Just consider how Indians today can successfully carry out enormously complicated and gigantic tasks like the rescue efforts in Uttarakhand, scheduling and conduct of the IPL in another country at short notice, and, above all, holding General Elections for over 800 million people in 9 phases, etc. And, yet, when it comes to simple tasks like keeping the roads clean or being orderly in queues, the challenge seems insurmountable. Why do crises bring out the best in Indians, while everyday routine tasks can’t get done properly?
Further, even the poorest Indians will keep the cleanest homes from the inside, but be completely unfazed about chaos and filth outside the front door. The rich are exactly the same. It is not as though the return from the effort is high as in the IPL; conducting the General Elections or rescuing the victims of a disaster are by and large thankless tasks, often involving the loss of precious lives.
Is it because the Indian mind responds to complicated challenges more than simple ones? It is being surmised that the increasing number of Indians becoming CEOs of multi-national corporations is because they have a greater understanding of diversity owing to the complexities of their country, and so function better in a varied globalised environment. Once the best clerks in the world thanks to Macaulay’s education system, Indians are now bored with repetitive and routine tasks. In a manner of speaking, they have entered the next phase in evolutionary development where coping with boredom becomes as much a challenge as survival.
It follows, therefore, that anybody seeking to get anything done will have to put forward any task as an interesting challenge, even more than a lucrative one. Ask the parents from middle-class backgrounds that have sons and daughters chucking up secure, well-paying jobs to pursue their dreams or creative interests, and one would discover how far the ‘malaise’ has spread.
Leaders today will thus have to ‘package’ tasks in innovative ways if they wish to harness the potential of the new Indian. Monetary compensation will no longer do. Clever ways will have to be found to get people to behave in more socially responsible ways so that the best use can be made of the resources at hand. There will have to be balance maintained between supply and demand side economics.
The academics seem to have woken up to the fact that India is the world’s fourth largest economy if calculated in a certain purchase parity way. Although, in the totality and in per capita terms, it does not amount to much, but it is a fact that the nation is one of the biggest buyers in the world, whether it is defence equipment, oil, gold or cheap consumer items from China. At least in these four sectors, Indians pool their resources together in a massive way – why can’t other sectors be similarly ‘crowd-funded’ so that critical levels are reached to trigger an emotional and creative response from the people? Perhaps everything has to be scaled up to excite the people’s imagination.
The socialist model attempts to trim everything down to the basic, functional level – the way George Fernandes as Railway Minister had introduced one class of travel for almost all categories of Indians. It turned the Railways into a massive loss making concern, and also took the pleasure out of travelling. On the other hand, where there is a dream being sold along with the services, there is more holistic involvement of human nature. This is much like a housing project being touted as a ‘golf’ destination – no matter if ninety-five percent of the residents never play even a single round their entire lives. If Dehradun, for instance, has to get its roads in good condition, they have to be going somewhere interesting!
