The world needs new ideas of progress

Arun Maira

Former Member, Planning Commission

THE protesters who opened smoke canisters in the Lok Sabha on December 13 — exactly 22 years after the terror attack on Parliament — were educated youths complaining about inadequate income and employment despite India’s GDP growth. They called themselves members of a fan club of Bhagat Singh, who, along with Batukeshwar Dutt, had lobbed low-intensity bombs in the Central Assembly in April 1929. Bhagat Singh, a national hero, was executed by the British in 1931.

The genocide in Palestine is a reminder that humanity must look for new role models of civilisations and leaders.

What set Bhagat Singh apart from his comrades was that he was a great reader, says Prof Irfan Habib (whose books on Bhagat Singh include Making the Deaf Hear). The young Bhagat Singh read extensively. His mother would scold him because he would stuff his trouser pockets with books and end up tearing them. Bhagat Singh was also a writer. A few months before his execution, when he was 23, he wrote his seminal essay, Why I am an Atheist, explaining his socialist leanings for which the British feared him.

What do young people, with smartphones in their hands and pockets, read today? I read about two books a month, besides essays in journals on philosophy, economics, science and political governance. I write my thoughts in commentaries like this one, and in longer essays and books. For whom do I write, my publishers ask? They say young people aren’t interested in the subjects I write about and have no patience to read or listen to anything not entertaining. The new editor of a business paper, for whom I had been writing a monthly column for many years, asked me in 2008 to ‘dumb down’ my articles and make them ‘racier’ to attract young readers. My column was discontinued because I could not bring myself to become an entertainer.

Writers need publishers of books and journals to carry their ideas to the public. Giving your customers what is popular is good business practice. Book publishing is also a business. In 1996, the management consulting company I was working with in the US persuaded me to write my first book. One of the largest management book publishers in the US offered to publish it. He gave me two books as models. One was Ken Blanchard’s The One Minute Manager, first published in 1982, which had continued to sell in millions. The other was Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, published in 1990. CEOs and senior executives proudly displayed Senge’s book, with its iconic black cover, on their tables and bookshelves.

Senge’s book was described as the most sold, but least read, management book at the time. The publisher wanted me to write my book in the style of The One Minute Manager. In the 1990s, consultants were trained to pitch their ideas in ‘elevator speeches’ to fit into the short attention spans of top executives. They were told to imagine that all the time a CEO will give them is the minute or two it takes to ride up with him in an elevator from the ground floor to his office on the top floor. I wrote my book in a simple ‘how-to’ style, though not like Blanchard. I asked Senge, a friend, to write the foreword. He agreed with my ideas, but declined to write the foreword because he did not want to pander to executives who wanted complexity stripped out of reality and would not make time to read and learn.

Not all senior executives or young Indians are tied to their smartphones, reading short tweets, viewing one-minute videos or showing off holiday pictures and selfies with stars. Many young and old Indians are reading. Some are looking for new theories of inclusive and environmentally sustainable development, which the prevalent science of economics does not provide. Some are rediscovering Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was a revolutionary like Bhagat Singh, albeit a non-violent one. Gandhi was also a great reader, learner and listener, and a prolific writer too. He named his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth. When asked what he thought about Western civilisation, Gandhi said: “That would be a good idea.”

The genocide being carried out in Palestine by Israel, supported by the US, is another reminder that humanity must look for new role models of civilisations and leaders, and for new ideas of progress outside Western-dominated academia and media.

Delivering the 2010 Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures (after the 2008 global financial crisis, when economists promised they would find a “new normal” strategy for economic growth), British economist Adair Turner pointed out that too much reality was being left out of economists’ models for them to explain the world. With a twist of Keynes’ statement that “practical men are usually the slave of some defunct economist”, he warned that the “great danger lies (now) with reasonably intellectual men and women employed in the policy-making departments of central banks and governments who tend to gravitate to simplified versions of the dominant beliefs of economists who are still very much alive.”

Money speaks. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Economics has been dominated by wealthy US-run institutions — US universities and think tanks, the World Bank and IMF. Business theory is dominated by US business schools. Young managers’ minds are shaped by stories of US business leaders of Fortune-500 companies: Jack Welch, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc. US ideas of capitalism and democracy have been forced onto many countries with the power of US arms and money, often with tragic consequences for their people. Many people, young and old, with aspirations to make the world better for everyone are looking for new ideas on how to make economic progress inclusive and sustainable, and governance more just. They would do well to read the ideas of thought-leaders with Gandhian and ‘feminine’ views of life, communities and systems, such as JC Kumarappa, Hazel Henderson, EF Schumacher and Elinor Ostrom. And, with ancient philosophers, Eastern and Western, they should also read some 21st-century ones such as Michael Sandel, Byung-Chul Han and Thomas Fuchs.

One good book often leads to another. The New Year is around the corner. Time for resolutions. Reading good books enriches the mind and refreshes the human spirit. Can you get off your smartphone a few hours a day to make time for some good books?

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