Asked
recently what was the reason India
was still a developing country after nearly 72 years of independence and
obvious progress in some fields, an elderly gentleman, who had been a member of
an all-India service for all but the first two of the Indian republic's first
forty years, replied that our DNA was defective. Well, the fault does not lie
in our DNA but in the culture we have developed and have adopted over the last
couple of centuries. Barring for some honourable exceptions, it is a culture of
dishonesty, self-delusion, indiscipline, irresponsibility, and
under-performance. If India
is to really do justice to the talent of a billion plus Indians and the
opportunities they are having, the present negative culture will have to be
replaced by the culture of four positives - Honesty, Excellence,
Law-abidingness, and Responsibility. What follows is an explanation, in some
detail, of each of these four positives.
#1 Honesty
Honesty here is an all-encompassing
term for honesty of purpose, truthfulness, transparency, fairness, sense of
justice, intellectual integrity, courage of conviction, pecuniary honesty, accuracy,
walking the talk, delivery as per promise, and, above all, being honest to
oneself. Why honesty is much more than an ethical and moral nicety and being of
immense practical value is absolutely essential for nation-building can be seen
in the following.
Research, including
scientific, is basically a pursuit of truth and thrives in an atmosphere of
honesty where results even if negating the very hypothesis originally sought to
be proved are valued. That is how science progresses, inventions and
innovations are made possible.
Trust is built on honesty
and competence. For the same level of competence, higher honesty gives rise to
higher trust; and in a high trust society, transaction costs are less, which
results in faster economic progress.
If we are at point A and
are honest about it, only then we can correctly chart out our journey to point
B, the destination. Any self-delusion about the starting point or the
destination will make the journey unsuccessful. Hence, the importance of honest
measurements!
#2 Excellence
Excellence, which literally
is excelling yourself in some desirable activity of mind or body, goes much
beyond competence. In fact, our take on the excellence vs. competence debate is
- While competence helps you keep your customers, excellence delights them. For
the more mathematically inclined, competence is necessary for excellence but
not sufficient. However, for our purpose, we will also commend excellence as a
blanket term for punctuality (yes, that's how this all has to begin), high
quality, willingness and capacity to keep on learning, continuous improvement,
doing it right the first time (it goes by the counter-intuitive acronym DRIFT),
challenging others and accepting challenges ourselves in pushing the envelope,
using best practices as a launching pad for inventing next practices, and
making success a habit and building upon it. Excellence is its own reward, it
gives us a sense of real achievement, also that of pride which provides
intrinsic motivation for striving for bigger successes, even for reaching out for
the stars.
We all have spent many
years in academic institutions as students and many of us, if we were
fortunate, would have had some teachers who not only were very well-equipped academically
but they also helped us discover and nourished our spirit of enquiry, our sense
of wonderment, and launched us on a long journey of seeking knowledge. They
were excellent teachers!
#3 Law-abidingness
In a law-abiding society,
one in which the rule of law prevails Lord Denning's immortal words "Be
you ever so high, the law is above you" ring true. There, the perceived
inconvenience or harshness of laws is not an acceptable plea for not obeying
them; so long as they are there, they have to be obeyed. There is, however, a
due process through which unnecessary or outdated laws can be amended or
abrogated altogether.
The notion that the law puts
fetters on us is clearly wrong. In fact, following the law in its letter and
spirit liberates us. Most of the creative work in arts and sciences has been
done in nations where people, by and large, abide by the law. Many of our young
people who were considered mediocre in India start flourishing when they
emigrate to the West or even Singapore, which are generally law-abiding
societies.
#4 Responsibility
Responsibility is going
above and beyond the call of duty to do something for others on one's own
initiative, not needing any supervision. A sense of virtual ownership gives
rise to it. Since feeling responsible is voluntary, RESPONSIBILITY IS ONLY
THEIRS WHO BELIEVE IT IS THEIRS. No one else can make you feel responsible, of
course, they can hold you accountable for your acts of commission and omission.
Someone assuming
responsibility of their friends will always help them in taking the right path,
the one feeling responsible for the environment will help keep the surroundings
clean, minimise air pollution, prevent and stop abuse and wastage of water, and
propagate the philosophy of reduce, reuse, and recycle. An individual or a
small group can assume the responsibility of the entire society or even nation.