The world’s economic balance is tilting towards the east- namely the Chinese speaking world and India along with Korea,  and Singapore. The Chinese have a trillion plus USD in their reserves and are the factory line of the world, in the past three decades 300 million Chinese have been lifted out of poverty and the Gulf based sovereign wealth funds are lapping up assets in the west as the economic free market structure crumbles under housing and consumer debt. Greece defaulted on its debt repayment plans and the Eurozone shivered, Spain and Ireland are next on their way to the financial clinic to check in to the ICU. Bail outs since 2009 have been the order of the day. America is bail out central. GE and the biggest american brands have received government funds to survive. Its the socialization of the losses and privatization of the profits. It seems an irony that these are the same people who call for limited government intervention and the free market in boom times. America stopped manufacturing since the 1970’s by outsourcing it first to Korea and Singapore in 1970’s, the Asian Tigers in 1980’s and finally bangalore’d their strength; the service sector to India, South Africa, Philippines and Eastern Europe in the past two decades. Apple is the benchmark of American Innovation, but it only design’s its products in Cupertino and its manufacturing its done by the Taiwanese major Foxconn in its industrial estates in China, employing millions and not thousands like in America as Apple does; that too very highly skilled talent from Berkeley, not the high school diploma out of the public school system in Brooklyn. American graduates teach English in schools from Sharjah to Shanghai as there are no jobs in US itself. An average American college graduate has a starting debt of 24k when he begins his first payable full time post. American Political Commentator Fareed Zakaria has called for an overhaul of the innovation ecosystem to create jobs in his series on CNN.

In short, economic growth without job creation is meaningless with the demographic bomb exploding in Africa, Middle East and South Asia.  Social implications of a society are huge with three skipped meals acting as a trigger for a revolution as the vegetable seller in Tunis that ignited the Arab spring. In India, Maoists have capitalized on this sentiment of dis-entitlement where the tribal and the Subsistence farmer have no option to give away fertile agricultural land at throw away prices to loan sharks or to corporate land grabbers for the real estate scam called the SEZ or an economic free zone. Free zones in the Middle East are created on arid desert land like the Ras Al Khaimah Free Zone or the Salalah Free Zone in Southern Oman where land is not for agriculture. India has 100,000 farmer suicides and is a net importer of food. Our so called demographic dividend as Nandan Nilekani calls in his lucidly written book ‘Imagining India’ can be only materialized if education is reformed to make it inclusive as half the engineers in India are not employment ready and companies have to re-train them before work. Manufacturing is stuck in the matrix of antiquated labor laws and land acquisition.  Agriculture needs the most reform to make it viable career option once gain.

Services by nature will cater to the very educated cadre of the work force, apart from Singapore or the Scandinavian nations, but larger countries would have to be be manufacturing nations by creating home grown Samsung or Haer to satiate the social need for work and livelihoods, to avert another Jasmine Revolution or a Singur.

We have been hearing a lot of hooplah over the term civil society in India since the anti corruption movement picked up pace. According to a recent article penned  Centre for Policy Research Think Tank honcho Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express post on the civil society space (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/that-seventies-feeling/804154/) . He writes about impending new media regulations and the financial harassment norms for ngo’s which get funds from overseas. The civil society is composed of a myriad spectrum of actors made of of millions of small groups to behemoths like SEWA and Centre for Science and Environment. Of course moral entrepreneurs in ngo’s and civil society, peddle ideas as their products for the mass market.

