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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.
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