Empower politicians to make a better India!

It is commonplace for us to complain about poor governance in India.  Projects are not completed in time, promises are not kept, benefits do not reach beneficiaries.

I believe the solution for improving this poor state of governance is in empowering our elected representatives and expanding their number.  I realize that this might be quite contrary to the prevailing (fashionable) mindset of disgust towards the incumbent politicians.


I believe that the key cause of inefficiency and ineffectiveness of governance is the fact that essentially nobody is responsible for good governance.  Let me elaborate why:

Our first reaction towards poor governance (failed projects, sustenance of corruption, etc.) is to hold our elected representatives responsible.  But the reality is that they hardly have any power.  Even Narendra Modi, with all his supposedly dictatorial mgmt style, cannot choose his team.  He must work with the same bunch of IAS, IFS, GAS, etc. officers that Gujarat has been bestowed with (by a body that reports neither to him nor to us the people).  He cannot fire them; he cannot hire them; he cannot penalize or reward them with real performance incentives - he just has the limited ability of transferring them and maybe threatening them with pathetic assignments or dummy cases.  He does not even have the ability to choose his ministers in charge of various departments - the finance minister must be an MLA popular in some constituency, while even a Nobel laureate in Economics is disbarred from being appointed!

The team given to ministers and the CM has lifetime job security.  They will not even face any penalty for performing badly - in fact, they can indirectly threaten the minister to lose his department (and constituency) by choosing to ignore his directives.  These "cadres" themselves form a power center, protecting each other from other layers, while within their layers, create a merit-less hierarchy.  Seniority and authority must be given through age and time spent in service, and not on basis of effectiveness or service delivered.

It is not that these cadres have any authority either.  Even the seemingly all-powerful IAS officers are forced to work with a team of much older and often motivation-less deputies, who are appointed entirely without his say, and also enjoy a lifelong job guarantee.  Very often, the best an officer can do is insult or humiliate his subordinates, hoping (in vain) that  maybe that the perceived fear might motivate his team, but his team is too smart to fall for that.

The ensuing result is that anyone in the chain can stop an initiative from succeeding, a project from completing.  So the best our helpless-yet-responsible politicians can do is make some money at it while hearing their constituents' curses.  We force them to make promises that they can't possibly keep, and them blame them when the inevitable happens.  We do not give them authority, we do not pay them decently, we despise them and blame them for things beyond their control, and then we expect them to be honest and magically effective - are we that unrealistic and stupid?


Another reason for poor governance is the way authority is distributed.  The city of Gandhinagar got a Municipal Corporation recently, but this corporation has hardly any authority to serve people - they cannot enact local laws, cannot spend for public welfare beyond a tight budget supported by meager taxes, cannot improve police security, cannot promote industries.  How can this body be considered the authority over Gandhinagar?  No wonder we never bother to remember who our councilor is!

In fact, given the deadlocked system, how can we even expect those councilors to do anything in our interest at all?  Think of it, what motivation can these people possibly have?


I feel particularly disappointed at this situation because it has a simple solution, which we fail to follow - a solution proven and sustained over centuries at other countries, like the US:

The solution expects us to recognize the fact that we are a democratic nation.  By definition, being a democracy implies that we must govern ourselves.  We (through our representatives) must have complete direct authority to define our policies and priorities.  We cannot be taken for a ride by a select few that passed a UPSC/GPSC examination.  In fact, we must have authority to elect all senior officers - in the US, not just lawmakers, but even judges, public attorneys, police chiefs, heads of several departments, etc. are directly elected.

Hence the first step is to increase the range of positions that require getting elected to.  Note that this need not be costly - these elections can easily be consolidated with others at fixed intervals by setting a chain of replacements.  The US, over the past 200+ years, has not once required an emergency election of Congress or the President.

Thereafter, we must focus all executive authority to one Chief Executive.  This CEO must be able to choose his/her team, ways of managing the team, ways of reporting, ways of managing projects and responsibilities, and so on.  We must ensure that the CEO gets all the necessary flexibility and authority required to successfully fulfill the role we entrusted him/her.  With this CEO in place, we are no longer victims of lack of accountability.

