THE year 2010 is not far enough away to justify a long-term vision, such as Vision 2020 which President APJ Abdul Kalam has authored. Equally, the time horizon between now and 2010 will take us beyond the five year term of the current United Progressive Alliance government. One cannot, therefore, view this period only through the lens of stated governmental goals and objectives, i.e. the Common Minimum Programme.

The year 2000 was globally celebrated as the first year of the new millennium. Five years have gone by since then. For India, the events of the past five years have been significant, at times tumultuous and at other times momentous. The events and images that we witnessed during the last five years have included:

Images of India (2000-2005)

March 2000: President Bill Clinton’s visit to India, the first by a U.S. President in two decades.

May 2000: Birth of India’s one billionth citizen.

January 2001: Earthquake in Gujarat killing 30,000 people.

April 2001: Successful launch of India’s GSLV propelling India into satellite-launchers club of five.

July 2001: Failed Agra Summit between Prime Minister Vajpayee and Pakistan President Musharraf.

September 2001: Lifting of U.S. sanctions against India and Pakistan (imposed after ’98 nuclear tests).

December 2001: Terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament.

December 2001: Indian and Pakistani troop formation along border prompting fears of a war.

February 2002: Gujarat carnage, the worst inter-religious killing in a decade.

July 2002: Election of scientist APJ Abdul Kalam as President.

August 2003: Two simultaneous bomb blasts in Mumbai killing 50 (Gateway to India; Zaveri Bazaar).

May 2004: General election; Congress coalition with Manmohan Singh as PM assumes office.

December 2004: Tsunami natural disaster killing over 300,000 people worldwide (12,405 in India).

April 2005: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to India; principles set for border dispute settlement.

April 2005: Commencement of Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service between India and Pakistan.

July 2005: Signing of Indo-US nuclear cooperation deal offering civilian nuclear technology access.

July 2005: Mumbai floods prompted by the most severe rainfall in a hundred years killing 1,000 persons.

October 2005: Kashmir earthquake killing approximately 1,500 people in the Indian state of J&K.

October 2005: Simultaneous terrorist bombings in crowded Delhi marketplaces killing 62.

Yet, India remains not so very different a place today in 2005 than it was back in 2000. The events of the last five years have not fundamentally altered the socio-economic and political fabric of the country as a whole. The trend during this period (2000-05) has not taken this nation into an entirely different plane or trajectory.

One reads, sees and hears a great deal more about India in the international media today than has ever been the norm in the past. The column-inches and airtime devoted to coverage of the Indian economy and polity globally have risen. While this is certainly not a flawless barometer, it serves as a better indicator of India being at the cusp of future sustained growth than our operator-driven equity capital markets which have been on an untamed upswing.

 

The year 2010 is closer than we think. What will India look like in 2010? How different an India will it be from the India of today? As a young Indian, I feel our images of India in 2010 will be shaped, in great measure, by how the answers to four important questions evolve over the next five years:

1. Will this ageing nation be able to elect a younger political leadership?

2. Can our state and government focus principally on the happiness of the ‘common man’?

3. Have we ensured that during the next five years India’s economic growth is unhindered and accelerated?

4. Can this country execute on long-term strategies rather than just near-term fire-fighting exercises?

Younger Leadership for an Ageing Nation? I do not mean to state the obvious. By the year 2010, however, all of us will be five years older. According to United Nations estimates, by 2010 India’s median age, estimated today in 2005 at 24.3 years, will rise to 25.6 years. In fact, India’s median age has risen steadily since 1970 and is expected to continue its upward trajectory – according to some estimates until well beyond the middle of this century. While India, as a nation, will have aged over the next five years and beyond, one hopes that our political leadership will grow younger, more agile and vigorous. This is bound to have far-reaching consequences for the Indian political landscape.

It is well-established and widely accepted that there are two political anchors today around which coalition governments can be cobbled together in India. The table above shows a plausible list of the four senior-most present-day leaders in both anchor parties. By 2010, only one of the aforementioned eight major political leaders, who have all participated in governing the country over the past several years, will be under 65 years of age, the ‘normal retirement age’ as defined by the US Congress for social security purposes in that country.

