Towards Perfection

There is talent; there is plenty; there are financial, intellectual, emotional resources. There is also the call to go forth and embrace the beckoning future with open arms. But it has to be accompanied with the inventive and creative spirit. Something of one’s own has to emerge and put into it, into that future. Unfortunately, not much of that is happening. We are by and large still imitative. We are, even now after decades of Independence, working with the colonial mindset. Perhaps Macaulay did not imagine that the impact of his ‘education’ will be so far reaching. The most glaring lacunae we witness in our individual and national life are of discipline and perfection in work, lack of attention to details. We are great inventors of software, but our bank accounts come with faulty entries, our electricity bills have to be corrected by going to the departments, our telephone lines get disconnected because of the non-payment of bills which never reached us. See our roads, see our garbage littered all about, every few feet in cities like Pondicherry which boasts of a tourist destination. Our traffic is most erratic and accidents are taken as a part of life. There is hardly any work ethics, any work culture. Commitment is a rare commodity, and pursuit yet rarer. Countless are the woes which are of a minor nature, but they do pile up to show that the Power of Perfection has decided not to remain amongst us. The Gita speaks of skill in work but that is in the scripture and has not entered into our modern blood-streams. In that respect, there is something admirable in the western societies. That the material creation can be majestic and marvellous is the gift of Goddess Saraswati to them who are her votaries and which we are not.  No wonder, we do not receive her presents.

The call of the Beckoning Future

Narayan Murthy gives the call of the Beckoning Future: that is the beginning of the journey of life. Can that also be the beginning of journey of a nation? To a School of Business audience in the US Narayan Murthy has a tip to offer, a tip learnt from life-experience. He says: “I will begin with the importance of learning from experience. It is less important, I believe, where you start. It is more important how and what you learn. If the quality of learning is high, the development gradient is steep, and given time, you can find yourself in a previously unattainable place.” [A Better India A Better World] Success is without doubt always encouraging in an enterprise; but there has to be also capacity to learn from success instead of learning from failure. The true character lies in it. This is perhaps what makes Jim Collins from Good to Great great, that Good should never come in the way of unending progress, never lull us into complacency that would prevent us becoming Great. And yet what is Great? is there an end to it?

Perhaps the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull should illustrate it—that there is no heaven but a better world is found through perfection which lies not in measures and scales by which the rational-analytical-scientific mind goes, but in quality that can be felt and cognized by some kind of a perception of the subtle, bringing out the thing that it really is. There is a beyond to all we do; to strive for it is the ceaseless pursuit of perfection. To use Meredith’s description—it lends a yonder to all our longings. Here is one beautiful video-illustration of Perfection whose name is the inspiring Seagull:

The satisfaction of the bird is not in the sky in which it flies or with what speed it flies, but in the wonder of flight itself. The joy of a student is not in how many subjects he studies or what rank he gets in an examination; it is in the study itself. Therein the belief is also that he will get the reward in life in one way or the other, and there need not be any doubt about it. That is the ultimate for every kind of our occupation and the real satisfaction, the real feat, the triumph lies in realising it.

Such could be the most idealistic approach and the chances are that the practical, the down-to-earth world will simply pooh-pooh it, if not call it naïve and dismiss it. But such are the few who can give character to a society and help it in many direct and indirect ways to grow and prosper. If they are absent perhaps nothing might be availing to it, nothing might be said about it. In the meanwhile, however, let us have a look at a few things which somewhat seem to be encouraging to us

To be a Proud Gujarati

According to the 8 August 2008 report of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, the richest city in India is now Surat, ahead of  Bangalore and  Madras, with an average annual household income of Rs 0.45 million (over $11,000 per year).

80 per cent of all diamonds sold anywhere in the world are polished in Surat's 10,000 diamond units. They employ 700 000 people.

The only non-Jews in the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem diamond bourse are Gujjus.

Between 2004-5 and 2007-8 Surat's middle class doubled in size and its poor reduced by a third.

The fifth richest city in India is now Ahmedabad, ahead of Bombay and Delhi, and miles ahead of Calcutta.

The percentage of man-days lost in Gujarat due to labour unrest is 0.42 per cent, the lowest in India.

Of Gujarat’s 18,048 villages, 17,940 have electricity.

If we don’t mix up politics and economics then under Chief Minister Modi, the face of industrial Gujarat is changing.

The world's largest oil refinery is coming up in Jamnagar. Owned by Reliance, it already refines 660,000 barrels of oil a day and will double that this year.