Next, we must set up systems to ensure that the CEO doesn't take us for a ride, say like Indira Gandhi did, or Narendra Modi might as some fear.  We must maintain a set of basic guidelines and principles that our CEO cannot violate, and cannot modify without our direct and wholehearted consent.  This set is what the "constitution" is supposed to offer.  We must also set up checks to ensure that our CEO chooses appropriate people as senior colleagues - the way the board may have a say in appointing CFOs and EVPs and Presidents, an independently elected board (aka "legislature") (and not a politically appointed governor) must approve the CEO's appointments.

And finally, let us keep it our own business to determine the laws and objectives that the CEO should enforce and attain - the way shareholders elect a board to set the direction for the CEO, we should appoint this independent legislature.

At lower and more local levels, let us again set up similar structures, like say a council of directly-elected representatives that decide priorities for the city, and a CEO mayor that executes those priorities.  Let us hold the board responsible if it charts bad priorities, and let us hold the CEO responsible if he/she fails to achieve the targets.

At the top few levels, we can maintain a decent critical body, like the shadow cabinet in the UK, or simply the opposition in the legislature, to continually monitor the role of the CEO and point out flaws that might go unnoticed.  In today's age of information technology, the media can play that role even better than the opposition.


The system I have proposed has been proven to work and sustain.  It will increase our faith in our representatives, because now they will be empowered to actually represent us.  It will help our executives do their jobs, because they will not remain bound by rules (or appointees) that nobody really wanted in place.

Those of you who have bothered to read this write-up entirely: I ask you why we cannot or should not switch to the model I have suggested, and if you agree with me, suggest how we can manage this transition.

Hope to have your inputs!

Greatness

It's only by seeking simplicity and service, and by shunning all pretensions of greatness, that we can achieve true greatness and lasting satisfaction.

We often think that money, fame, power will deliver success and happiness, and we keep chasing these, always unsatisfied and lusting for more. Hardly do we realize that not one of the great people that we admire from history - be it Gandhiji, Einstein, Lincoln, Tagore, anyone - looked for such kinds of success. Yet they are quite alive and matter to us even today. Even if Bill Gates or Tata get into history textbooks, it will be not for their wealth, but their creations. Why just history, even our fictional heroes - Superman to Singham - are admired for their service, not their self-centered achievements, like making a big house or a hefty portfolio.

Let us pause in this stupid race and reflect if we have chosen the right road to the right destination, and correct ourselves if we're just running after mirages and imitating the wrong models.

New Year Resolution: Be important!

Happy new year, folks!  It's once again that time of the year when we make resolutions, with full confidence that we are not going to follow any of those through... ;)  Just kidding!  I hope you are better at pursuing resolutions than I am, cuz I have one resolution to suggest today, in case you might want to take it up.

The resolution I propose is: "Be important".  Kinda catchy, isn't it?  Let me explain:

I keep feeling that most of us tend to ignore, and therefore fail to use, the wonderful gift of getting a life as a human being.  We just try to survive, spending away the precious 70-80 years of our lives in our routine chores.  We learn in order to earn, we earn in order to maintain our family (people who will also learn / earn), and by the time we think we've learnt and earned enough, we're done with our quality time on earth.  We are no different than ants and pigeons and dogs, who also live lives just around their daily food and instantaneous pleasures / pains.

I think this is a pretty pathetic waste of the opportunity we've been given: to enjoy life as humans.  We have been given the awesome power to change the world by using our brains.  We know that we will find great pleasure in bringing about that change and seeing people happier, yet we ignore/forget that.  We justify not doing this with our limitations of time and money.  I see this especially in case of NRIs and professionals: despite their better abilities and financial position, they spend their entire lives in the same old cycle.  It's so pathetic that we don't find time to do what we are made to do, what will give us the most happiness - immediately and in the long run.

So, friends, resolve to discover and use the human potential inside yourself.  Get up and change the world around you!

You'll have opportunities to make a difference almost everywhere you look, I'm sure. Guide and influence someone's career decision.  Change someone's way of thinking.  Bring education within reach of someone who can't afford it.  Make a product or launch a service that serves an unfulfilled need, or raises our standard of living, even if by a teeny weeny bit.  Find ways to utilize hidden or unused potential in people, say housewives and senior citizens.  Train people to deserve employment.  Agitate to bring about a change in a law.  Spread awareness about some good health practices.  Help your friends make money in the stock market.  Build houses.  Solve a family feud.  If nothing else, just find time to sit and listen to people who only want your attention once in a while.

