Research & Publications
Research & Publications
Professor Dash. Thank you very much for the invitation. Nirmala, Siddharth, Dr. Sodhi, Prof. Shambu and the teachers and the future of India, the young leaders of India.
I'm Here today. I'm here to commemorate a great nation builder, Dr. Varghese Kurien on his hundredth birthday anniversary at the Institute of rural management Anand, and here in NDDB. The Institute, which he had founded.
Dr. Kurien's autobiography, “I too had a dream” begins with a letter to his grandson Siddharth. In which Dr. Kurien writes, I started my working life. Soon after the country became independent. The noblest task in those days was to contribute in whatever way we could towards the nation building and India of our dreams, a nation where our people would not only hold their heads high in freedom, but would be free from hunger and poverty, a nation where our people could live with equal respect and love for one another.
Now, how can I honor this great man today? Doctor Kuriens dream is our dream too, for our country. And by committing to follow the path, he showed us and to realize it.
India set out on 15 August, 1947 Towards, it's traced with destiny. In Jawaharlal Nehru’s memorial words, but we have miles to go to reach it. We must continue to follow apart. Dr. Kurien laid out his remarkable life. Now let me step back to look at the big picture of how our country and the world are progressing. There are four very visible problems. The first is slow Suffocation of our own natural environment, that we human beings are causing by our pursuit of economic progress.
Climate change, carbon India is now attracting everyone's attention and water under the ground, which has been disappearing in our country for a long time, also appearing alongside the problem of carbon in the intellectual discourse. It was always visible to people on the ground, in our country.
in India.
In India that water is what they depend upon and it's disappearing as well as between the water underground and the air above the soil. The quality of it is so rapidly deteriorating in our own country, by the impact of our means of progress or creating more productivity. Our country with 14% or something of the population of the world has only 3% or less of the arable land in the world.
So we depend on the quality of our land. The very soil notices everything, and we are destroying it faster than perhaps anybody has, is doing anywhere else in the world. Similarly, we have only 4% or less of the fresh water resources of the world, including what is underground, the aquifers and via 14% of the population of the world.
We are destroying aquifers and our freshwater resources faster than anybody else. Second bundle of problems is about the economy, not enough jobs being generated in our country. Reasonable incomes and sustainable incomes for dignified work. Real wages have been declining for the last many years and very rapidly through the last two years of the pandemic. Real wages means what your wage can buy you in India.
Those had very fast growth rates during the last 20 years and we had the lowest employment elasticity with growth.
How many good jobs do you generate?
India generates the least number of good jobs per unit of GDP growth, a country which has the largest number of young people in the world. Our potential for being a great respected force in the world.
How are they going to work? What have you done in terms of creating opportunities for all young people in the villages? Those from our cities earn with dignity and earn enough.
The third set of problems is the inequality between those who have and those who don't have enough and are finding it harder to have even that. The number of billionaires is being tracked and celebrated. India is arriving as being one of the good economies of the world because of the number of unicorns that we are producing.
What is a unicorn? A unicorn is a Person or Enterprise with producers' national wealth and the benefits of that going to few people. Does it have any real impact on creating incomes for people on the ground? During the pandemic, our stock markets have soared and are beating records, but people have been losing jobs and lives and livelihoods in millions on the ground.
The fourth bundle of problems is the underlying problems to do with power.
The politician who calls the shots and says, This is the solution. These are the regulations that are good for everybody. Who fixes the rules of the economy. The people who most need it for growth and opportunity who perceive most of all should be shaping the rules of the economy, but it's not their voice heard in shaping the direction of the economy. Four large sets of problems and they interact with each other.
It was said in 1991, after the fall of the Berlin war, that history had ended according to Francis Fukuyama, a very famous political scientist. The reason he said this was that there were two large ideologies that were wanting to prove to the world that they are the solution to the world. One of them is electoral democracy, and free market capitalism.
There was opposition to these two forces from very largely the Soviet Union. Which didn't believe in elected democracy and neither in the free market. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama said that forever. Now it has been proven that only two forces, two ideologies will not run.
That is electoral democracies, as well as free market capitalism. End of history of ideology. No need to study political economics anymore. What we are experiencing in the last decade is the conflict between those two victims of the cold war.
Democracy is fighting capitalism. Capitalism is being shaken by the challenge from democracy, from people's movements. The bastions of economic power are being challenged by them. They're being challenged. So history carries on and history is yet to be written.
You should write the history too and learn a new history of combining these two forces. But there's something contradictory in these two forces. The force of capitalism is based on property rights. It is right if you own something, you should have the full rights to protect it and to use it.
Others should be prevented from taking away your property rights. The right and onto this system. Therefore those who own more of something must have a greater say in how it's used. So therefore in corporate governance. Those who own a million shares must have a million votes. Anybody's small shareholders own one share should have only one vote.
It's bad, isn't it? The person who owns them all should have a greater share. Human rights says that every human being has a beating heart. Whether it's a man or a woman or young, old, rich and poor have an equal vote. Person owns anything or everything, the vote is the same. So how do you make decisions? How do you govern together? Democratically a system where the two opposing principles of rights are prevailing. So I leave you with this question. This question is a very relevant question.
