Road To Progress - 1

The Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi is giving what people were all the time desirous of.  He has given so many mantra’s and people are lapping it up.  He is showing people that there is hope.  There is hope for a better life, hope for a good environment to live in, hope for prosperity and economic progress.  People are fed up of living within financial constraints.  The world has become aspirational.  While the India’s rich have aspirations to conquer and dominate the world stage, the poor want to do more than just survive.

The Prime Minister’s mantras are not new but their coinage is effective.  It throws a spell and people are falling in awe.  But if you take a deep look, they have a lot of meaning attached to it.  Speed, Skill and Scale was one which describes the way India should go ahead if it has to, forget the outer world and become and economic superpower, help India’s population to prosper internally.  Even if they do business internally within India with this mission, they will achieve great heights.  This mission statement has lot of deeper meaning to it because we have now got very used to the “Chalta hai” (it’s ok, who cares) kind of attitude.  “Chalta hai”, interpreted could mean: 1) It’s ok, we will do it at our own pace; 2) let’s compromise on the materials; 3) Let’s compromise on the quality; 4) let’s compromise on the workmanship; 5) let’s do some additional cheating; 6) let’s not put more effort; 7) how will the customer know what we have not given him; 8) he is not going to be our repeat customer, so any poor quality product or service will do, and so on.  This Chalta Hai attitude has to change, and has to change fast.  If not, it will affect our image the global level.  People will seek products from abroad.  Earlier, people were crazy for Japanese, British and American products.  Then we saw a demand for Indian products and now Chinese products have conquered.  Name the product and you will see a Chinese product.

Combined with the “Make in India” Mantra, the “Speed, Skill and Scale” concept have to potential to take India to the next level in terms of its own economic progress.  The market in India is huge and products that are manufactured in India will be consumed here itself.  So market and consumption is not an issue.  Manufacturing has to pick up and for that to happen, the government must ease the norms for doing business.  In the coming days, it would be interesting to see how the plans unfold.  Much has been said about what should be done and what has not been done.  But now the time is for the government machinery to work together, iron out the differences, work in synergy with each other.  The Prime Minister must ensure that the Speed, Size and Scale mantra must start from the government departments first.  The scale is there in terms of the huge number of employees (here we will not question the performance), the format and structure is there.  They need to deliver things with SPEED.  How will the Prime Minister bring in accountability of these babu’s will be interesting to see.  The PM and his office may have control over the Central Government ministries and they may be able to drive it in mission mode, but when it comes to the machinery at the State and Municipal level, it will collapse completely.

I am left wondering as to why previous governments could not think of all these simple aspects all the while they were in office. India could have achieved so much progress.  These kind of activities do not require legislative procedures and the opposition would have been floored completely.  This gives rise to another point that creativity in political field also has become very important.  Creativity was the domain of artists in the field of fine arts, advertising and related field.  But just by being creative, so much can be achieved.  There is positivity in the environment, stock market is bullish, people are talking about it and there is energy flowing all around.  And the best part is nothing on the ground level has changed yet but people are hoping that it will, very soon.

Indians are looking up with hope for a better tomorrow.