Nelson Mandela was not democratically elected and he was the voice of the anti apartheid movement, Abu Amar aka Yasser Arafat was not democratically elected too, but he made palestine into an issue from a non issue post 1967. Anna Hazare, Mr. Kejriwal, Ms. Bedi and the Bhushans are not elected, but electoral democracy is a monetarily driven process, not a battle for ideas at the operational level, its a battle for power and control. The civil society is like any other estate of society, its either good and effective or ineffective and detrimental. The best of laws are drafted by thinktanks and policy formulations are done by profs at grad school research centers. Not every thing has to go through the proverbial people’s court, people have their ideas and since the platform of the web 2.0 have opened up like blogs like this one and ngo websites like avaaz, that catalyze mass movements like the Lok Pal Bill movement recently. It was India’s first digital democratic enterprise. For a vibrant civil society, economic accountability and transparency is fundamental, because they lobby for policies and the public has a right to know the drive behind the move. The Civil Society is the crucible for smoldering politics at its best, a wake up alarm for those in power to improve their ways. The Arab Spring  and the former soviet summer in 2005, was amplified by civil society actors. Lech Walesa was from Civil Society in Poland to made it to presidency in the early 1990’s. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch highlights excesses in countries which do not have democratic mechanisms to guard their own countrymen such as Burma and Sub Saharan Nations.

Civil Society is an effective lever for change, when traditional mechanism fail, its a safety valve in the processing plant called human society….

Today, I watched the Salman Khan starrer ‘Ready’ at the only theater which screens Bollywood films in Singapore. After, Wanted and Dabangg, the genre of nonsensical entertainment comprising of catchy numbers and over the top action, as in the films in the 1980’s and the early 1990’s were again back in vogue, with the masses craving for style and raw humor. The USP of Bollywood is not tasteful cinema which will be treated as case studies in film schools internationally like kurosawa ans ray, but rather the absence of it. The south asian ethos is captured in bollywood films which is indeed one of the bigger cultural exports apart from yoga to the global community. The TED Talk delivered by Shashi Tharoor on the rising ‘Soft Power’ illustrates the the charm of bollywood over an illiterate women in Dakar, West Africa who travels to the main city to watch a bollywood film every month, even though she understands none of the dialogues. Human emotions are powerful enough to surpass the language barrier and Bollywood’s true strength is in delivering in the face, raw emotions to the person who does not even understand it.  

A Russian and an Indonesian friend of mine was inquiring about Mithun Chakraborty, the famous lead actor of the 1970’s and 80’s and they remember him by the iconic film ‘Disco Dancer’ and the song Jimmy Jimmy… Although Mithun Da, might be a 60 plus, character actor now, his work resonates with people who does not understand any word of it, its only by action and mannerisms that he swayed his audiences. Amitabh Bachchan is a legend whose popularity is from Kabul to Kyoto. His charisma and his sheer talent, has made him India’s unofficial cultural envoy. Shahrukh Khan was honored with the ‘Datuk’ title from the Royalty in Melaka, Malaysia for his sheer popularity to bring in tourists in to Malaysia with his film Don. The film ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ is a household staple in the Malay speaking world. The power of musicals are undermined by the intellectual community in India. Its our identity as the Hong Kong Film Industry has its action choreography as its mantle, leading to Oscar wins in the main category. Lagaan and Slumdog Millionare showed that Bollywood resonates with even the  western audiences. Let us play to our strength instead of being blatant copycats.

A couple of months back we have been blown away by the public support in favor of Gandhian Anna Hazare and his crusade for accountability via the Lok Pal Bill, essentially a watch dog cum anti graft legislation, which led the current dispensation, to agree to a joint civil society-government mechanism to draft the law. The People saw a ray of hope in an elderly career activist who stood for his values, lived a life in serving communities in Maharashtra State. The cancer of corruption cost the global economy one trillion dollars last year in lost  revenues and in effective public service delivery. Billions of dollars of stolen tax dollars from India are in off shore tax havens, siphoned off by the elite.  There is acute trust deficit between the electorate and the political class in India. The vacuum is being filled by civil society leadership like Anna Hazare, Mr. Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev. Well, Baba Ramdev is a spiritual entrepreneur, with declared business interests of 1100 crore, his traditional medicine empire spans globally. According to a tweet of a CNN-IBN Journalist, the preparations of his agitation dwarf that of Anna Hazare, which massive infrastructure. Although,  Baba Ramdev has a political dimension to him, but he has more trust from the common man than the government.

