<b>Jamal Mecklai:</b> Welcome to the New India

MARKET MANIAC

We need to see the horror of the terrorist attacks in Bombay as an opportunity to change ourselves, our city, our country, and, indeed, the world.

There has been a huge outpouring of anger, sadness, sympathy and, yes, commitment since the event, highlighted — for me — by the hundreds of thousands of people, mostly under 35, at the Gateway on Wednesday last week. The positive energy (for change) at that time leaves no doubt that this is a seminal turning point in the history of our time. To quote Ramesh Ramnathan’s column in Mint,

“A telling sign of upward mobility in India is [has been] a reducing dependence on the state …. Last week in Mumbai [Bombay], all that changed for India’s aspirational class. We’ve come up against the one issue where we can’t dodge dependence on the state: terrorism. Suddenly, we are waking up to discover that the same state that we have ignored for the past 60 years is necessary for us to make sense of our lives (a visceral glimpse into the life of the poor) [italics mine].”

Finally, we have no choice but to participate. And participation has already started in a hundred websites, citizens groups, petitions, and so on. Many obvious and critical ideas are bubbling angrily to the surface — set up a national security agency (as in the US after 9/11); improve the morale and infrastructure of the police forces; create zero tolerance for crime, petty or significant; and so on. And many of these demands will be taken up and implemented willy-nilly by our crumbling political establishment. Pressure on it must, and will, continue.

However, to my mind, we also have to address the root cause of all of the above — the fact that young, educated, professional people do not ever think about entering politics. And, reasonably so, given its current state. We need to create a framework that will change this mindset, and I propose the following:

 

Using The Times of India’s model of Teach India, create a program called Govern India. It will consist of a small number of high quality professionals, who would commit one year of their time to build a shadow government that will be run by a team of (say) 50 young professionals, each of who would be sponsored for that year (salary, etc.) by their current employers. 
 

The shadow government will work round the clock both pro-actively (developing bills to be passed by Parliament) and reactively to current events, and issue daily instructions to the actual government through a committed media space. 
 

My belief is that this would lead to (a) much improved actual government as a result of this professional approach and public pressure, and (b) as important, the possibility that some — even a small number — of the team may choose to continue their careers in politics, after their internship. The program should be made continuous and, over a few years, we could see a change in the nature of our Parliament. 
 

I would like to see Anand Mahindra, Azim Premji, Nachiket Mor, Nandan Nilekani, Ramesh Ramanathan and Ratan Tata as the leaders of this shadow government. Of course, this is just my list — some of them may not be available/interested, but, in any case, there are no doubt many, many people in India who would both qualify and be keen.

I have already broached the idea to the Times group — over the past few years, they have shown tremendous commitment to the country and to change. If anyone reading this agrees with the idea, please communicate as much.

Another huge opportunity I see is for India, Pakistan and the US to get together to thwart one of the key founts of global terrorism. There is already a lot of talk about creating a UN-based team to work with the Pakistani government, such as it is, to eliminate the terrorist training camps. Of course, winning back hearts and minds is another, much longer run story, and to address that I feel we should create a series of continuing citizen-to-citizen dialogues between our two countries. The truth is that ordinary Pakistanis have been misserved by their government even more than ordinary Indians, and if we can begin — and sustain — dialogue between ordinary citizens of the two countries, it will go a long ways towards creating a sustainable peace, not only in our area, but in several parts of the world.

There are a large number of NGOs — both existing and newborn — who are working with considerable commitment in the area of understanding, expressing and trying to address the needs of ordinary people, and this crisis should (again) be seen as an opportunity to bring many of these organizations together to create a critical mass of on-the-ground demand. Unfortunately, I really don’t have any idea as to how to bring these disparate streams of committed do-gooders together. I can only suggest that senior organizations — for instance, Citizens for Peace, which has been around since 1993 — could provide the structure to enable the energy and enthusiasm of the newly awakened youth of India.

One final thought — we must believe in this change. Being positive gives us a head start.

Aa jaon maidan mein!