Because we're celebrating Dr. Kurien's hundredth birth anniversary. Because the cooperative movement which says methods of governance in which the rights of every person are equal. We have to learn those methods of governance and apply them on larger scales. The two other forces that have appeared more recently with capitalism and democracy have been contending now for over a hundred years, very visibly. The two other forces, one of them is digital technologies, very new 15 years digital technologies are spreading everywhere and they can be used for creating economic enterprises.
It could be used also in public discourse. But they are polluting the public discourse. They're causing more divisions, more hate, very shallow knowledge and wrong knowledge being distributed around the world. You can shut it back into a bottle of this force.
The fourth comes to be earth itself. We are hearing it. It says I'm not going to carry on supporting you the way you've been going on. Think about it. So here are these four forces that come together and create the conditions in which we are living. If you do not take note of and do something about life. As we say, our children and grandchildren will be quite miserable.
That nurtures the world such that every human being finds themselves treated with dignity. A sense of at least having an equal opportunity. Whether I make it or not depends on my own effort. But they're not invisible barriers to our progress. That's the world. You have to find ways to create together. The concept of a circular economy we've been hearing a lot.
Especially when you talk about the environment. Things must continue to circulate. Nothing should be allowed to accumulate as waste anywhere. Every waste has a use and should soon be in good time. Put back and be part of the system. So the waste is also a resource and resource also the waste. Also a waste must circulate.
Like the obvious example is plastic. It's a very good invention. To keep things sanitized. It is very convenient to carry things. But if the plastic doesn't circulate, change itself and be circulated back at chokes up streams, oceans and prevents the earth from regenerating itself. This is the concept of circulation in the physical economy.
Now I'm going to use the same concept of circulation into the money economy.
This is the pattern that you have enterprises in which the people working. Those people who own one asset, like one Buffalo. it's their assets, their work. The only asset they have and people have more money at the minute. A little piece of land, that's all they have with which they can participate in the economy and get money.
Use assets who get the money made out of this use. So if you designed institutions and the limited liability company is a great invention. One of the first was the East India company founded in 1600. In which investors in London were given the protection of limited liability. That came from investors, put your money into the enterprise.
If there's any risk or any harm. it's only as much money as you put into it. That you can be sued for. The rest is yours to continue and put into something else. Of course we know the consequences of the east India company on us. But here in India, it's a good new model of economic governance. But they couldn't care about the board of the Eastern India company on how the money was made.
What are his things out here in India? So long as he made money, what the board was concerned about was? The equal fair distribution amongst the shareholders depending on how much they put in. This model of a limited liability company has continued to become the dominant model of running economies.
Even as we were hearing yesterday, co-operative societies are finding it sometimes easier to be connected with the regular economy. If they convert themselves into a company. Then you can be recognized in these topics. But then the principle of governance becomes one. Which is suited to just fairness in the economy with respect to how much you've owned.
It's no longer fair to society anymore. So the workers work and produce. By their efficiency and dedication. As I saw yesterday in the chocolate factory, there were lovely, wonderful things, which people are buying and paying for, but at least it's different in your case.
But in other cases, The surplus that is made by the high value. That the product commands in the larger scale. It's sold and the efficiency of the workers that surplus goes to those people sitting up in London. The equivalent of it is to decide. What to do with that surplus? Invest it into another financial venture and some derivatives make even more money out of money for themselves.
So we have to say, How can you get that money? Which is getting stuck up there in the financial system and being used for finance back into the hands of the people. Who actually generated the wealth. The circulation is expected to come back from the people who've made all the profits. Either through taxes, but they say, if you tax us, we have no incentive to make more money.
So you will have to allow us to make the pie even larger. mostly for ourselves, So that there'd be enough to go around. That's not happening. The second is we can ask you to do some CSR. if you've got a law in India, that 2% of your profits is probably 10% of your revenue.
2% of your revenues you will spend on building a hospital after all that you've done to water and soil has caused cancer. You build a nice hospital for cancer that serves millions. You've got CSR and philanthropy,
What is trickling down? though taxes, CSR, and through philanthropy is very small compared to what is flowing up. Which is accumulating up there that is why the wealth of the wealthy is growing larger and larger. The financial sectors of the economy have grown three times as large as a proportion of economies than they were in the 1980s all over the world.
This is like plastic accumulated over then by the way as money became plastic. It's becoming too. It's not even real anymore. But this is viewed, acquire different economic institutions designed on different principles of equity and governance. So this is what we must honor in this space. Dr. Kuiren is the benefit to the people for which we as managers must work. Our ideas of designs must be deep at the center. What is the design for what's the purpose of the enterprise?
We in India had written into our constitution 1947. Which says article 39B the ownership and control of the material resources of the community.
The constitution requires it to be distributed as best to subserve the common good. Article 39C that the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth. The means of production to the common detriment.
I think the ownership and control of material resources of the community should be sought and distributed. That they serve the common good. The operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth. The means of production to the common detriment.