Moral Entrepreneurs are not new, every time there has been a gulf between the ruling class and the people, a group of valued people have bridged the gap. The civil society brigade, which are the NGO’s like Amnesty International, Oxfam and the WWF have stood up as a moral voice in times of persecution and civic unrest. This materialistic world of ours, still treasures values,  particularly when they see the rot effecting their daily lives. The dynastic, career politician class exudes no respect from the middle class. The unrest in the Arab Spring was led by moral entrepreneurs in the middle class, the Google executive who started it all in Cairo  is the poster child of civic activism. Moral values are what binds us as a civilization, a buffer against anarchy beyond redemption.

 

The idea of India is an intellectual contest since the moment Nehruji, uttered his memorable Freedom at Night.. independence day speech. Every nation builds its culture derived from the majority religion in the nation, The secular yet culturally Christian West, The Muslim World across the Organization of Islamic Countries, Arab League, GCC are very particular about reflecting Islamic Values in their daily lives, as it is not only a Faith, but a world view, culture and governing and legal system as well. Japan and Korea are very modern, but have Buddhist leanings.  Thailand, Burma and Cambodia are very Buddhist in character, indeed and hence their cultural ethos. Turkey and Indonesia are secular by constitution, but Islam being the majority religion is the moral compass in daily lives.

India is a continent in itself, an anthropologist’s paradise and a complex model on to itself. A 5000 year old civilization, multi religious country with multitudes of races, linguistic groups and sub communities. Its Organized chaos at its best. China with all its dialects and regional variations, implemented the one national language policy with Mandarin, which made communication uniform from Qingdao to Guangzhou. Even Hindi as a National Language is contested with it not being taught to my Tamil friends down south. Following the Singaporean model of Multi-Racial harmony with four National Languages is an excellent model, but consensus is something hard to ferment in India, apart from Bollywood, Cricket or a territorial conflict with Pakistan.

A Language is a frame of mind, a window to a culture and the diversity in India is a our biggest strength and an enormous weakness as well. This coupled with caste based politics and fragmentation in India with affirmative action for lower castes in the Hindu fold, makes the concept of an Indian Identity harder to define than rocket science. A hundred low level separatist movements around the country, weaved around identity and economic issues do not help either. India is a vibrant, economic power with global aspirations, identity has risen above social and ethnic factors to a single economic community identity like the EU or the former Soviet Bloc, with regional political players and two national parties with in significant reach in one part of the nation or other. There are many sub identities, within the larger persona of being an Indian. This a question to be answered by every citizen of this nation. Identity is a work in progress all the time but a National Identity helps build resilience and further social capital. Lets Build One India, like One Malaysia not only in campaign but in spirit as well.

The Open Source movement in software revolutionized the way we integrate the personal computer in to the ethos of our everyday lives, and all this is because some geeks in the basement garages in the 1980’s and 90’s, did programming to score geeky brownie points among their peers. Some became Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other internet biggies. Linux, is the bench mark for open source software, the operating system which is only next to Google and challenges the Corporate hegemony of the Seattle major. Web 2.0 Technology is revolutionizing and accelerating the trajectory of  the open source movement. Education is jumping on the band wagon of Web 2.0 tech to expand the reach of world class education to people in remote parts of the world. Its the age of the PROSUMER – We are both creators and consumers of content. E-Learning is changing the landscape of learning. Most Universities have a E-Learning week once a semester, mostly before the reading week (I had one at NUS).

MIT Open Course Ware is a miracle for students in the developing world, who have access to MIT lectures, which are usually a lot better than their local schools. ICT is changing the learning paradigm in the third world, learning is liberation from poverty.  Khan Academy, is the Open Source Tuition Website for School Kids and basic university course ware. TED and Pop Tech are amazing sources of ideas or twitter is a open source way of obtaining real time data.  Long is the time passed where, the Guru of the class is the ultimate source of knowledge, now a days He is only a Facilitator of our ideas.

