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BOOK
REVIEW
Dialogue for development
Remaking India. One
Country, One Destiny by Arun Maira
Reviewed by Chanakya Sen
One may
be forgiven for harboring misgivings about a
management consultant's book on  accelerating India's
economic development. What could Arun Maira of the
Boston Consulting Group offer other than the
beatnik mumbo-jumbo of management literature?
Surely, efficiency in a corporation is no
prototype for development of a country of India's
dimensions. By the time 10 pages pass, though,
Maira makes you sit up and notice. He is not
drawing the typical arcane business school
diagrams and pyramids. His unique perspective that
inclusive development depends on serious dialogue
is a welcome intervention into the stale discourse
on India's economic progress.
The stunning
upset in India's April 2004 general elections
indicated the groundswell for inclusive
development spread out to rural areas and poorer
sections of society. "If the benefits of change do
not reach many, people will get dissatisfied again
and throw out the incumbents." (p 16) Maira's
belief is that the country needs to unlearn
prevalent ideas and adopt new processes of
participative learning to include the average
Indian in development parleys.
The broader
the diversity of stakeholders, the greater is the
imperative for skills in aligning their actions. A
war on poverty in India depends on a new model of
leadership that works without strong authority but
blends varied interests. India has millions of
leaders motivated by deeper aspirations in
villages, schools, factory floors and market
places. "The key to make change happen is
motivation rather than analysis and plans." (p 50)
Genuine leaders set high standards, expect good
performance from all, give the tools workers need
and never accept anything less than the best.
Pride in work and pursuit of excellence can
overcome India's record of shoddiness and
ordinariness.
India would benefit from
productive dialogue among leaders representing
different income levels, occupations and political
affiliations to create a shared vision. It is most
essential to reach alignment on a few fundamental
objectives and principles. Without heartfelt
commitment, vision is reduced to mere decoration.
Therein lies the necessity of participation in
crafting a developed India.
The "second
generation" of economic reforms relate to labor
laws, subsidies and prices of utilities, issues
that impact a much larger set of stakeholders than
the first round of reforms. Leaders are those who
shape the whole in ways that fulfill the
aspirations of the individual parts. Charismatic
and authoritarian leaders ignore participatory
processes and end up with half baked solutions.
Twenty first century leaders should stop
considering India's huge population a liability
and instead turn given factors into comparative
advantages.
Indian business persons have
to play a role more complex than that of companies
in developed countries in facilitating inclusive
development. They should "compassionately connect
with conditions in the communities around them"
and reverse the post-1989 mantra that the business
of business is merely business. India Inc should
look beyond core business activities and investor
interests, and be responsive to society's broader
needs of health, education, environment, water,
infrastructure and governance. Failure to reach a
contract between business and society leads to
breakdown of trust, loss of reputation and heavy
financial costs.
In the 1960s, business
was not considered a respectful vocation in India,
mainly because industrialists failed to win the
confidence of the masses. The House of Tatas stood
apart in the public mind for tangibly building
modern India. Maira joined the conglomerate in
1964 due to its impeccable reputation of telling
the truth, caring for the ecology, respecting
common property and placing national goals above
personal greed (the converse of Enron-led greed).
JRD Tata's values, anathema to economists like
Milton Friedman, simultaneously kept two goals in
sight - "creation of not merely personal wealth,
but wealth for society". (p 134) The Tatas were
one of the first Indian companies to stand up to
foreign competition in the 1980s, beating back the
Japanese in the light commercial vehicles sector.
Their social contributions - institutes of higher
research and education - did not fetter market
competitiveness.
Two principal indicators
of the health of an economy preferred by
businesses are stock market indices and rankings
of foreign rating agencies. Such lenses blind
companies to remain "out of touch and not know
what is really going on in the country". (p 126)
Holistic indices that integrate quantitatively
measurable and qualitatively perceptible factors
are lacking due to a "conceptual emergency". Many
are unwilling to question the reigning orthodoxy
for fear of being branded grass chewers.