The writing is on the wall with regard to a generational shift in the BJP by 2010. The Vajpayee-Advani duo will no longer be at the helm of that party five years from now. The jury is still out on who could possibly grow into that role in the BJP. The Congress too must see some turnover in its senior ranks by 2010. However, the near universal ageing of the party’s entire senior leadership rung shall not have taken place, unlike in the BJP. Smaller national and regional parties too are witnessing generational shifts with the passing of the baton. The period between now and 2010 is likely to herald a partial dismantling of the gerontocracy that India has evolved into during the post Rajiv Gandhi era.

A younger leadership in India will, by default, have the ability to think and act beyond a limited five year time horizon. The potential upside of such a shift is considerable.

 

Aam Aadmi Ko Kya Mila? The key question for the poor of India is: Will the India of 2010 be a more livable place? The ‘Aam Aadmi’ slogan today is slowly catching up with the popularity of ‘India Shining’ in 2003. However, the concrete results of this gradual shift will begin to become apparent only by 2010.

Lord William Beveridge, born in India to an ICS father and an educationist mother, was the author of the Beveridge Report (The Social Insurance and Allied Services Report) of 1942 in Britain. He had famously said: ‘The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.’ An economist and social reformer, Beveridge conceptualized and articulated the fundamentals of the Labour government’s legislation for social reform which served too as the outline of the welfare state in post-war Britain. Full employment in a free society was the cornerstone of Beveridge’s belief system. During the year gone by, the Government of India has appeared to embrace Lord Beveridge’s thought process.

One of India’s northern neighbours, Bhutan, sets an example for us. In 1972, Bhutan, led by King Jigme Singye Wangchuck upon his ascent to the throne, had designed and introduced the concept of Gross National Happiness (‘GNH’) as the objective of all economic development and good governance of the nation. What is crucial about this concept is not the debate surrounding whether and how GNH should be defined or quantified. For India, getting mired in the theory of the technical term is uninteresting and unimportant. What is critical, however, is the directional tilt and perspective that this provides a process as complex as governance of a democracy of 1.1 billion people. The ability to perceive life, both in the rural and urban spheres, as it exists through the eyes of millions of common folk is a skill that our political leadership needs to focus on and refine.

 

Closer to home, no school child in India who has ever read a textbook published by the National Council for Educational Research and Training can be oblivious to ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s talisman’. Gandhiji’s talisman figures prominently on their inside covers: ‘Whenever you are in doubt or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test: Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away.’

For a twelve year old, as I was when I first read this quote, the question of arousing one’s conscience through observing the misery around one was somewhat novel. Perhaps I was too young then to understand the import of Gandhi’s words. However, even today in 2005, more than a half century after Gandhi’s assassination, his words provide us with a roadmap.

The UPA government has enacted into law the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005. By 2008-09, the Government of India proposes to write an annual check of approximately US$9 billion (Rs 40,000 crore) for this programme which will constitute 1% of India’s projected GDP. The proposed phased implementation of the act suggests that by 2010 one full year of the nationwide programme rollout would have been covered. By 2010 the effects and benefits of this piece of legislation should have become visible. The act seeks to deal with unemployment in this country and has its specific focus on the rural domain. The employment dividend that will accrue from this is contingent upon the effective implementation of the act and by tactically plugging holes in an otherwise leaky delivery system. This is the first significant step down the path of India ultimately emerging as a welfare state. No other developing nation of scale has attempted to undertake such a risk and adventure.

 

Is the Hindu Rate of Growth Dead and Buried? India’s economic growth trajectory since independence has been characterized by economists broadly as having taken place in three distinct phases: 1950/51 - 1979/80 Hindu Rate of Growth; 1980/81 - 1990/91 Initial Reforms; 1991/92 to date Economic Liberalization.

Each of these periods have had their own Real GDP Compounded Annual Growth Rates (‘CAGRs’) which ranged from approximately 3% to 6%. With the advent of each phase, India’s growth trajectory shifted to a new, higher plane.

The most relevant reference period for India’s projected growth over the coming five years is the most recent of the three phases – economic liberalization 1991/92 - 2004/05, which witnessed a 6.09% growth rate. The table below provides both historical data pertaining to this period as well as forecasts for the coming five years up to 2010 by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Many times in the past India’s critics have written us off. We had once been written off as a colony. We had then been written off by Paul Ehrlich as being an overpopulated basket case. We had later been written off as being on the losing side during the Cold War as a friend of the Soviets. Most recently, we were written off in 1991 during our balance of payment and liquidity crises. Each time India has proven its critics wrong.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently stated in Parliament that the combined fiscal deficit of the Indian central government and state governments is 10% of GDP and ‘among the highest in the world’. As we begin to mortgage our anticipated future economic growth over the next five years for ‘good expenditure’ such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee, we must also commit to taking the difficult steps needed to sustain and hasten this growth.