This is a topic which I have touched up on in my earlier posts as education and its dispensation, is something I feel passionately about, as The Rise of  Branded Elitist Institutions all over the World, are the new citadels of clergy as in the middle ages. Whether these are the Ecole Grandes in France or ITB in Indonesia,  Education is increasingly more about a passport to prosperity and upward social mobility rather than learning and empowerment of the mind. The recent debate sparked off by the Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, IITB and CMU/MIT Alumni, about the reason why the IIT’s and the IIM’s are not producing world class research and the value is only due to the exceptional caliber of the human potential.  Educational Institutions are in the end analysis nothing but elite clubs of limited access to cultural and social capital as emphasized by Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and Harvard Don Robert Putnam.  They are about personal branding and private networks ultimately and not about knowledge accumulation and reproduction for enhancement of the cause of humanity.

The prep coaching industry for the IIT’s, IIM’s and Med School’s in Kota and Hyderabad are insane, the monetization of cultural capital is complete. Cultural Capital is translated into Symbolic Capital and Power later on in life. Preparation for IIT exams begin in the early teens, as if that the IIT exam is the pinnacle of achievement. Or the Liberal Arts equivalent of St. Stephens, St. Xaviers and Loyola is the stuff which dreams are made of.  The myth of the IIT/IIM passout has reached new heights post liberalization and has reach the zenith symbolism of a myth. The enorminty of the Chinese university entrance exam of the Gao Kao is equally maddening.

The whole dimension that a person is a failure if a person is not bright enough to make it to the elite schools like Oxbridge, Ivy League or the IIT-IIM phenomena in India is mis-informed. Success is not assured if a person, makes it to these institutions, life is a cross country race and not a 100m dash. There are things in life people do which make them great, even if they do not make to these elite schools. Human Potential is more than a Brand. The greatest of Artists, Musicians, Writers and Entrepreneurs were not Ivy-Retarded and write did not to enshrine their names in the annals of History. Let the Rat Race be confined to the Rats and not infect the Homo Sapien species.

Success is relative and the term means different things to different people of a socioeconomic edifice. We all need success stories to inspire us to fulfill our potential. The entire genre of motivational books is based on parables and human stories which inspire us. There are some extra special individuals , which we all can be if we are passionately driven enough to make a positive transformation in our day to day existence. By presenting the higher moral ground to the so called ‘Self Made Man’ , we are all abdicating our responsibility for a better life for all of us. One member of a family who does well, can transform a group of people, the power is in our hands. it is all in the mind and the flesh is weak.  It needs sacrifices, facing rebukes from near and dear ones and giving up on a lot of things, well life is treacherous and a very bad master. Life is never fair, it will always seem that the grass is greener on the other side. We always wish that things could have been different. The thing we can do is to try our hardest and to be a good trier. One does not have to possess the IQ of 150 to make a good life, it about finding what we are good at and working hard at it.

The people who are blessed with opportunities, are just having the same stuff, we are trying to attain a bit earlier. Having the right opportunities does not mean that the person has has a easy way, because he has worked to capitalize on the opportunity and not left it by the wayside. Being born in a family of wealth and stature, gets a person a head start but nothing more, if anything it makes a person even more aware of the potential the world has to offer. It does not make him a weaker person or have a fragile spine to deal with the vagaries of this sinful world than the person who is so called self made.

A Dhirubhai Ambani is a one in a billion, we are all here, because of the teacher who had patience on us when we could not understand a high school math problem, a parent who had patience even we made a bad call regarding our finances or a friend who stood by us when we were in the midst of a emotional breakdown. A million multitudes of gratitude and generosity makes the person we are ultimately, and by that understanding; I would not be arrogant enough to call myself self made.

