I was cleaning up my mail over the weekend and chanced upon two mails to V Bala, Ex CFO of Infosys, and Capt Gopinath of Deccan Aviation, just before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections on my views on why they, given their reputation, should not align too directly with AAP and stand for elections on their ticket. Capt Gopinath did not contest and withdrew from AAP, Bala did contest, lost his deposit and still remains in AAP..... I guess with a huge sense of being let down by a movement which spawned the hope of a large majority of the educated middle class.
"Instant gratification" syndrome is a severe shortcoming of the times we live in .... from instant noodles to ready credit to instant messaging via Whats App or Twitter and everything else in between........the obvious casualty being thoughtfulness, reasoned judgement and substance : thus giving rise to increasing flippancy in the general public discourse. Arvind Kejriwal's genius was in harnessing this microscopic attention span on a national scale when he launched his party..... leading most people to believe that Instant Karmic deliverance is on hand thru his hit and run tactics ! Please note that I am making a distinction between the activism phase in the fight against corruption and the metamorphosis into a political party. Like most people, I too was hugely motivated by the activist phase under the leadership of Anna Hazare and genuinely felt that at last we were on the threshold of a genuine people's movement. However, I was realistic enough to gauge that the process of creating AAP, the political party, was fraught with serious danger....and this formed the basis of my two aforementioned emails. The salient points as I saw it in those heady days were :
1) Taking unsustainable short cuts to create a national footprint for contesting the Lok Sabha elections : It was apparent that there was no foolproof process for putting up candidates and, in the chaos, many wholly undesirable elements would easily make the cut ; this would directly affect his core value proposition of fighting corruption and provide clean politics
2) Lack of a coherent policy stance especially in the areas of economic development and taxation : let alone foreign policy, defence and socially relevant areas like health and education
3) Following the time tested tactic in our left of centric polity of playing to the gallery by sheer sloganeering, making contradictory statements suited to the audience, etc : I recall the literal humiliation of Gopinath on national TV by other members of the party..... such was the tolerance demonstrated when sensible views, which most of us have always stood for, were aired publicly....... achievers like him were seen as "elite" and specially targeted by others within the party till the "janta" line was toed which, of course, had no bearing to economic reality
4) Collective behaviour of the party as a rag tag coalition of unassorted, hugely diverse conglomeration of high decibel, highly aggressive people ( many of whom were rank opportunists) without any cementing ideology apart from loyalty to Kejriwal and ostensibly to fight corruption.....but do remember fighting corruption in a country with such a deeply entrenched social ill is only tested when one has the opportunity to be corrupt ! Anna Hazare, Modi, Mamta Banerjee and Kejriwal himself are few notable exceptions, as would be some of the well meaning people who joined the party...........but in my view they would remain a hopeless minority.
5) Intolerance towards differing points of view aired by the few sensible voices of even some "co founders" such as Yogendra Yadav, Anand Kumar, Madhu Bhaduri and Prashant Bhushan : Kiran Bedi did not even join the party given her apprehensions and stalwarts such as ex Lokayukta Santosh Hegde too disassociated themselves from AAP.
These were not encouraging signs of a party being created with the enormous goodwill of the masses ; and had formed the basis of my email and overall judgement at that point of time.
Much water has flown thru the Yamuna since then.... and it is with a degree of sadness, more than anything else, that I revisit the movement today at a juncture when the Dengue-Chikunguniya issue has provided the proverbial tipping point in the life of AAP. The sheer callousness and brazenness with which Manish Sisodia justified the trip of his entourage from Rio to Finland via London and France as an educational tour was nothing short of the lack of accountability demonstrated by politicians of all hues when they undertake such jaunts which have almost become routine "perks" of the job. BAsed on Chetan Bhagat's article in Times of India,what was not publicised widely in the rest of the popular media was that they travelled First class...yes, first class@ Rs. 5 L per ticket and not business class@ Rs. 2 L or economy @ Rs. 50K ! The callous comment by the Health Minister, Satyendra Jain stating that globally dengue has not caused any deaths as per Google....carefully sidestepping that these infections precipitate debilitating conditions depending on immunity, general health, etc which can lead to complications and death in many cases. The list of accusations of rape, extortion, attempted murder, criminal intimidation, domestic violence, sex scandals and fake degrees of the ministers/MLAs is only increasing and 8 MLAs out of 67 have been arrested so far. These are all direct consequences of liberal distribution of party tickets due to the short sighted short cuts taken by Kejriwal I had alluded to earlier.
