How Good A leader Is Manmohan ?

In around a month, Manmohan Singh will reach the midpoint of his tenure as the Prime Minister. There will be assessments followed by bouquets and brickbats in equal measure. He has been successful in bringing down the communal temperature, sustaining the economic growth, forging a brave new foreign policy path, initiating some landmark acts like RTI, launching programmes like Bharat Nirman and the rural employment guarantee. He has alienated the urban educated sections because of the reservation policy, failed in convincing the left on several reform initiatives and not managed to make any headway on preventing terror.

But how good a leader is he? By common thinking and opinion polls, he is not a good leader. But going by research on leadership he is probably the best we ever had. The most influential theories on the personal characteristics of a leader have been by Plato, Warren Bennis and Jim Collins.

Plato propounded the concept of the ' philosopher king ‘. According to him the king should either be a wise man or a lover of wisdom. On this yardstick, India today has probably no politician better than Manmohan. And no past PM, barring Nehru comes close to him in knowledge and wisdom.

Warren Bennis emphasised the importance of self-knowledge and inner voice in becoming a leader. He also spoke about having vision, a broad education, curiosity, virtue and risk-taking as essential ingredients of a leader. It is difficult to assess any past PM on self-awareness and inner voice but amongst the other parameters aggregated, Manmohan scores more than any PM except Nehru. He however fails badly on risk-taking.

Jim Collins studied more than 1400 organisations over a thirty year period and arrived at the concept of 'level five' leadership. Level 5 leaders exhibit a paradoxical combination of personal humility and ferocious resolve. They are mostly shy but competent. Abraham Lincoln, possibly the greatest leader America has produced, was a typical level 5 leader. He was described as quiet, peaceful and shy by author Henry Adams. Level 5 leaders have always achieved more than the level 4 leader who is the charismatic and visionary type. Here again, Manmohan could do better on resolve but on the overall attribute he would rank higher than the earlier Indian PMs.

Many great leaders also develop an elaborate inner life due to hardships and traumas in their early years. Manmohan Singh grew up in poverty, battled against odds to do well in academics and then excelled as an economist. This broad experience of life in different facets makes him more complete as a human being than any of his predecessors.

The only dimensions where he falls short are risk-taking ability and resolve - definitely an outcome of his days as a bureaucrat. As a leader, he also has to operate more on instinct than on caution. Whenever he has risen beyond these limitations as in the nuclear pact with the US or the reforms as the finance minister, he has stood tall.

The Future Arrives Faster Than You Think

A friend has commissioned a project on "Futuristic Business Opportunities" with some ISB students and that set me thinking about predictions for the future. It is a difficult terrain and the world's greatest experts have fared badly in it. In 1990, John Naisbitt wrote 'Megatrends' and Alvin Toffler wrote 'Powershift'. In both, India features as a peace-loving, backward, democratic country which buys a lot of arms and has satellites. Neither could predict the arrival of India on the world stage. Both thought Japan will set the fashion and cultural trends of the future. China's emergence is suspected but not the scale of its achievements and growth.

Let us just look back at 1995 in India .Even ten years back, nobody would have thought that India would be an emerging superpower in 2005 . We cannot today manage without a cellphone and e-mail which barely existed then .The aspirational products for the upper-middle class were microwave ovens,compact music systems , 1000 cc cars and holidays in Bangkok. Today the aspirational lifesyle elements are Plasma TVs , 2.5 lit SUVs and holidays in Serengiti .The hottest job sectors were then in consumer goods sector. Today, it is sort of passe. Ten years back,the senior executives earned about Rs 8 to 10 lacs in a year. Today it has reached Rs 35 to Rs 50 lacs . There were no malls or multiplexes in the country and today any self-respecting one million population town has malls. There were no Indian CEOs of global companies or widely- known management gurus .The last decade has thrown up Rajat Gupta,Rana Talwar,Prahalad,Mohan Sawhney,Indra Nooyi and Vindi Banga etc. to the top echelons of corporate success.

The interesting thing about these movements is that practically none of the mainstream media was able to either spot or predict these changes. So the only possibility of predicting even for ten years is possibly to go through expert opinions in specialised journals or research papers . One megatrend in India has been that the it has closed the gap with the rest of the world in lifestyles. But in cultural trends it has Indianised itself more in line with many countries in the world. So today Bollywood movies excite the passions of even the snootiest in our cities. Hindi pop music has become acceptable in all circles.


Going by the present trends and overall global directions ; it seems positive that India, China, South Africa and Russia will start playing important roles in the world displacing France, Germany and Britain . The upper-middle class ,with the greater purchasing power of the rupee,will have actually a better lifestyle than westerners including having customised nature or heritage holidays and premium cars like Porsche 911 or Audi R8. The lower-middle class then will have a lifestyle which the middle class has now .

India will be amongst the principal players in auto componenets, healthcare and tourism besides IT . We will also see a dominant presence of Indians in Wall Street and international media houses in the next five years .

But certain things may not change - like the Congress and BJP squabbling over Ayodhya, India being at 117 in the FIFA rankings or Rekha dancing to a sensuous number .