Thirty per cent of India's cotton is grown in Gujarat, 40 per cent of India 's art-silk is manufactured in  Surat, employing 0.7 million people.

The world's third largest denim manufacturer is Ahmedabad's Arvind Mills.

A KPMG report says 40 per cent of India's pharmacy industry is based in Gujarat with companies like Torrent, Zydus Cadila, Alembic, Dishman and Sun Pharma.

The state of Gujarat's GDP has been growing at 12 per cent a year for the last 12 years, as fast as China's.

India's wealthiest man, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance, is Gujarati. Forbes says he is the world's fifth richest man, worth $43 billion. Azim Premji of Wipro, is Gujarati. He is the world's 21st richest man, worth $17 billion.

Ten of the 25 richest Indians are Gujarati.

Some of the best business communities in India—Parsis, Jains, Memons, Banias, Khojas and Bohras—speak Gujarati.

The two great leaders of the subcontinent, the Mahatma and the Quaid, were both Gujaratis from trading communities. One a Bania, the other a Khoja.

Gujaratis number 55 million, five per cent of India 's population living on six per cent of surface area, but hold 30 per cent of all Indian stock.

Gujaratis account for 16 per cent of all Indian exports and 17 per cent of GDP.

Towards Globalisation

Yet we must understand that this kind of prosperity does not have much respect in the business minds of people. It does not provide to anybody value investing, it does not underline economics in terms of business principles which are generators of wealth, of true finances. Our Gujarat seems to be still groping and fumbling of a developing society. Diamonds—yes, they provide employment but they do not bring growing money which can flow back in producing something else, something branching out of it, that which can act as a powering of the economic growth engine. Today we live in an extremely competitive world where the realities are far harsher than the satisfaction complacencies can provide. To a certain extent we still live in a protected environment that is unable to bear strong winds of the buffeting markets. Warren Buffet started with a $25 pinball machine and grew into the richest man on earth today. What is the secret behind it? Of course it is the man behind it who matters. But the system also matters. Would Buffet be successful if he were to work in the Indian environment? The straight answer would be “No”. Such individuals and such systems have organic relationships, and it is these which count.  What is the grade of industrial product we export,—it is that which is going to determine the worth of our home-earned wealth. The globalization that has arrived at our doorsteps cannot be told to walk away, ‘be gone’. As a matter of fact, we ought to have been a great partner in shaping and monitoring globalization that was on the way to countries that matter. It seems it did not matter to us during the first two decades of our independence. This should have happened at least forty years ago. Perhaps there were signs of it getting initiated during the time of Lal Bahadur Shastri as India’s second Prime Minister. But his premature death on 11 January 1966 due to heart-attack—we are made to believe it—scuttled the entire beginning. His death had initiated an era in the national life.

Of Bureaucracy, Controls, and Political Shades

“Lal Bahadur Shastri had been full of common sense,” writes Gurcharan Das. “He had come to feel that our elaborate system of controls had become heavy and self-perpetuating. For every control that failed, we needed two more to shore up the original one. In a complex, non-monolithic government that India had become [thanks to Nehru’s policies and rule] controls were causing delays, waste, and enormous harm. He thought it was time to loosen up. …” it was early in December 1965 that for the first time the word “liberalization” made an entry in the official thinking. But the whole process had to wait for twenty-five long years, when in 1992 the economic revolution started arriving in the Indian field. The cobwebs of the past had to swept and a change ushered in. This is what PV Narasimha Rao spoke after the swearing in ceremony of his cabinet in June 1991. The first thing that was necessary to do was to dismantle the notorious License Raj. That would amount to knocking off the bureaucrat from the scene, someone who was much patronised by the Nehru system. There were different types of entrenchments and issues involved all their complexities, with the human play of the lower in its vigorous contents.

Nehru after his visit to Russia during the freedom struggle, early in November 1927, brought socialistic ideas in social, commercial and government planning, and these became a part of his lifelong creed. He became more religious to them than to the country, with his soul now left at the country he had visited. He writes: “I turned inevitably with good will towards communism, for, whatever its faults, it was at least not hypocritical and not imperialistic. It was not a doctrinal adherence, as I did not know much about the fine points of communism. … These attracted me, as also the tremendous changes taking place in Russia.” He went there just for four days in connection with the tenth anniversary celebration of the October Revolution, but came as a changed man. That change lasted throughout; it is that change which cast a long shadow over the economic progress of independent India. He introduced the concept of mixed economy, with a strange and injurious mixture, or hybrid, of capitalism governed by the state machinery. Eventually it turned out to be a failure both of ideology and management. But the failure was entirely at the cost of the nation. The first casualty was export promotion. Its cause could be traced in setting up a massive inefficient monopolistic public sector. In order to protect it, there were controls and checks through bureaucratic management. Soon these led to trade unionism. The bane of mixed economy is well illustrated by performance of the Haldia state fertilizer plant. Here is an account presented by Gurcharan Das in his India Unbound:

Thousands of well-paid workers had lifted the bungalows for managers and nice flats for workers. There were nice road, bright lights, a school, a dispensary, and a hospital, even a subsidized store for the employees. The capital budget for the plant had paid for this middle-class dream. However, the factory never produced a kilo of fertilizer! And this went on for years. The cleaning cre kept the factory clean, the mechanics kept the machinery in good order, and the workshop supplied spare parts. The managers and workers came to work, and the personnel department marked attendance. Everyone was paid, including a bonus, and even overtime in some cases. However, they had no work because soon after the factory was built it was discovered that the company was unviable. If they had produced, they would have lost masses of money. It was cheaper not to produce. Yet they could not close down. Not only was it bad politics to close, the law did not permit it.

So, who is responsible for this irresponsible enterprise? the top policy-makers of course, and the political system, and the bureaucratic machinery. But the sadder part of it is the technological and engineering teams. Did they ever examine the viability of the project? Or they were just behaving like sheep? Or like courtiers in the palace of Moghul? Or they saw only that side of the bread which was buttered? It all sounds despicable. Could not have any journalist made a thorough technical scrutiny and come out boldly? Even if they all knew that it was not a viable proposition, they had no courage to speak out, none. And that was the kind of freedom we got. The colonial mindset was in full command of everything. Nehru was at the helm of affairs, and none would dare speak a blunt and frank word, give utterance to a technically honest view that would not please him. Nehru was perhaps a good leader for fighting against the British, fighting for the cause of Independence; but he was miserable in holding in his small and trembling hands the reins of the independent country. The regretful aspect of the chronicle is, India never developed an authentic free mind during that formative regime. It persisted. It persists. Where’s that freedom Tagore had cried for?

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where the words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert and of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action—

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

An example of that small manipulative mind’s persistence could be seen in the context of the Allahabad High Court finding in 1975. It pertains to the parliamentary election of Indira Gandhi, holding her guilty of violating the prescribed norms, she resorting to corrupt election practices. It was legally punishable, though at times a comparison is made of the Prime Minister being punished for “speeding in traffic”. Was the crime proportional enough to merit such a verdict? She had used “a government employee in her election and state machinery to put up rostrums and mikes during her campaign”. She had won the election by a hundred thousand votes, but this bit of malpractice was enough to nullify it. With the High Court verdict came in its quick wake the ignoble national Emergency. All the voices were gagged, even in private conversations on the telephones. Yes, it was the case of the Prime Minister held guilty for violating traffic rules, and she could not get away with it just because she was a Prime Minister of the country. Even assuming for a brief moment that there could have been an element of political malice towards her, the question is about the government employee. Why does he do that? do what he is not supposed to do? The answer is, the psyche of the employee has remained essentially the psyche of a servant of the colonial past. In any case, if Indira Gandhi was found guilty for using official machinery for private electoral purposes, would not the employee become punishable for lending himself to it? We have no idea what had happened to it legally, or in terms of official action asking for explanation regarding the matter. Or was it silenced during the Emergency?

Another generation did not avail,—rather had wasted,—the gifts of Independence. In the meanwhile, the world had gone miles and miles ahead of us. A new voice of China arose, it assuming a dominant economic and political role in all the international and diplomatic relationships. However, during the last two decades things have somewhat brightened, at least in some areas. Earlier we had success stories of Lal Bahadur Shastri loosening the Raj grip; C Subramanian the architect of Indian forestation drive; MS Swaminathan claiming the green revolution with high yielding variety of crops; Varghese Kurien the initiator of the white revolution making milk flow in every house; Sam Pitroda the development thinker and telecom inventor taking in a bullock-cart telephone to every village; G Venkataswamy the founder of Aravind  Eye Hospital devoted to eye-care with the motto to eradicate needless blindness. But now other windows have opened out; while many came to us, we have also contributed in their coming. The largest inspirational window for new economy and development is the three-hundred thousand Indians now living in the Silicon Valley. What started with the arrival of engineers in the Valley has now blossomed into they becoming CEOs. Half of the companies are run by them. It is also an avowal that knowledge is wealth.

