Walk the talk

Dear Friend:

You are reading this either by accident, or because you have interest on India. In either case, read on. You have all the right to carry a different opinion than I have. You have all the right to criticize me to the bone. You have all the right to post your comments right below my thoughts to communicate your thoughts.

Freedom of speech is a right. Actively practiced, at least in theory, in all modern democracies. Recently I heard from a friend, who lived for three long interesting years in Singapore, that it has different definition for the freedoms. Thought and action actively controlled by the state is borderline dictatorship. If that is what is being practiced, it is a wrong practice.

Human Resources has become a nice name in the corporate world. Similar to many other small words made to convey a packaged pre-defined aura of a meaning. Leaders have a huge responsibility when it comes to managing human resources. They wield the power to direct, restrain, channelize, activate, put into action, the humans who listen to them. To quote a famous comic strip, "With great power comes great responsibility". Leaders are sometimes created. Sometimes by accident. Sometimes through hard work. Some times through bloody wars, and sometimes thorough an electoral process. In a democratic society, the leaders chosen through a fiercely contested election almost always have the Himalayan task of leading more of opposers than supporters. Winning over the opposers is of as much importance as leading those who balloted one to power. A positive and a negative combined forms zero. For each negative that is converted to a positive, the opposing forces decreases by two. So a hard question to never to be ignored for a new leader is, how to win over the opposition?.

Yes, you are absolutely right. That is not an easy task. We are not looking for easy solutions here are we?. If there were a Silver Bullet, I'd have given up my first born for the cause. But there exists none (Neither the Silver Bullet, nor my first born).

A new leader can start by realizing that, he or she has the responsibility to lead every one who is not a leader in his circle to a better state. That is the simple definition for what a leader is supposed to do. The leader needs every helping hand from his circle to achieve the common goals. Any actions that will increase the negative charge should be avoided. Every action should convert as much negative charge in the circle to positive charge. Every action must be evaluated prior and post to plan and and measure.

The Human resource is the most important tool a new Leader has. A leader always leads humans. Even with technology advancing so much we do not see any leaders running around setting the goals and objectives of a bunch of Computers, do we?. Lucky us, I must say!!. Time is the constraint many a new leaders has. There is a fixed term, and then uncertainty beyond. The results are important, and the resources to start with are few. End of the term the new leader gets his report card which lists the number of things he or she achieved, not the number of things he or she 'thought of achieving'. I say, do not worry about it. There are umpteen things in this world which you do not have control over. You are not going to be the last leader either. If the number of negative charges you converted to positive are large enough, either you or someone who thinks and acts very similar to you is going to succeed you. Leader, apart from the charisma and oratory skills has a defined set of characteristics. The styles may be different; but the objectives are not.

India needs leaders; India needs young leaders. It is time, IIM's concentrate an elective on political leadership. A coherent approach and study on successful leadership styles, coupled with the correct management techniques will go a long way in channelizing our tremendous human capital.

I grew up in an era where family planning advertisements adorned the highway sides. Now, suddenly both India and China are waking up and realizing that population is a capital. Channelized thought and action will take India a long way ahead.

If you have traveled by Train through India you will see a lot of uninhabited land. Hundreds of kilometers of stretches in most of the states, where the only human being you may come across will be a small line of women balancing pots of water on their head walking back to some destination you cannot see. Those are the places where our human capital needs to be distributed on. Lets us have a clear strategy to identify places to build new cities. Let us identify the local resource availability at these places. Let us pick the Industries, and crops for those places. Let us mine out all those rock lands for construction work, Let us explore our land and the sea to get to our much needed natural resources.

A booming stock market and a booming real estate market in the cities does not mean anything in the long run. What matters is what is the GDP. Gross Domestic Production. How much we manufacture in our factories and how much we reap out of our agricultural land.

A thriving economy cannot sustain growth without providing the much needed infrastructure. The growth of China is so different from the boom in India. China is decades ahead of India in that, it is now starting to show the results of a well thought out plan to utilize its human resources by providing the necessary infrastructure. But it is not a race with China that we are on. Our objective is to get Indians to a better state by channelizing the potent energy.

I hope I have made my introductory post to outline my thoughts at a macro level. I believe India needs young leaders who could strategically build infrastructure and channelize the human capital for a better India. My future posts will elaborate this outline.

Stay tuned, and Jai Hind!!