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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

India: Not a Land of Doers!

"India is not a land of doers"! Without inviting the wrath of my country fellowmen, let me state that these are not my words (but I agree with it 100 %, though. Sorry). This was stated by Naryana Murthy.

Ok, my mental agony began like this. Deepak from Bangalore sent me a link of his post that he published on his blog (Lamhe- The Moments): " Shame on Bangloreans- Keep it up". He started his post with this: "Its really a matter of personal shame, just 50% around voter turnout in Bangalore."

And the post continues to describe the apathy and indifference of our countrymen to the electoral participation. It is another fact that we Indians are first to criticize and lament the system!

I said: Depak, We know just to complain, criticize and curse! That is it! The youth of the nation has not been galvanized by the use of Information Technology to an extent that translates into  participation into the democracy. Yet, we never forget to complain!

Every one wants that we need Bhagat Singhs to be (re)born for the country, but not in my home!

To aptly summarize the situation in our country, let me quote a few phrases from the an interview with N R Narayana Murthy, co-founder and chief mentor of Infosys Technologies: (source: Rediff)

●  The Indian society is a society of ideas. It is a society that has revered talk. In this society, articulation is mistaken for accomplishment. We are quite satisfied with our voice, with our writings. This is not a society that is focussed on execution.

● Here everybody wants to be an engineer, nobody wants to be a technician. So when a society does not value implementation, execution, what happens is you create more and more reports and nothing gets done.

For example, (Reliance Industries Chairman) Mr Mukesh Ambani and I gave two reports on how to improve the higher education system: one to (then prime minister) Mr Vajpayee and one to Dr Manmohan Singh.

Second, there has been the Knowledge Commission. Nothing has happened. Third, in 1998 I was a member of the IT Task Force -- which was headed by Mr Jaswant Singh -- and that task force submitted its report somewhere in 1999 0r 2000.

Nine years and I don't think even one suggestion has been implemented. And we made 108 suggestions! So that is why I am not a big fan of ideas in India.

● My brother-in-law is a famous professor of physics at Caltech and he tells me it is very easy to come out with an idea. But to validate that idea he and his doctoral students will have to work hard for six months, one year... sometimes two years. That takes 20 hours of work each day for two years. So it is important to come out with new ideas, but it is even more important to execute them.

● We are not a nation of doers; we are a nation which believes that our articulation is our accomplishment.

2 comments:

  1. I would recommend that you seperate the political class from the normal Indian humans.We are a land of doers,despite non0performing netas.Whatever we have acheived has been because of the people minus neta.We are a great nation(minus netas)

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