India’s emerging success and the contrast

Today Information Technology has become the mantra of success, and there are many right reasons to look at things that way. It may not be a comprehensive phenomenon in the context of the national economic development, even as hard engineering and agricultural areas remain not in too happy a situation. If the criterion of export of sophisticated industrial products to developed countries is to be taken as a measure, then perhaps there is not much room for feeling happy about matters. This is the kind of export of our cultural arts which are mostly received by our own people who stay abroad; not much of it patronized by the people of that country. For instance, when our music or dance programmes are offered in the US, most of the attendees are the resident Indians in the US; very few Americans go for their performances. The success of the Indians in the US is summarized in terms of neo-globalisation: mastery over the English language, the capacity to generate dollars, and the skill in designing large and versatile Windows. If these are the defining features, then much needs to be said in terms of the country’s problems, in every field. How did India fare in the Olympics held last year in Beijing? The answer in one word is “miserably”, for the country and the resources of the kind we have. If we go by the total number of medals won, we have US with a tally of 110, China 100, Russia 72, Great Britain 47, and India way down with 3 out of a total of 958. That is more a failure than a success. That is a big commentary also, more so the competitive world in which we are living today, with the relentless force globalisation is exerting on everybody. Take another example, of science. India boasts of a very large scientific and technological manpower at her command, but hardly she ranks anywhere in the realm of science. Perhaps somewhere in the first ten, but in terms of science per se we will fail to claim even a few scientific achievements of which science itself would be proud. Since Independence not even one Jagadish Chandra Bose or CV Raman has come out from our laboratories. Narayan Murthy puts it as follows: “For the first time in the history of India, we have received global acclaim. And this has been in just one filed—software exports while what we have achieved is creditable, we are still at the very early stages of our marathon. If we have to fulfil the target that has been set for us, there are certain urgent initiatives that the country—the political leadership, bureaucracy, academia and the corporate leadership—will have to take up.” Thus if Information Technology has to reach the vast masses of the country, what is necessary are decisions by the political leaders. To discuss whether it is good or bad is waste of time, and one realizes it when one just starts using it. In the dynamics of the competitive business decisions have to be taken quickly and implemented.

This also gets linked up with education. Narayan Murthy says that the quality of education to be provided has to improve significantly. “This requires that we create competition by allowing private universities to come up and also inviting well-known educational institutions from abroad to establish a presence in India.” He is forthright and it is good he is; but it will be frowned upon immediately by our scientists turned into educational bureaucrats. The Raj that is prevailing in the realm of Education needs to be pulled down. There have to be different categories of education for different types of receptivity, for instance, there is no point in forcing mathematics on a student whose natural inclination is for painting or music; for his use whatever mathematics might be needed will be provided through those subjects. It is strange that such a basic thing of education is not recognized by these rule-makers and governors. In such fallacious formulations is the justification for the misconceived quota-system in our educational institutions. Two criteria might be immediately applied: the education should be good; the education should be productive. In the second category the compulsions of the modern age must be recognized, the competitive environment in which we live. In the first category it is the innate quality of the mind that must emerge. The power of independent thinking and going to the roots of the problem has to be strengthened if the student is to become tomorrow the leader of thought. It will define for itself the kind of questions it must set forth to solve. The depth of solution will depend upon the depth of thought that will pose the questions, identify the issues.

This is well summarized by the advice Narayan Murthy gave in his convocation address to the Indian Institute of Technology New Delhi students on 9 August 2001: “Seek opportunities in areas that are outside government control. That is where the opportunities lie and where merit will be recognized and rewarded. That is where quality jobs can be created in your quest to solve the problem of poverty.” But such a quest for solving the problem of poverty could be incidental, not as a targeted primary objective, but could be an outcome of a more fundamental approach in pursuing creative ways of wealth generation. According to the ancient Indian tradition wealth is vitta which is in the service of society’s welfare, not as a means of gratification but as a means by which the creative powers can enter into play of a wholesome living; it is indispensable to the fullness of the outer life. It is a power of expression of the spirit

On 13 April 2006 celebrating the occasion of Infosys’s Billion Dollar Day, Narayan Murthy exhorted his employs as follows: “… be original, daring, different, and unreasonable. Work hard, have good values, put the interest of the country in every deed of yours and make this country the best place in the world.”

The fallacy of “they will do it” has to be dissolved. When one begins to do things then there is hope for oneself. There is then hope also for the country.