The lack of governance is perhaps the worst outcome of this experiment. We have a duly elected CM who takes no responsibility and, in fact, has formally abdicated his constitutional responsibility of governing the state to his deputy....unprecedented in any democracy. The approach of remaining in a perpetual activist cum confrontation mode with other duly constituted bodies/ governments along with shameless,self promotion thru blatantly illegal, and misleading, ad spends with public money smacks of an youthful form of ego centrism which is unacceptable in public life. Leadership is all about using available resources and leveraging existing eco systems thru mutual cooperation to deliver the task on hand. Kejriwal misses this approach totally and, in his almost adolescent thought process, believes confrontation with the central government, the LG, the police, the NDMC, etc will lead to success in his prime constitutional obligation of delivering the best for the people of the state. I do not remember Sheila Dixit or Madan Lal Khurana ( ex CMs of Delhi) ever abdicating their responsibility with respect to law and order or health due to jurisdictional issues as envisaged by the law enacted whilst creating statehood for Delhi. He perhaps does not even know that a basic tenet of management of large organisations is that the leader, who is tasked with an assignment, is expected to garner resources not wholly under his control thru the creation of cross functional teams : concepts such as matrix-ed or networked organisations are alien to his understanding. He still is ensconced in the fossilized organisational structure of command and control....and shows his childlike grumpiness and insecurity when not perceived to be in "control".
The historic mandate for AAP was to lead the strategic transformation in public governance, in the small state of Delhi as a test case, before branching out nationally. Kejriwal has completely misread this. He would do well to educate himself and his core team in some of the tenets of leading strategic transformation by either inculcating new team members of integrity who understand the subject, or taking cues from case studies in the public domain of large corporations like Xerox, Caterpillar, etc., or those in public policy like the city corporations of Hong Kong, Chicago and New York.
Some pointers to Kejriwal from my experience on the Sloan Fellowship Program, where we had the opportunity of learning from iconic figures such as the Late Sumantra Ghoshal, Donald Sull of Harvard, Niall Fitzgerald (then Chairman of Unilever) and Gary Hamel :
1) Use his moral authority not to demand respect, but command it, by fostering an environment of cooperation immediately with all agencies responsible for various facets of running the Delhi administration
2) Use some learning experiences from PM Modi who is bringing in large scale changes in governance across the country though much of it is not under his full control
3) Having alienated Anna Hazare he desperately needs a mentor and coach to align his leadership traits to productive use ; Advice/training from someone capable on developing his influencing skills would be crucial too : a core skill in the contemporary world... as are age old character traits of humility and benevolence. He would do well to realize the fine line between narcissism and egocentrism !
4) Increase focus within the party to concentrate on administering Delhi, and moving away from its current digressions of aspiring for a pan India presence
5) Take direct responsibility of running the government : this will lead to a huge change in the perception of AAP in the public eye
6) Induct advisors who are professionals in their respective areas to assist the totally inexperienced ministers and create a time bound, goal and accountability matrix with strict, defined review mechanisms for performance of all ministers : a hybrid Singapore model
7) Acknowledge that his manifesto was not a well thought out comprehensive, coordinated list of aspirations but an accumulation of disparate "goodies" aimed at placating different vote banks....and thus just not unachievable. Being perpetually in a defensive mode due to this fundamental flaw is only driving the party deeper into the morass ; and if he comes clean, he can use the balance of his term to reset the dialogue and drive productive engagements
8) Learn to live within his means : instead of squandering money on foreign jaunts, shameful self promotion and providing 400% increase in MLA salaries ( and thus behaving like all the corrupt parties) he should promote judicious use of public money in well thought out public schemes
9) Create pockets of excellence in the bureacracy and the departments thru specific projects : and use the success stories to create an atmosphere of competitive excellence within the state administration
10) Communicate positive messages publicly... and frequently
He still has time till the end of his term and must use this God sent opportunity to transform the polity.......else it will be another "Himalayan blunder" in the political history of India and, above all, a betrayal of public faith.
(PRABAL BASU ROY)
Prabal Basu Roy is a Sloan Fellow from the London Business School and a Chartered Accountant: the writer presently manages a PE fund and has formerly been a Director and Group CFO in various companies.
Join me on Twitter.com @PrabalBasuRoy
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