Maira asks, "When would the liberalization
of the Indian economy benefit the poor? How long
should they be patient? And the political question
is: how long would they?" (p 64) Strategically,
India's polity cannot hold its course of
privatization without sharing benefits with the
poor. A new format of business organization in
which the poor are engaged in larger numbers as
free agents, not employees, is one way out. A
humane conversion of monolithic corporations into
"networked enterprises" can raise the purchasing
power of India's poor. "People are the only
appreciating assets in an organization. They
should be managed accordingly and not as
components of technical processes designed by
engineers." (p 166)
Resistance to change
can be surmounted "when there is a deeper and
higher aspiration". (p 82) Vision, directly
connected with people's personal aspirations,
generates the torque for change and achievement.
The Japanese people's strong desire to make their
country the global frontrunner in industry led to
the Total Quality Management miracle under Dr
Kaoru Ishikawa.
Transformations thrive on
new theories and principles, not just new
routines. Toyota's Production System dissolved
hitherto insoluble dilemmas in manufacturing
management. The best way to learn is in the line
of fire. "The apprehension of failing creates
emotional and cognitive tension and spurs
willingness to consider new ways." (p 96) Leaders
use crises as crucibles to discover new strengths
whereas others get crushed. India has to evolve an
innovative approach suited to its peculiarities.
"This is not a problem of economics but of
societal learning and of leadership." (p 151)
Growth in India must "splash around"
incomes and jobs because there may not be time for
it to trickle down. To sustain its lead in
knowledge-based services, policymakers must
concentrate on India's professional and vocational
educational systems. Rural roads,
telecommunications and entrepreneurship have to be
stimulated, recognizing the special skills of
women. Urban improvement schemes have to be sui
generis, since Chinese or Singaporean-style
imposed models are unsuitable to Indian democracy.
Maira advocates a "middle-out" as opposed to a
"top-down" approach.
Both in India and in
the US, Maira decries "dumbing down of
communication amongst leaders and the masses". (p
185) A more efficacious method than "downloading
communication" is dialogue to learn, not debate to
win. In prevailing debates, representatives of
people from various walks of life are barely
granted the right to participate. The amount of
high fidelity communication in such conversations
is meagre, although democracy implies listening to
the needs and wants of all. India must worry about
"the disease of poor communications because its
society is more vulnerable to fragmentation". (p
192) In the absence of concerted action in this
field, India will continue to stagger from "more
information and less wisdom, much entertainment
with less content". (p 197)
Simplistic
calls for increased "political will" to carry out
reforms are naive. Maira strongly recommends
another class of WMD - Ways of Mass Dialogue - to
synchronize multifarious interests. This dialogue
must not be trapped within the limitations of the
cacophonic parliamentary channels. Such a process
was successfully experimented with in South Africa
in the early 1990s, when groups from academia,
business and politics congregated to discuss a
multiracial future.
The current growth
trajectory of Western economies demands an
ever-ascending influx of knowledge workers and
skilled professionals, presenting a historical
opportunity for India. Remote services
(outsourcing) and importation of customers
(medical tourism, educational services, leisure
tourism etc) are two impressive income earners
that India can prioritize. Alternative approaches
to centralized planning have to be devised, as
predictability and control techniques succeed only
in closed systems. Models that obtain commitment,
not enforce compliance, are the keys to resolving
the Indian economy's endemic flaws.
Assembled from Maira's columns published
in the Economic Times, this volume sells the
vision of a super capitalist India where narrow
competition is subordinated to a new humanism. It
offers novel ways of thinking about trite
development paradigms. Never before has the canker
of India's economic woes been summarized as the
lack of empathetic listening and talking.
Remaking India. One Country, One
Destiny by Arun Maira. Response Books, New
Delhi, October 2004. ISBN: 0-7619-3274-7. Price
US$7, 236 pages.
(Copyright 2005 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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