The real foundation of Progressive India…
During my recent visit to the US, I started reading the book “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. The book is indeed outstanding. Without any hesitation I would highly recommend it to everyone who wants to understand what it is going to take to survive in the new “flat” world. In no uncertain terms Friedman has clearly stated that not only individuals and Companies but also countries need to sit up and take note of the changing world if they have to survive in the new flat and complex world.
One of the important factors that he has researched in his book is National leadership. He writes
“Venture capitalist John Doeer once remarked to me “You talk to the leadership in China and they are all Engineers and they get what is going on immediately. The Americans don’t because they are all lawyers”. Added Bill Gates “When you meet Chinese politicians, they are all scientist and engineers. You can have a numeric discussion with them- you are never discussing “give me a one liner to embarrass my political rivals”. You are meeting with an intelligent bureaucracy”. WOW!!
Compare that now with our MPs and MLAs, whom we can vote to power. Barring a few top officials (thankfully) such as our present PM and President, I think we will pretty much struggle to identify highly educated politicians. Because we believe that politics is not for the educated. Just imaging - If your child were to grow up to become an engineer and tell you that he wants to contest the local public election, you would probably look at him as if you had seen a ghost. However there is need to change this way of thinking because unless we have the right people making decisions of National interest we would not progress to our potential.
In 1961 American President Kennedy had his vision for America – “To put a man on the moon”.
For us today the vision is - “To put every Indian boy and girl through school”. If we can do that we will do a great service to our country. So, will this happen overnight? Obviously, “NO”. Kennedy’s vision of putting a man on the moon had a 10 year timeframe. We can expect our vision to take even longer.
If you are reading this email in India you can probably contribute by doing something. For one, if we can spare some funds we could help a rural Indian student to gain access to education in cities. You might have heard of the “Vidyarthi Sahayyak Samiti” an institution (Pune Phone: 25533631) that helps rural students to take higher education in Pune and people like you and me can for a small amount of money “adopt” a student and help his / her education under the earn and learn scheme. Even if each one of us does a small act as this it will go a long way in helping this vision.
When education is spread far and wide and is accessible to all, we can expect that the educated would contest the elections and the educated would vote and that would be a huge change. Let us please not call this a dream. Let us call this a vision. On this Independence Day, let us commit to helping the education of at least one Indian child each year…
Have a great week and a great independence day.
Regards,
Sudhanshu Pandit.
Monday, August 15, 2005.