Be someone who matters.  Don't be yet another ant or pigeon, whose presence or absence will make no difference to the world.  Touch and uplift the lives of people around you.  Be someone who made the world a richer place.  It will make you feel important, one of the feelings humans crave most for, right since infancy.  And you will earn lots of good wishes, which I consider as the main raw material for "luck".  Most of all, it will give you sustainable satisfaction, for you will be living a meaningful life.

Our days and years are too few and too precious to waste away in daily crises and efforts to survive.  Let us resolve to use them to make a difference to the world around us.

Once again, my best wishes for a fun-filled yet meaningful year ahead!

What do we really want in life?

What do we really want in life?

Now that's one FAQ without a single clear answer, isn't it?

Nope, I don't even claim to have the answer for you.  But I wish to share my thoughts here, and hope to know yours, and probably offer a single answer applicable to all.  And let me modify the question - what should we really want in life?

The most likely object people seem to be seeking is wealth.  At times people don't acknowledge it openly, but you'll find that money and material assets are the most popular objectives.  But that doesn't make sense to me.  I've hardly ever seen anyone satisfied upon having achieved this objective.  Firstly, rarely does anyone achieve his financial objective, cuz it keeps moving.  And then, even as he crosses his original targets, his discontentment remains the same, if not increases.  This is because we seek to be richer (than X, Y, Z), not rich.  It's a relative target, not absolute.  And as we upgrade ourselves to financially richer social circles, we find our new friends to be at our own or higher level, and obviously we again aren't rich enough.  As a peon toils hard to become a clerk and rise within his social circles of peons, he realizes that his new world is full of clerks, and he's hardly ahead of them.  I don't think we consciously think this way, but it seems the obvious explanation to the behaviour of many of us.

Satisfaction with wealth also hardly seems to give any satisfaction in life.  It doesn't assure that our kids will stay with us as we grow old.  It doesn't ensure the longevity of our marriage or even life.  It doesn't give us the social importance we crave for.

Well, maybe then a happy family is what we're looking for?  I guess having a warm and caring family surely keeps us happy, but it expects very little ongoing action or maintenance.  As intellectual beings, we need to keep doing something.  If a happy family is our end objective, I think we'll feel pretty incomplete or blank soon after we reach that level.

Social respect, or importance, or fame, is also something many crave for.  We seek attention from the day we were born.  Even rich people seek to get noticed by building and showing off weird-looking skyscraper homes, or naming universities after themselves.  Gangsters are also probably just fulfilling their internal desperation for some importance.  Politicians, after amassing enough wealth for tens of generations, still seek power, for power gives them the feeling of importance.  Some social workers do stupid things to stay in the limelight even after their causes have succeeded or crashed, because they're addicted to getting attention.

I am not sure if importance or attention will give us satisfaction.  It is addictive, for sure, but having it seems to cause more desperation than contentment.  And as I see in people who I think as successful - like Ratan Tata, or Peter Drucker, or Dr. Patt - they shun attention so that they can enjoy life more.  Their sense of importance comes from within only.

I think what we really should seek is sustained happiness.  I think this one is the winner.  This is actually the primary objective - it is for happiness that most seek wealth or fame or power.  Yet I don't think we realize that this is our real objective, because to achieve these superficial objectives, we compromise happiness very easily.  We easily give up the pleasure of listening to the sweet songs of birds or the coos of a sweet child or the smile of a customer, so that we can attend to professional priorities.  We do not realize how a kaka sitting outside his hut in a remote village can be happier than us, without having any iPad or laptop or even electricity!

So how can we achieve sustained happiness?  I believe we can do so by seeking happiness of others.  There is no pleasure greater than that found in making others smile.  Ramola teacher and Fr. Hector and Dr. Patt may not be as rich and famous as Mukesh Ambani, but they have inculcated knowledge and character in countless students.  Peter Drucker and Stephen Covey offered ways to be more effective, and win together by empowering and teaming with others.  Ratan Tata and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs delivered products that changed, elevated, our lives.  Interestingly, most of these received fame and importance, though they never sought it, still don't.  They enjoy seeing the effect of their work in people's lives.  They enjoy being in sync with their natural compass or conscience.