All the popular media  glamorizing rhetoric about becoming an entrepreneur as well as creating a phenomenon single handedly and eulogizing everyone who studied at an iit or at an ivy league school. The projection in the media is about creating our own venture by participating in biz plan competitions and creating the next Google or a reliance for the next generation. As if starting and running a business is as simplistic as playing monopoly or counterstrike.  Or to be counter intuitive, is doing a regular day job so drab and un  sexy that we are decedents of Mr. Bean and his ilk? Our parents and our forefathers who tilled farms, taught in schools or did administrative jobs in companies or in government, did actually raise successful families and lived contented lives.   Running business is not about going to student conferences to speak or distributing name cards at networking events or doing fancy stuff wearing dapper suits. Its about sweating it out getting projects, executing them and optimizing resources as well as motivating people to give their best towards a common objective.

The whole popular culture about celebrity worship and pursue the ‘Hot’ career sector at that moment whether it is Social Media, Nanotech or Biotechnology  is  the very black hole which sucks the potential energy out of the souls which may be talented in a different field altogether AND CREATE which they really enjoy doing like music or art or even playing a sport on a professional level. Ultimately, it is about the individual enjoying what he does and so he does it well enough that the market will buy the service and make a living.  Its important that we get back down to the basics and concentrate on the things which matter to us… Being normal is indeed normal and its meaning differs from person to person and on what meaning each one of us wish to manufacture.

Teaching Kindergarten and  being a factory workshop operator is perfectly good, as they create the bedrock of civilization, they run real things unlike traders in front of a couple of screens with rolling & streaming numbers. Success has to decoupled from the essence of wealth creation, it has to be linked to happiness..thats what lives are all truly about!

There has been a turn in the dynamics of political modus operandi in India; powerful personality leadership cults are emerging which lead regional satraps and the national parties like the BJP and the Congress are struggling to project a definitive leader as the face of the party. In this era of the 24×7 media beast, a clear leader projection helps in cementing the position of the party at the battle of the ballot box. Mamata Banerjee; the single women anti communist crusader who brought down the left cooperative at writers building, ran a campaign which was presidential in nature, the entire story of change and hope weaved around the personality cult of Mamata Di.  Nitish Kumar, has emerged as the renaissance hero of modern day Bihar, changing the wild west perception of his state to that one on the highway to highness in the league of emerging states in India.  His re-election with a 2/3rd mandate was a result of his clean image and pro growth, secular credentials.

Madam J. Jayalalitha, the newly elected chief minister of tamil nadu, is also the supremo of her political outfit where the rest are in the shadows of her overwhelming persona. The ultimate Guru of Developmental politics in India is the ‘New Sardar’- Narendra Bhai Modi, who has built a fan following internationally, due to his ruthless leadership abilities and powerful oratorical skills.  Naveen Patnaik, the three term chief minister of Odisha state, runs a single man enterprise based on his clean image and pro growth policies.  There is a single strand weaving all of them, single man, grass root leaders and street warriors who built their mass base painstakingly whose heart is on local and regional issues.

The High Command culture in the Congress, is dynastic and pseudo monarchic in nature. Super popular leaders like Indira and Rajiv Gandhi as well as Soniaji and Rahulji are present, but the public perception is that they are aloof and not in touch with the ground realities on 2011 India. The top leadership of the congress is greatly talented and experienced, but none of them will be projected as the PM candidate. A YSR was a grassroots leader in Andhra Pradesh, who did a great deal of work, was unfortunately killed in an air crash. His Son quit the party, because his Father’s legacy was not given its due.

The Gen ‘Y’ needs clear signals regarding the leadership of the country. Clarity is the foundation of communication which is the basis of Leadership. The BJP has too many leaders, like too many cooks spoil the broth.

Will Rahulji be decalred as the PM candidate for 2014 or will Nitish lead the NDA? Only time will tell, for the exciting next episode of the series called ‘Life in India’