 

India needs, once again, to exceed expectations by beating macroeconomic estimates for the level of real GDP growth that this country should experience between now and 2010. A synopsis of this well-known formula, among other points, includes: reduction of fiscal deficit at the central and state government levels; reform of labour laws and productivity; investment in infrastructure; and reform of the judiciary.

Each of these is a difficult decision which will be accompanied by punishing levels of execution risk. They require courage of convictions and the ability to sacrifice the immediate term for the long-term. India has a better chance with these over the coming five years, given the practitioner’s sophistication in economics that is to be found in our top leadership.

 

Can India Shift Gears Out of Fire-fighting Mode? The business of governing a country our size has layers of complexity that go well above and beyond those required for managing a large business in the corporate sector, whether in India or abroad. In fact, the analogy of a nation’s CEO itself should be suspect as it is misleading. The title of Chief Executive which President Gen. Pervez Musharraf held in Pakistan from 12 October 1999 to 23 November 2002 is not a bit tenable in the context of India. Luckily, leaving aside our pink sheets, this reference has failed to gain currency in India.

However, there is one analogy from the world of business which warrants examination in the sphere of governance, namely the Long-Term Incentive Plan. This refers to the grant of shares to any eligible employee of a company, the final vesting of which is subject to continued employment with the company and satisfaction of a performance condition. This compensation instrument is specifically designed to increase performance-pay correlation over the long-term and to align incentives of individuals with those of the organization itself over time.

Political travesties and natural disasters sap a very substantial percentage of real-time mindshare and energy of Indian governments. The proliferation of both print and electronic media makes today’s India the most crowded media market in the world. The media has contributed to magnifying the devastation and immediacy of situations raising expectation levels to never-before-seen heights. Valuable time is lost in the newfound and unhealthy media induced need to articulate and communicate damage control measures as opposed to the time spent to implement them. Both in the aftermath of the Jharkhand constitutional crisis and the Mumbai floods, far too many people were seen on television in Indian TV news network studios who should perhaps have been involved in disaster management by being members of damage control teams in the field.

 

Is there an answer in India for the overwhelming sense of helplessness and despair that a critical mass of such circumstances triggers? Can greater governance bandwidth be deployed for longer-term measures and concrete action rather than be consumed by reacting to immediate term complaining? Can we provide cures for casteism, corruption, communalism, population explosion, environmental degradation and AIDS?

India as a nation has systems and delivery mechanisms which, for better or for worse, do function, albeit occasionally, haltingly and imperfectly, as far as short term deliverables and deadlines are concerned. Equally, given our history as a planned economy, long-term conceptual thinking is on-going both within and outside the government. Anticipating problems and ideating on potential solutions, with an emphasis on long-term silver bullets, ‘armchair-ism’, is an area of national strength. However, a void appears to exist where teambuilding for and implementation of long-term plans is concerned.

Simply put, today’s problems weigh so heavily on those running the government that the potentially bigger problems of tomorrow are left largely unacknowledged and unaddressed. This is an area of great systemic weakness in India. Our leaders are older than they ought to be. Our citizenry, also our greatest asset, is young. A severe and visible disconnect exists between the separate time horizons that each of these two groups are focused on and invested in. Therein lies the problem. Indians have been abysmal at following up on and implementing plans that impact the distant future.

 

Effective long-term execution is a source of competitive disadvantage for India. That is where Rajiv Gandhi was so uniquely different from other leaders of his generation and later. Given fourteen years of hindsight since his assassination, we can see with clarity his futuristic action-orientation. His successors have been unable to carry that tradition forward. This is why the Aam Aadmi in India, more than the establishment, recall him with such affection and nostalgia. If India is to leapfrog into the millennium we live in, we need to be pro-active in demonstrating that political and organizational capital is being invested in the domain of future-oriented implementation.

I see India becoming by 2010:

* The most populous democracy governed by young, modern, idealistic and innovative leaders.

* Home to the largest number of the world’s poor with an emerging social security construct.

* The world’s fastest growing economy administered by a democratic coalition government.

* A major nation where long-term problem solving has outpaced short-term quick fixes.