I therefore believe that we will find long-lasting satisfaction and happiness in life only if we make it our life's objective to see others happier.  Small acts of thoughtfulness and kindness and generosity, pleasant surprises to our friends and family, can lift our spirits every day, as our conscience gives us a thumbs up.  People who want more than a live-by-the-day approach can identify noble causes they believe in, and make that their career.  That may be building educational products for children, or researching effective management theories, or fighting the green house effect, or finding the cure to cancer - there are countless options.  Some professions have contributions built-in - doctors save our lives and health, pharmacists find cures to illnesses, civil engineers and architects build magnificent structures to serve our future needs, musicians create tunes to please our senses.  In fact, if we remain conscious about it, we can redirect almost any professional career towards making a positive difference in the lives of the people around us.

I am more confident than ever that people seeking others' happiness will be the most successful of all.  I hope you're one of those people!

Weekends & Productivity

My latest management experiment at Peach is the two-day weekend.

I have always wondered how people in the US and other developed countries, despite working just five days a week, deliver amazing output, at very predictable speeds.  I do realize that better education, superior management, different social traditions, etc. may be more influential in bringing about this efficiency; however, I have a feeling that a two-day weekend also plays a good role in improving productivity.  And, in fact, I feel that a two-day weekend is more necessary here in India than elsewhere, given our cultural tendencies.

I believe a weekend is supposed to be a break for us from the daily work routine.  The break should give us time to relax, reflect, and recharge ourselves for the next week.

Now I guess a typical professional here uses a one-day weekend to contribute at home (which is obviously tough on weekdays given exhausting work hours and the daily commute), spending time with family, buying groceries, eating out, repairing breakdowns in the house.  Add to that our countless social events - marriages, birthdays, engagements ("ring ceremonies"), katha, mundan, besna, what not...  In four months of the year, hardly a weekend goes by without a marriage to attend (btw today I have to attend two).  Now, a weekend is also the only opportunity we have to meet friends, cuz they're also lost in their careers.

Many of us manage to squeeze these priorities in a Sunday, but at a high cost - I find people more exhausted on Mondays (that's when I have maximum absences - we call it "Monday fever") than even on Saturdays.  Forget about getting relaxed and recharged for a new week.  Forget about reflecting on the week, and introspecting how we can do better, or learning something new.  Nope, it only adds to our exhaustion.

My hypothesis is that the two-day weekend more than doubles the effectiveness of a weekend.  And we deliver better output in a five-day week than in a six-day week (assuming, of course, that people are sincere).

I believe so because the two-day weekend is clearly more than sufficient to handle family priorities, social occasions, and fun plans.  We get so much time that we're forced to relax or think up work.  And that is the type of time we need for learning, enriching ourselves, and planning ahead.  Even an hour of sitting on the swing doing nothing, or a lazy afternoon nap, recharges us, as it erases the exhaustion of the previous week from our minds.

Work is also unlikely to suffer because people come refreshed on Monday, well-prepared for the week ahead.  Sincere professionals have time to simulate their priorities before they come.  As that they had enough time to handle personal and family priorities in the two-day weekend, they can focus on work without getting distracted.

I have initiated two-day weekends (on even Saturdays) at Peach, and intend to observe the difference in productivity in my own self and in my colleagues during the odd and even weeks.  This was the first such weekend, and I personally feel very rejuvenated, and am looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow.  I hope that more of us feel the same way....

Return to Innocence

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine shared her concern that maybe she's too innocent for the world.  Someone at work had warned her that it's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and someone might just make her a scapegoat if she trusts everyone, and she started wondering in what ways might people cheat her.

That warning might sound like common sense to us.  But I feel actually disturbed to realize that we find sense in being skeptical and distrusting people.

Actually, we must realize that this distrust is probably the worst feeling a human can have.  This distrust has killed millions in the past century alone - Stalin with his paranoia of even his own partymen, Hitler with Jews, and Mao with every intellectual in China.  It is not only stupid, but quite dangerous and destructive to distrust.  And it is quite contrary to our own natural instinct.

I think we were designed to be innocent, right from birth.  Babies do not know doubt.  They do not seem to worry who might hurt them, and go to anyone who radiates love and entertains them.  Not many babies end up getting cheated and hurt, do they?  We all know that babies mean no harm to us and have no hidden agenda to screw us.  Their innocent coos and smiles can only make us happy.  So our conscience prevents us from even thinking of hurting them.