What do We Eat Now?

The list of foods that we can eat is shrinking faster than an aspiring model's waistline. Even as early as twenty years back, we were able to eat several dishes with pleasure and without worrying that we were murdering ourselves.But now the list of items with dubious value is longer.

The first item on the list is milk. This was supposed to be the panacea of all food deficiencies. Dara singh drank two jugs of it everyday and so did the Gods. It was holy and healthy, affordable and nutritious. It had Calcium to make our bones strong and Protein for our growth. But today its parentage is under severe question. We are told that no animal drinks milk of anybody other than of its mother and so cow or goat milk cannot be suitable for us. It has growth hormones more suited for calves than humans. We are also told that in large parts of the world like China and Africa, they do not drink milk at all and yet are flourishing. The propaganda juggernaut has become so powerful that Maneka Gandhi could even work out an alternative career on this and so could numerous talk-show hosts and anti-milk doctors.

The second unfortunate item on the list is eggs. They were supposed to be repositories of protein and wholesome. They were eaten every day during the breakfast by our erstwhile rulers. So as children we were given eggs-poached, fried, boiled or in a pudding. The super manager Russi Mody used to have sixteen-egg breakfasts. But now eggs remind us more of cholesterol that protein. You start feeling vaguely uneasy in the heart when you take even a two-egg omelette. The upper limit of taking eggs is three a week. So out go all the Spanish omelettes, noodles with eggs or even Moghalai chicken which come with boiled eggs.

The third pariah is the humble bread. White bread , made of refined flour, was an all-time food. It came as toasted bread in breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and as recommended diet when we had fever. Today refined flour is the cause of troubles in pancreas,heart and kidneys !

The other nutritious food like ghee and red meat have been so much calumnised that they are almost treated like nuclear waste.

Fruits and vegetables were the last of the protected species which no body could touch. But the long arm of medical research has even not left them in peace. Apparently,twenty different kinds of pesticides go into the production of a fruit or vegetable now. So an apple a day was expected to keep the doctor away and I started eating apples everyday. But apple has pesticides in seeds and its core besides the skin. So the only way to eat the fruit is to wash it in warm salt water for thirty minutes, take away its core and then chomp it with a prayer that no more pesticides are left. Grapes are supposed to be positively lethal with pesticides oozing out of every pore. I am told that the fox in the story does not even jump for the grapes because they are carcinogenic.

The green you see on a ladies finger is actually a coating of a dye. The brinjals and spinach are more chemical than vegetable. Rice and potatoes are fattening. Fish could have the deadly lead in it. All processed foods are unhealthy-so out go Maggi and cornflakes or even jam.

I wonder how long will the restaurant boom last with all these frightening truths staring them in the face.

Lalu Prasad Turns Into Jack Welch

I have been tracking Laloo (not Lalu as he calls himself now) for a long time. I got fascinated by this rustic man with tremendous wit and humour ten years back. I also knew he was the smartest operator in Indian politics - anybody who can install his wife, with a primary education , as the chief minister has to be really a smart cookie. He also gave a voice to the downtrodden.

But the lower castes in Bihar under his patronage started doing what the upper castes had indulged in-plunder, terror and exploitation. The state treasury was shamelessly looted by Laloo and his cronies. The state went back in time. But Laloo survived through his buffoonery and political savvy.

I had to follow his motorcade once on a drive from Gaya to Patna. Laloo had just lost the lok sabha elections and you expected him to be down. But he was irrepressible on the route. The route itself was lined with his supporters on both sides - thousands of emaciated, bare torsoed men and children cheered him as he went by. I had to follow his motorcade as nobody in Bihar can overtake him. Laloo stopped in four places where he opened the door of the car, put his feet up and had samosas and jalebis offered by the locals. He got down in a few places to give im promptu speeches.One interaction went like this.

Village Youth : We do not have jobs. Can you help us? You did not give us jobs when in power ?

Laloo:What have you studied? Do you speak English? Do you know computers ?

Village Youth: (now befuddled and embarrassed) No.

Laloo: The government at the centre now is not allowing me to expand employment in Bihar. They allow only multinational companies who want candidates with knowledge of English and computers.

The entire village then starts cursing the centre.


Laloo has a unique way to use humour and twisted logic to set his own agenda in a conversation.

He is now employing the same tactics in portraying himself as the great turnaround specialist of railways. Anyone with a modicum of experience in running an organisation knows, that it takes much more than allowing a bureaucrat a free hand (which is all he seems to have done) to achieve any sort of improvement. For an organisation of the size, complexity and mindset of the railways obviously it would take enormous effort to make any dents.

The railways have started delivering results possibly because of a) initiatives already in place before b) economy growing c) factors in the transport sector d)some changes brought about by Laloo's team e) other environmental drivers.

But the media is portraying him as a management genius.He has been given the entire credit for the performance.This is absurd.I also suspect management schools are playing to the gallery in this.

Nobody who has mismanged a state badly for so long can overnight become a genius like this. This is simply not human nature.