We the Leaders: My foray into writing a book

 

Leadership is a fascinating subject. Partly because it is part of our everyday usage but it is not easy to explain it, partly because it has so many facets. This is one of the most written about topics in management literature. Academics, top global CEOs. Journalists - everyone had a stab at it.  

I was also transfixed by the idea of understanding it. I still am. The world has seen the leadership of Gandhi, also of Churchill; Jobs, and also of Eric Schmidt. Their styles within even a narrow domain of human endeavour could not be more different.

Who is a leader? What is leadership? How do you become a leader? How much more effective can you be by becoming a good leader? Is it action or is it inspiration? Is leadership contingent or does it have permanent values? What role does culture play in leadership style? Is a Japanese leader different from a British one? Can you transfer leadership skills from a monastery to a commercial organisation?

The leadership puzzle has countless questions. My book, published as an introduction to leadership drew from my experience as a leader of a commercial entity and my readings. 

I thought it would be more appealing to have a short book but the regret I have now is I should have put more on each topic.

But then there is always a tomorrow.

( The book is available on Amazon)

The Divergent Paths of India and Pakistan

 It has been 75 years since both the countries became independent. Pakistan was carved out of British India in 1947. It consisted of East and West Pakistan. In 1971, East Pakistan separated and became Bangladesh.

Pakistan and India today stand at two very different points in their trajectories and it is interesting to see which points of departure triggered these diverse paths.

The most critical difference right at birth was the way the core identity was defined. India decided to be a secular republic whereas Pakistan decided to become an Islamic country. This meant religion was to be given primacy in the formulation of any policy. Many parts of religion are incompatible with modern democratic values and Pakistan like any other country has not been able to resolve these conflicts. This became more of a problem after the Islamic radicalisation process started by Zia Ul Haque. 

Gandhi died in January 1948. Patel died in 1950. But from the top echelons of Congress, a stellar set of leaders from Nehru, Maulana Azad, and Rajgopalchari were there to see the country through the initial tumultuous years. Nehru continued till 1964 and gave a sound democratic framework and built several institutions in the fledgeling republic. In Pakistan, Jinnah was ailing and died in 1948. The first Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan was shot dead in 1951. After that, the political leaders did not have that stature and the first decade after independence witnessed a lot of turbulence ending with military rule.   

The Indian founding fathers were foresighted enough to calibrate the power of armed forces. The army retained its stranglehold over power in Pakistan and over time this has led to several military coups and regimes disrupting the democratic fabric.

The basic ethos of the Indian constitution was diversity. It tried to accommodate languages, religions, and cultures. The Pakistan establishment dominated by the Urdu-speaking West Pakistan elites tried to impose their language and culture on the very different Bengali East Pakistan. This led to resentment finally culminating in the liberation of Bangladesh. This weakened the country significantly not only militarily and strategically but also psychologically. The country could not then recover from a vicious cycle of events after that. 

Today India has one of the largest economies in the world, a vaunted technological workforce, and macroeconomic stability. Pakistan is still struggling with debt and supplying basic amenities like electricity and water.

It is sad but shows how history can be cruel if people are not alert and allow their leaders to choose self-aggrandising paths over progressive thinking. 

 

The Nature of Power

 

There is a popular saying that goes like this: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

A quick run through the 20th century's violence is enough to prove that. 

Hitler died in April 1945. The allied forces had captured Germany, and a few embattled Japanese regiments were waging a feeble war. The conclusion was foretold. Yet the US establishment decided to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This killed and wounded 250 thousands people forever. These were not forces fighting the war - they were innocent people who had no direct role in the war. 

General Franco killed thousands of Spaniards who opposed him. Stalin sent millions to Siberia and got many eliminated. The Pol Pot regime in Cambodia killed fellow citizens.Many Chinese lost their lives in the Cultural Revolution.

Most of us meet many types of human beings including political leaders and it is truly impossible to find someone at a personal level who wants to indulge in genocide. But the same leaders become power-hungry and do not mind ordering mass eliminations.

It is only power and nothing else that transforms ordinary people into cruel despots. It changes their psyche. They rationalise all their inhuman actions with glib explanations. They distance their real selves from the tragedy that their actions bring. They lose their soul. Power is the evil that captures their humanity. 

India's Lunar Triumph

 

The Chandrayaan -3  mission was a testament to the prowess of ISRO. Also a glowing tribute to Indian science and technology. 

We tend to relate to the moon in various ways, through stories, myths or even as a symbol of beauty and that is why it catches the public imagination even more. But ISRO has a long series of accomplishments. Over 60 odd years, ISRO has completed 124 spacecraft/satellite missions, 93 launches and 431 international customer satellite launches. 

The key milestones range from the first rocket launch (1962), the first satellite launch (1975), the launch of own rockets for satellites (1980), space capsule recovery (2007); Chandrayaan 1, the moon impact probe(MIP) reached the surface of the moon (2008), and Mangalyaan, a space probe,  that reached and stayed on the orbit of  Mars after a 298-day journey (2013). 

Promoting scientific temper is important and the constitution recognises it too. Science does contradict most things religious, so by extension many deeply held beliefs around which we conduct ourselves. This does not make it easy to convert people to growing a deep faith in science.

On top of that people in positions of influence who get a large amount of media space, try to legitimize anti-science discourse with their comments ranging from condemning Darwin ( as important a figure as Newton), or dragging in stories from epics and passing them off as scientific claims. Recently, the country arguably paid a heavy price for several unscientific acts during COVID-19.

Tweeting, speaking and celebrating the lunar mission; a signature scientific and technological achievement is desirable but it is meaningless without genuinely promoting scientific temper.

Knowledge is Power

 

The history of the world shows how dynamic the currents of time are. The countries that dominate today become has-beens tomorrow. 

The Greeks and Romans dominated the era from 2500 years back till 300 CE. The Egyptians and the Persians before that. The Islamic civilisations had their moment of flourish around the 9th to 11th century. Turkey with Ottomans in the middle of the last millennium. India in spurts during the reign of Ashoka, with the Gupta dynasty and then the Mughals.

But post the scientific revolution and enlightenment, the Western countries have retained their dominance for almost 500 years now. England, Germany, and France retain their leading positions.

In this relatively fast-changing world, power comes disproportionately from technology and new ideas. New theories of science and political economy or philosophy supply the framework for a society that produces advanced technology and knowledge. 

Increasingly power flows not from the barrel of a gun but from knowledge.  The US has produced the most original innovation and knowledge in the last 150 years and now it dominates the global order. With the direct and indirect benefits flowing from inventions like the nuclear bomb, internet, telephone, televisions and numerous other ones, it became the pre-eminent economic and military power. 

With AI and biotechnology, this will stay that way. Knowledge and its applications will become even more important in the power matrix. 

The countries that have open societies, and a liberal environment where dissent and criticism are allowed, create the most fertile ground for the production of new knowledge. 

So at this point in time, it is wiser to bet long-term on the liberal democracies in the West who still do the most original research in most fields over authoritarian regimes like China or Russia which sometimes can have short-term wins but don't have the necessary structural platform for retaining power.