Passionate About India

Right at the start, let me take up the example of Canada, which is celebrating the 250th anniversary of The Royal Proclamation of 1763, issued by King George III – a landmark document which is considered by Canada’s aboriginal leaders as the bedrock of their rights. Shawn Atleo, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations (a body of leaders of First Nations in Canada, which aims to protect the rights of aboriginals in Canada) said on this occasion, “We need a robust agenda of change. Now is the era of action… We set out the priorities that will lift us up and carry the country forward.” While reading this, I got thinking about the dismal picture of our very own aboriginals – or should I say tribals – as the term “aboriginals” is not used in the Indian context. The tribes living in India can be traced back to the primitive times, satisfying the similar condition of genesis, as has been the case in Australia, Canada and United States. Tribal communities in India make up 8 per cent o...

As I sit down on the eve of my 40th birthday to write this editorial, I couldn’t have thought of writing on a more important aspect – as great political leadership is what India requires more than anything else today. And though I have written considerably on leadership, it has mainly been about corporate leadership. Leadership in corporations is massively different from political leadership, and therefore it requires a special model and a special line of thinking. While in corporations the final aim is profit maximization in most cases, in politics the final objective is necessarily social welfare maximization. While in corporations the best leaders are often the best marketing guys, in politics the best leaders necessarily have to be the people who are the sincerest and most hard working. While in business you can make do without the knowledge of economics, in politics that can be suicidal. While in business being unethical can harm you and at most your stake holders, in politics the...

This editorial comes at this crucial juncture when the ruling government and the opposition (that includes some Congress allies in the government too) have locked horns over the entry of foreign private players in the retail segment. The debate was imperative as the retail industry has always been considered as the nervous system of any nation, and this industry has in most of the cases even helped nations revive themselves during bad times. So it was interesting to evaluate the entire debate from an analytical dimension as well. Currently, the organized retail in India is only 2 per cent of the retail industry; clearly, a huge opportunity is waiting to be unleashed. The opportunity can be gauged from the fact that the American organized retail market is 80 per cent of the overall retail market, Thailand is at 40 per cent and China at 20 per cent! If on one hand organised retail is a global reality, then on the other, the Indian middle class has the given power to splurge, making the p...

Gandhi has been my favourite for seminars on leadership and management for years! In fact, in the last chapter of my first book Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch, I described him as the ultimate successor of Krishna as a management guru! The reason is simple! To me, there is no greater a management guru than Krishna; and the Gita is my ultimate guide to management! Krishna guides a handful of five brothers to victory against the army of a hundred brothers in the mythological Mahabharata, and in a similar way, Mahatma Gandhi guided us to Independence against all odds! Whether Krishna was true or not is debatable, but Gandhi was for real! And what we all know about Gandhi is that when he died, he said, “Hey Ram, He Ram, He Ram,” – though now even that is debated by various scholars. However, what many of us don’t know about Gandhi is that he used to read the Gita daily and called it the most important guide to success. So what is it about the Mahatma that makes him such a revered fig...