Wanted: a mission

Revitalisation should be the goal for the nation’s leadership

What are the key tasks before the nation’s leaders today? There may be about 400 million opinions on this subject, roughly equal to the number of adults in the country. However, most adults who have a basic understanding of the way nations, institutions, corporations and other human communities function would agree that key tasks can be usually defined under a few headings. These could vary from creative or competitive excellence to institution building, from creating missionary excellence to rejuvenation and so on. In any case, the objective is to help identify the key result areas for the nation’s leaders.

At the risk of sounding simplistic I would submit that the goal before the country’s leadership is that of revitalisation. We are a nation without a mission. Corruption and dishonesty are not even issues any more. Pakistan is united by its ‘hate India’ campaign, or the ‘Free Kashmir’ slogan. Israel is united by the Arab threat and a Jewish homeland that they have built and the integrity of which must be protected. We Indians are each on his own; some pursue personal glory, others overnight riches. Some are united by the mission of building a temple, and others by the cry to pull down another! There is no single, secular, national goal that we can identify with.

The first task, therefore, for the leadership is to give the nation a mission, one that motivates people to perform heroic tasks. Not since John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr have there been many national leaders who have mobilised millions like they did. Rajiv Gandhi, with his youthful looks and cherubic face, almost did. But he blew it! We need the likes of a Kemal Ataturk, who laid the foundation for Turkey’s rejuvenation. He deIslamised the nation, scrapped the Arabic script in favour of the Roman, brought women into the nation’s mainstream, and heralded sweeping reforms.

The second priority is to set a few time- bound tasks to establish credibility. Tasks that people can participate in and can identify with. Tasks that would comfort people that the old is being cleansed and the new is being embraced. Both are essential, the mission as well as the task, because a mission without a task is a pipedream and a task without a mission is mere drudgery.

The circumstances could not be more appropriate. On the one hand the previous Congress government had already started the liberalisation process that has put achievement of aspirations within the reach of many more than before. Conditions also are conducive to pursuing the strategy of decentralisation and empowerment. On the other hand, the need for cleanliness in public life and social development is recognised like never before. Grassroots awareness of rights and aspirations is at an all-time high. Leadership must help “break the web of imprisoning circumstances that engender defeatism”. Here, the key to success will be participation — by the social sector, the corporate sector, the youth and all the other stake-holders who have a vested interest in the nation’s progress. This is the age of coalitions, not only of political parties, but also of all those who share a common purpose and a value system.

But this is where the cookie may crumble! How can we have a shared value system when corruption and dishonesty are not even issues. Bofors and the urea scam may serve as political ammunition and as cocktail snacks in Vasant Vihar, Malabar Hill, Poes Garden and Alipore, but do they make our blood boil? What does make our blood boil is the daily dose of humiliation and corruption we are subjected to by the likes of the telephone department, the electricity linesman, the DDA, the RTO, the traffic police or the registrar of documents. Everyday we demean ourselves, bludgeon into immobility the smallest quiver of conscience that may still live and go about our chores resignedly.

Our new leadership can mobilise 400 million people to root out this evil at least at the daily level. Let the politicians make crores from Bofors, urea, etc, but let them prevent the common man from becoming a petty criminal daily. Given the clarion call, millions will join in and we may have the most constructive revolution ever! As Dr Hans Bockler, one of the architects of the new Germany, said: “If men are to be free from the old and the outmoded, it can only happen if they set themselves new goals and place humanity and moral values in the forefront. When men change, the structure of society changes, and when the structure of society changes, men change.”

But there will be obstacles. Complacent industrialists used to operating in a protected market will resist the entry of new competitors. Politicians will not want to dilute their own power. The bureaucracy will have a problem for every solution. And last, but the most lethal, from the common man who has become so inured to bribery and corruption that the thought of delay or failure for the sake of a little speed money will quickly trigger his reflex to give and live. But the leader has the goodwill of the vast majority of the country. However, this goodwill is short lived, if you don’t deliver. Fifty years after Independence we must decide what kind of India we want to rebuild. The new broom must sweep clean, and soon. Otherwise it will be swept out itself, unknown, unsung, unwept.

Nripjit Singh (Noni) Chawla

This article originally appeared in Business India - 12 August 1996