It has been a long time coming! It always takes an irresistible moment to pen down it down…..
rather to hit on the key board these days! So, here I go…….
Let me start with a few random spray of thoughts :
- In 2006, at the IIFA awards in Dubai, the smart event managers from Bollywood made a
calculated move of inviting the Malayalam Superstar Mammootty as one of the Chief
Guests.  I am sure you can guess why!  The smarties did not know where to hide when
Mammootty tore into the organisers and questioned the very concept of IIFA (International
Indian Film Academy) when the competition is limited to just Hindi.  In its section, Indian
Cinema, covering great strides made by Indian Cinema the poster s that were featured were
Raja Harischandra, Mughal e Azam, Sholay, Lagaan, Monsoon Wedding and Bride &
Prejudice Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya, Assamese have no place in their IIFA.
No room for Satyajit Ray or Adoor Gopalakrishnan!    I am not sure who appeared in poorer
light! - Times higher education world rankings for 2014-15 are out and our Indian friends are upset
that not a single Indian University features in the top 200! - The centre of gravity of Hockey moved away from the sub-continent not because the
Europeans mastered playing hockey on grass, but they effected the change in the game itsel
– introduced astro-turf! There was a time when India had one Astro-turf at national Stadium
in Delhi where as country of the size of Netherlands had 250 astro-turfs!  You can guess the
downhill from there! - An infamous quote of ‘Beefy’ Botham was that the sub-continent was such a place that he
would rather send his mom-in-law than come here to play. Two decades later, all the
cricketers are queuing up to play in the IPL and they don’t care whether the match is at
Raipur or Ranchi! -  According to EIU, India will be among the top three economies in the world by 2030! The
Softbank Chairman thinks we will be #2 by 2025! Just look at it in detail – by 2050, India
will be a 63 Trillion USD economy (from the current USD 2 Tn) while China will have crossed
USD 100 Trillion (from USD 10 Tn) and the US will be around USD 70 Tn (from the current
17 trillion).   After all, US will be 50% Asian
What is the point! – “It is the Economy, Stupid!â€
The famous line of James Carville (Biil Clinton’s Campaign strategist) will, after all, remain valid for a
while to come! And when the Asian economy will contribute over 55% of the global GDP in 2050,
over 100 out of the top 200 universities in the world will be in India and China.  Our own Acharya
Narendra Dev College and NSIT and Manipal university will figure there! That would be because of
the fact that the EIU equivalent and the Forbes and NYTimes equivalent media are likely to be from
here.  The grass will have become astro-turf!
India will be a super power. An economic juggernaut.  In 1750 AD, India and China added up to 67%
of global GDP. The wheel has turned a full circle in 300 years, as expected. So, the question is not
whether we will be successful or not.
The question is what is it that we will be doing as we become successful. Would we become also
aim to become the soft super-power or not ? Would we bring the wisdom of an Indian mother and
the Indian housewife to bear upon our model of success ?  Would we invest heavily in education
ahead of many other things or not ? Do we have the self-belief that our natural way of doing things
could be nurtured and re-invented without copy-pasting the western models of the 20th century ?
In a recent holiday in kerala, I saw that the only waste generated after a full meal was a banana leaf.
And imagine whom are we copying blindly!  Measure it against the waste generated at an up-
market restaurant that packs food or serves food. It is a bucket full of plastic and paper.
India and the coming decades :
While we are busy searching for the models from the west, there is an increasing recognition in the
west about some of the aspects of education in China and India. Each is aping the other. The wise
among these will dig deeper and evolve the next practice by retaining the best of wisdom and
innovate the process by staying anchored in the future.
Only an idiot will not invest in education. If a poor or middle class home invests between 15-30
percent of its monthly income in education, why would it be different for a nation. That too for a
nation such as India. The more the leadership believes in economics, the greater will be the
conviction in investing more in education.
Singapore, Estonia & Kerala :
Singapore has been a ‘sexy’ nation for a while. Estonia, as an example, is on the rise. It has already
been classified as a ‘developed economy’. But, there are closer examples in India. Kerala has
rendered the debate of ‘left’ or ‘right’ and all ‘isms’ irrelevant. The prosperity of the state has to be
seen to be believed. Sure enough, it will get classified very similar to Estonia, if it were to be a
separate nation.  And, mind you, it has a million flaws yet. North of Vindhyas, we are dealing with a
billion, in comparison. Yet, we are on our way as a nation.
Bring the universities in :
The higher education and further education universities in Europe need India more than India
needing them. Yet, a long term perspective makes it persuasive to make room for them to come
and establish themselves here.  The benefits of many decades of expertise in higher education and
vocational / skills education will become available to our masses. The universities there are likely to
even change hands and become Indian in terms of ownership!
The 500 million Indians to be made employable is a very hygiene level goal that must not leave us
breathless. It will, if we do not open up and address the world from a location of adequacy,
competence and self-belief as a nation.
At the 2011 World Skills conference in London, I had a chance to address and sell India to the
attendee universities. Over a 100 of them from all over Europe, North America were in attendance.
The FE universities are struggling more than ever before. The Govt funding has evaporated. The
universities had never learned the art or skill of hunting for their meal!  You know the result of that.
“Zoo ka Tigerâ€!  There is a great opportunity to make it a win-win for all.   I may hasten to add that
the Indian student, the Indian entrepreneur and the Indian eonomy might end up benefiting much
more. The overseas guys are likely to be grateful to us for it!
Incubation :
Koramangala (Blore) is already more throbbing than Palo Alto at its best. Of course, the sheer
population is a reason too. But, don’t we think that is one of our strengths once education is
delivered.  One of the most audacious thing any governance guy will do is to push the pedal in the
direction of incubation.  Make it a ‘cool’ thing for the youngsters to become a job creator than stand
the stupid job-queue!   This will also decongest the cities as many entrepreneurs are also feeling
comfortable enough to be at Coimbatores and Lonavalas and Othapalams while building disruptive
solutions using technology. Remember, the world’s richest man sits in Omaha!  Technology and
bandwidth will make imagination and audacity count like never before.
Governance :
The future of Governance is grounds up and tech-enabled whether you like it or not. The top-down
economic planning is an old and antique process. It was considered ineffective by Gandhi, a man of
immense intuition. The grounds-up planning and execution with aggregation and broad direction
setting at the nodes is a super-compelling argument now. Technology@hands of a poor man has
turned most hypotheses on their heads. Any marketer or entrepreneur or administrator needs to
reboot him/herself into an “Outside-in†approach from the current “inside-out†mindset. The latter
works fine in a steady state but not in a disruptive era or a period of rapid transformations!
This is the time to go hammer and tongs. Like Mammootty. He did not have to hear a Yash Chopra
or a Bharat Shah. He was a super-star down south and al the superstars there – Mammootty,
Mohan Lal, Chiru, Rajani, Kamal had crossed the Rs 1.0 Crore mark much before Bollywood learnt
about it. So, he had nothing to hear. Hence, he spoke his mind.  We need to speak our mind as a
nation. We need to speak from a location of adequacy. Our time has come sooner than another
saint of our era predicted.
Way back in late 90s, Dr Kalam said it. Much before any one that I heard from.  He said that India
will be a developed nation by 2020!  We are headed to a good place. Who cares what is it that you
call – Developed or Evolved or Rich or whatever!    We must aim to become a path-showing leader
to the world through our own and organically rich and evolved wisdom – that is eternal yet young
and futuristic!
