Jay D.

Shah (AMSoM)

India of My Dreams

India of My Dreams
India is the land of Golden Eras. There are international contributions which show Indian GDP in the past, even more than the highest of todays super powers. The Indian culture is so strong, the spirits of people are high and the times seem right. Even the natural selection is in the favor of the Indian Dream, by the demographic dividend at the right time when there are multiple growth prospects for India. In such positive times, I see India as a future superpower but that requires a culture for excellence, desires to grow as a nation rather than growth of a group of people, and the self discipline to accept the duties by people so that the dignity of humans in the country sustains and improves. In my dreams, I see India as a superpower and the economic and cultural power house of the world. But to achieve this, the common man has to work first. We throw a used wafer packet on the road while travelling; the same person would not do the same while travelling in the US. People complain that the government has not provided with the dust bins. But this does not end there. It is the people who need to develop a culture where the existing government has to think about managing the waste in a way that society can live cleanly and see the clean places. We have a culture of blaming others which needs a major change where in we take responsibilities for our action and we create an environment where it is considered good to be responsible. A person trying hard to explain a travel mate not to throw used water bottle on road while in a travel bus, is laughed at. This shows the poor attitude of the society. This is not just about the cleanliness. This approach spreads in many verticals of human society and so in human behavior. A person trying to establish religious harmony is appreciated by all. But the works that goes into accepting all religions as they are and as a part of our own life requires courage. Such rebellions are still not appreciated in the society. Even an IIT, IIM graduate looks at the caste of the person on the ultra forward wedding arrangement web sites before taking the interest in a candidate. This shows the rigidness in implementing the constitution (e.g. equality of religion) we follow. All these things are related, they show the dearth of self discipline and the dearth of the acceptance of the human as a human. We need to challenge this. The nation requires NGOs to work in this direction. Just imagine a situation where all the citizens become the citizens they are while gone to the US and follow the cleanliness standards. The whole areas are cleaner, they generate better energy, vibes, and the responsible people create a better economy with confidence in one self. This kind of a citizen is not blocked by another citizen by the social mask. This creates healthy opportunities without the religion bias. That creates the right use of the right resource and the focused individuals. The religion and the cleanliness are the most observable sides of this story otherwise there are multiple sides which can be targeted. Explaining the right use of resources (e.g. fuel, power, water, food, etc.), the right use of received opportunities, no-exploitation policies for people, etc are some of other examples. All these seem very petty and not so much achievable but when a kid is taught all these values, then there is a possibility of turning his life towards the positive sides and in the process the whole family may get enlightened. In my dreams, I see India as a superpower and the economic and cultural power house of the world. But to achieve this, we need to find the basic evils and crush them. The discovery of biggest evil turned out to be the poverty by our dear former president of India APJ Abdul Kalam while interacting with school 1

Jay D. Shah (AMSoM)

India of My Dreams

kids in Aanand district of Gujarat. Taking this forward, how does poverty gets created? The pure reason according to me is the employment problems. We need to reduce this evil to reduce poverty which increases education and in turn the nation grows and achieves my dreams. What is the possible way to tackle the unemployment issue? The best way is to create businesses which employ people. In this process I do not push the idea of subsiding the automation and give people the work. In fact I completely support the idea of automation. This takes away the work that is not required to be done by humans. This creates an efficient process to complete the repetitive work and gives human chance to do things that they have to do. This requires the humans to get more skillful and in turn earn better returns. This approach improves the standard of living of people at the same time helps to support the idea of society development where people learn more to earn more. This takes up the society, education level, competitiveness, etc. The people know their rights better and system performs better. Now to increase the businesses we need more number of entrepreneurs in the country. This is the place which requires extensive work. We need places all over the country which has established networks to register ideas, spread ideas, and help in implementing those ideas. These are the knowledge management centers of the country. These centers do not only deal with the generated ideas but also help in generating the ideas by making the people aware about the idea generation process and benefits of the same. Such centers are required in all the small districts to all the big metro cities. They are needed to be in colleges, schools, primaries, etc. This culture of entrepreneurship throughout the country modularizes the process of creating an enterprise. There are ideas unused as they have not reached to the right person who really needs them in their area. At the same time the generator might not be that risk averse. But the modularizing of such enterprise creation, gives equitable earning opportunities to all the stack holders for all the little or large contributions. Moreover, as Prof. Anil Gupta of IIM A says, the person should earn from what he does best. He supports the honey bee network concept which promotes the idea of bringing the far talent into limelight so that the talented person gets a market to sell that talent on his/her own and earn the royalties on his/her own rather than an intermediary earning all the benefits. This creates a culture where more and more people tend to think and create better ideas. This innovation genome in the country can only take us to the dreams of being the most powerful. We can do this, as the most developed countries today use the many Indian brains to innovate. We have these resources but the capability to recognize and appreciate those brains requires efforts like mentioned above. In my dreams, I see India as a superpower and the economic and cultural power house of the world. But to achieve this, we need a country with better governance and clean accounts of the people in the system called government. We have the best of constitution which is created positively. The positively created systems always leave loopholes which could be exploited. To stop this, we need better upper management which really want the systems to run and help common people rather than obstruct them to gain own benefits. Achieving this requires a very good leader and that requires the dependence on the elected personnel. This cannot always be true as the people taking positions in coming generations may not always have better standards. The best way to achieve this is by using technology. Log each transaction of government. Audit each transaction; make a rule that public service providers have to come out with their financials just like the public sector companies. If we can regulate the public sector companies, then why not regulate public servants? The whole system should transfer to computers and 2

Jay D. Shah (AMSoM)

India of My Dreams

that too managed entirely on cloud. If a file is pending for more than the stipulated time, then the layman should be allowed to check the status without going to particular office. Make available the related logs. Create the systems which are accountable and reliable. Treat the layman as your customers and serving them the real goal and the customer satisfaction, the performance measurement. All these require the discipline, dedication, human dignity, and the ability of self restrain for earning unsolicited money in the public servants. This requires cultural change and that can come only at the right age and through targeting multiple channels efficiently. That depend on the human rights framework we create and implement. In my dreams, I see India as a superpower and the economic and cultural power house of the world. But to achieve this, we need to move over and stop fighting for a state dedicated to a community, or region. We need to stop fight for a river or the amount of power supply a state receive and work in unison keeping the goal of national progress rather a state or a district progress. Capitalizing on the strength of a community and creating support for the weaknesses of a community is the micro level key for the ultimate success. In my dreams, I see India as a superpower and the economic and cultural power house of the world. But to achieve this, we need to capitalize the demographic dividend first phase that we are in right now and create policy which are beneficial in the second phase which can run as far as we can take it forward if we create the right policies. All of these are not only the duties of our government. It is a layman duty to change the culture. Each person needs to try in his home and the neighborhood to contribute whatever little is possible to make this a better and dignified place. This approach takes time but works for growth which is sustainable and full of the confidence in selves. Jay Hind.

-Jay D. Shah Amrut Mode School of Management