We, foolish adults, ask them to unlearn this innocence, which keeps them happy and even protects them.  And then we teach them that the world is a nasty place and they'd be fools to continue trusting people.  

I strongly believe that we will not go wrong if we choose to lead lives of innocence.  Though this might take some effort initially.

Given that we're adults and not cute babies, there is a decent chance that someone may try to screw us, and their conscience might not try hard enough to stop them at first.  But that is when we should have the wisdom and maturity to tell them what they did was wrong, forgive them for it (infinite times if needed), and then trust them again.

Faith in God is also something that can help us maintain innocence.  First, God (as per most religions) has awesome abilities, including inspiring our thoughts, helping us through difficult times (generally cuz it's he who creates them for some purpose), etc..  So if someone screws us, it's just part of some plan, and we should take it easy.  Another way of looking at it is that God programmed us with innocence when we entered the world, so innocence is what we were meant to have.  Sure, we try to format that out, but his programming of our conscience at least tends to sustain longer.  We need to have faith that he maintains the same conscience in the people around us; nobody is intrinsically mean.  We need to have faith that he means well, and so will inspire only the right thoughts in people, so long as we follow our conscience and always intend well.

It may take a while for people to see the baby-ish innocence in us.  But when we keep trusting them and keep trying to do the right things, they will love us and respect us and care for us.  They will feel good and confident about themselves because we trusted them.  They will feel a sense of responsibility as they realize that we depend on them.  In process, we are strengthening their conscience, and tomorrow, we might even end up inspiring them to become innocent again.

As you can see, innocence demands some effort and a lot of character.  But it will make us feel good.  It will make the people we trust feel good.  And it will make the world around us beautiful in a sustainable way.

So let us resolve to love and trust people around us, like babies do.  Let's resolve to be innocent again!

:)

Rising in love

Now that's not a topic you expected in this blog, is it?

Well, I am in love with love.  And by love, I am not referring to the love for family and friends and pets.  I mean very much the love that most of the best films of Bollywood and Hollywood are all about, the love of Notting Hill and Love Actually and Dil To Pagal Hai. 

Love is the most powerful feeling we can feel.  It energizes us to change the world, and more importantly, change our own selves.  It is something the richest and most powerful person will plead for and feel desperate without.  It is something the most mature person will act foolishly for, and still be happy about.  It is simple, it is obvious, yet it is impossible to explain to someone who has never felt it.

The point I wish to make today to you, reader, is - enjoy this feeling, make the most out of it, don't shy away from it.  Allow the force of love for your girlfriend or boyfriend or spouse to change you.  Allow it to shape you into a decent, caring, thoughtful being.  If you feel like pampering the one you love, don't hesitate, put in all your creativity and effort to make him/her smile.  Don't put checks on yourself, don't evaluate his/her reactions or analyze their feelings, just enjoy doing your part.

Indeed, there are chances of misunderstanding love for simple sexual attraction or desperation to choose a mate.  Well, there is a clear way to identify love - the feeling should intensely motivate you to become a better person, strengthen your character & integrity, sharpen your talents.  If it drives you to lie and do things your conscience bites you about, you're on the wrong track - it isn't love, or it's misguided love.  Love should make you rise.  It should make you do better in every aspect of life - it will have plenty of positive side effects, be warned...

I am convinced that love is a feeling that is truly divine.  I believe so because it is beyond our control - we cannot fake or simulate the feeling, it just happens to us.  Because it is plainly impossible to ignore and forget, no matter how hard we try.  And because it is something that your conscience doesn't disagree with, even if your brain might.

So don't miss out on this lovely feeling, when it comes for you.  Don't give up on it, no matter how hard you think it will be to materialize it.  Yes, remember to apply the test of "rising" or "falling" to check if you are actually in love, when you start having this feeling.

And finally, to those of you who believe you're in love - with your bf/gf, with your spouse (or someone else's), remember that your love story doesn't end in marriage or a break-up.  You retain the privilege and joy of loving much beyond that; all your life.  Don't let your daily crises de-sensitize you from this divine feeling.  Always remain in love with love!

I <3 <3  ;)