India / Political leaders or CEOs?

TO CARE OR NOT TO CARE

Malvika Singh
The Telegraph, 5 December

Why is it that in a country where the majority live outside of the large metropolitan areas in smaller towns and the countryside, we never see the prime minister, the home minister, the chief of the Planning Commission, the finance minister, or for that matter any minister in the Central cabinet, addressing, talking with, being with the ‘real’ and majority people of this land, people that elect them to power and fame, to personal growth and all the other trappings of rulership. These ‘leaders’ are perpetually flying about, presiding on podiums sponsored by CII, World Economic Forum, FICCI, media and television companies and private companies, the Walmarts of this world! Never do you find these ‘heavies’, PM and all, visiting smaller towns, smaller platforms and rural districts.

Little do they realize that unless they take charge, so to speak, of the real India, the neglected and exploited other half, this country will never move towards being a superpower despite what these men and women mouth with irritating frequency. Their platitudes are sounding superficial and intellectually limited, particularly when juxtaposed with the growing tension and breakdown of civil society, something they are not willing to see, accept or attempt to comprehend and correct.

If there is to be sane and intelligent planning for India and if the intention is to be socially and economically inclusive, policy- and decision-makers need to spend two weeks each month in the back of beyond, sharing the indignities that Indians have to live with. Only then will they be able to discard the skewed, irrelevant and destructive notings in files and absurd allocations that they have hitherto indulged in.

Think of Bharat

The reality of India escapes all those who have not lived and operated in the hinterland or fought an election from a rural constituency on a regular basis. Because of this professional, political liability, policies are creating the ‘them’ and ‘us’ syndrome that is leading to frightening social upheavals. Unfortunately, those holding the World Bank flag do not want to hear anything outside of their model for growth. They are afraid of facing the truth, of looking beyond their noses, lest what they see compels them out of their complacent intellectual lethargy.

Sonia Gandhi, it appears, is the only national leader of the UPA who is seen to care about the whole, and not merely the ‘upwardly mobile bits and pieces’. She has become, willy-nilly, the conscience-keeper of an India that tends to forget the fundamentals that Bharat desperately needs. She is, thankfully, not a symbol of the World Bank that has many ‘models’ in this country walking its ramp, using its limited designs to address the special and complicated needs of a plural and diverse polity. Sonia Gandhi traverses both India and Bharat with ease and understanding and is able to work positively to enhance the growth of both, simultaneously.

Leaders today need a broad-based knowledge of this land and its people. They need to understand the churning happening in the minds of the young, the majority, both in urban and rural habitats. They need to set aside their egos, their tired ideas and beliefs, and open their eyes, ears and minds to changing positions. If they cannot do so, they must step down from public posturing.

When a prime minister is master only of one trade, he depends, heavily, on his bureaucrats, a wily breed who, within days, run circles around their boss and take over. It is scary because with that kind of abdication by the ‘boss’, intellectual corruption, nepotism and all the other horrors of government and bureaucracy come into play. The leader who is straight and ‘good’, but is controlled by his babus and not by his own political sense, gets isolated, insular and is unable to relate to or address the problems that confront us all.