to persuade this 25%, these 200 million people or  a large fraction thereof,  that development matters,  that good economic policies matter,   that poverty can be conquered and our problems can be solved –   not between two generations,   but between two elections.

Some chief ministers in India have done this, like we saw earlier. With the same people,  within the same system,  the same bureaucracy .   So it is doable, and  we need to make this happen and replicate theses good examples  nationally.

My focus is really on playing a role in this transformation.   As an entrepreneur,  I realise that the largest/ biggest problem or biggest challenge in India that any entrepreneur can look for solving  is that of governance and creating a better future for India.

I woke up to this when a friend of mine, Atanu, asked me a question 3 years ago.  He said, “Rajesh you have everything. When Abhishek, who was  then 4 years old, grows up, and asks you a question,   ‘Dad,   you  saw all that was happening around you. Why didn’t you do something about it?’, what will your answer?”

My work will hopefully be that answer,  and I hope many of you will also participate in bringing about this  transformation in India.

This technology reachable and powered base can make a huge difference in the next elections.    There will be about 150-200 million  people on the internet in India , there’ll be the same numbers on Facebook.   Youtube is likely to be among  the top three Indian channels.

Technology can be now used to target and get out the vote. Taken together, this can make 2014 a game-changing election in India.

What this really means   is that there are about 200 million people, 25% of the voting base in 2014,  which now has the ability to determine India’s future.  But what they are going to  look for  is leadership, organisation  and message.    They are going to look for leaders who can make difficult decisions, who can lead.   They are going to look for grassroot organisations in  political parties who at multiple levels,   who can intervene if things are going wrong. They are going to look for a message which really addresses the aspirations of people and also at the same time addresses the fears of a majority of Indians.

This persuadable 25% can determine the future of India.

2014 is going be different.   I’m going to  tell you the reasons why it’s going to be different., and why  2014 can really change the future of India.

Firstly, urban seats are increasing —  there are now about 200 out of the 543 seats in India that can be classified as urban seats where the urban population is more than 35%.    And that’s a fact of the rising urbanisation which we have heard earlier today.

Secondly, first-time voters. These are people who have basically grown up in the post or under the reforms era of 1991. These first-time voters don’t remember  what it was like to be in the past. People who are older think what we have today is so much better than what  was there  in the 1970s and 1980s.   But the first-time voters have incredible aspirations.

They are the ones who if they register and go out and vote will account for 10-15% of the voter base.  Middle India doesn’t vote in large numbers today. But they have substantially large numbers because of the reforms. They have education, and for the first time, they are reachable through technology – Internet, mobile, social and video (YouTube).

What India needs to do is something it hasn’t done in 30 years.   It needs to deliver a majority  to a single party. It needs to deliver 272 out of 543 seats to one of the national political parties.   This is because, right now,  what we have in India is  where parties of 10-20 members  of parliament, who hold policy making to a ransom.   And that cannot go on.

What this means,   is that 2014 has to become a wave election.   There has to be a national wave.    It cannot be what everyone talks about  today,  — a summation of state elections,   where every state really makes its own local decisions.

So you  got to have a situation where,  it almost becomes a presidential form of election —  where people are voting for leaders, and   ideologies and ideas, transcending across the country.

It’s not going to be easy.  You talk to political analysts today;   they will basically tell you  that it will be a coalition government once again.  One of the national parties will get 160-170 and it will have to cobble-together  another 100 seats from 5-7 political parties.   And that’s not going to work.

Changing people’s voting behavior requires changing what they know, changing what they are  aware of, changing their understanding. What they need to understand is that India is poor not by an act of God but because of poor economic policies which have been followed for the most part,  since independence.   What we see in India today is   “British Raj 2.0.”

The British left,  and all  we changed was the colour of the skin of our rulers.   The same policies, the same institutions which were there to  extract and exploit,  and divide and rule,   are still very much intact.   For the most part,  what we have in India,  is not a democracy but a kakistocracy. A kakistocracy is rule by the least principled and the most corrupt.

That is the unfortunate reality of our country.   For change,  people in India need to demand good governance. Only then are we going to get a supply of good governance.   So the fundamental question really about the “HOW”   is changing people’s minds  and changing people’s votes.   And in this context,   the next elections which will be held in India-   probably in 2014 or may be a little  earlier –  are a pivotal  moment in our history.

The last few years  we have been buffeted by scams of incredible magnitude.   But there are some people doing very good work in India.   We will come back to that.

Nothing has changed from what I wrote a year ago:

This week’s links:

• Local will be the biggest opportunity: by Bill Gurley. “Over the next five years, this massive opportunity will come into focus as local businesses embrace the Internet and adopt new interactive technologies that increasingly automate the connections between their customers and themselves.”
• South East Asia Mobility Report: from Mobile Monday, by Madanmohan Rao. “Southeast Asia accounts for one tenth of the world’s population, with Indonesia’s population alone around 240 million. The region reflects a diverse mix of cultures, economies, innovation dynamics andmobile/Internet diffusion patterns.”
• Peter Diamandis Interview: from Wired. Peter is the X-Prize founder. “He soon realized that the same forces that enabled a small team of amateurs to make a lunar lander could empower cadres of bright, idealistic people to solve earthly problems.”
• The Voice of the Storyteller: from NYTimes, the last in a series on better writing. “Writing style begins with clarity: Find the right words, and decide what to leave out. Then shape your sentences. Turn a phrase, play with sound, listen for cadence. Think about tone, and select a point of view.”
• India needs drastic reforms, not cosmetic ones: by SL Rao in The Telegraph. “The needed reforms are structural and systemic, prioritizing decentralized governance, and administrative reform. “