The word introducing the constitution was socialism and people say, India, When the president of the Soviet Union visited India in 1990. He wants to meet Dr. Kurien. The Government of India arranged for him to come here and to see Anand. To meet with Dr. Kurien, I read this in Madhu Bahaduri's book ‘ The Lips’. The President personally has asked Dr. Kurien, India had the time to develop slowly on the lines of Amul success. Dr. Kurien answered that he knew of no better model than involving people as stakeholders in development, like in a cooperative.
Gandhiji did not like the Soviet Union and Shareholder capitalism. His reasons were the same reason. We said in both systems, the workers do the work and some people up there get the surplus and decide what to do with it.
In one case it's some bureaucrats in the public sector and the government. The worker gets a fair wage. Certainly in the Soviet system they ensured that the wages were fair and the working conditions were good. But as he said, he hated that system. Nevertheless because the workers did not have control over creation of their own wealth.
Did you say you get political power? He of course had the same problem with capitalism. He said, I'm a capitalist. I want people to do things efficiently to produce surplus..
Dr. Kurien teaches the way. I am here in the nursery of ideas. It's not the only nursery but it's probably the biggest nursery of this idea. Let's learn from the nurseries. We need to develop new forms of economic enterprises as an alternative to shareholder control for shareholder benefit enterprises.
IRMA founded by Dr. Kurien. He had some things to say. I found a bit of the history of one of his first students. In a seminar paper by Dr. Michael Healthy was then an NFA advisor with the National Dairy Development Board.
He wrote a new Institute of rural management and a new development discipline. He said the Rural manager's task consists of dealing simultaneously with a series of interacting systems. A) social and institutional system whereby human beings relate to each other formally and informally.
It's a core central part of the system,B) physical and technical systems whereby man exists within the biosphere. Practices agriculture in order to manipulate those systems. To human advantage and C) The economic systems whereby human beings exchange the fruit of each other's labels. If they are lucky, Save and invest in order to improve their life in future times.
He argued that the practice of rural management requires sensitivity to the priorities and needs of the society dominated as it is in our country. The inside countries have been dominated as it is by the culture of poverty. What Dr. Halsey said was rural management requires systems thinking, which is focused on uplifting the wealth and the power of the people at the bottom of the pyramid.
Let's step back once again, and look at the bigger picture. We need a new framework for global solutions for the environment. For the economy and for the distribution of political power. We need local solutions to these global systemic problems and the sustainable development Goals. Problems to do with the economy problems to do with inequality problems. To do with the environment of course, public health and education.
There's so many things that every country has to address. These different problems take different shapes in different places. Every state of India has got economic problems, social problems, environmental problems. Every country in the world has environmental problems, social problems and economic problems. But they're not happening in the same way.
The solutions to this complex set of problems must be locally related to the shape of the system there. To achieve our SDGs, the method is not to have the experts up there telling us about the environment. Public health solutions separately, it is in localities. People supported by experts around them. But people take charge of themselves and their communities and their environment to ensure that it's good for everyone and sustainable.
So local solutions to global systemic problems must be the way forward. All of you can be leaders of change. The question asked earlier this morning at a seminar keeps getting asked this question. What leadership to make change in something requires somebody. Perhaps many people take the courage to step out of the way things are being done.
To start doing things in a new way is to take a risk experiment. But do things differently because if you keep doing things the same way, They're going to keep having the same set of conditions. So leadership is about caring for something which is not here. But what you want and think I will take steps towards making something new happen. If any one of us can do that wherever we are in circumstances.
I believe that the change in India is going to be coming about actually by small people. I'm happy to see more and more that they're many women taking responsibility for their local conditions, their sisters, their families, their environment and with very little resources. They make change happen which is good for everybody.
This model of fireflies are leaders. They have very little light. But they rise up with that light and they create hope. When many rides together swarm of juvenile fireflies the darkness turns to light.
You don't have to wait till you become the CEO. You don't even bother to look for an organization. Which to be a CEO. Because maybe we need less organizations, But are community organizations, which are self-governed with respect for each other. Which yes, somebody who's given judgement on behalf of the others.
But it's for everyone who is putting the effort into the organization. We need every level in the local level, district level, state level and the national level. The international level, to have a new scorecard. Every level must say, I'm going to judge our wellbeing by environmentally, sustainable economically fair areas, be socially fair and respectful about each other, every level.
We are not good unless we are good in all these respects. So we need new scorecards and a sort of GDP. We need a broader set of measures. Every company needs more than its profits. It's done over a broader set of measures and every is to start measuring itself.
What quality of city are we? What quality of community are we? New scorecards at all levels are our vision. We measure ourselves against the progress that. With respect to everything simultaneously. What must you learn to be your system's leader? Not the chief of an organization but assistant leader. Who is a systems leader? She and he are facilitators of dramatic transformation in a system. The system's leaders, catalysts of change in the system.
Three orientations are required and each orientation goes with the discipline three orientations three disciplines. The first is systems being, we must realize. We could be having like Bezos on 200 billion. Emotional wealth somewhere but we have a very small part of a very rich complex system.
That system has been life. If the system is not healthy, no matter how rich you are, you won't have life. Many of them are not trying to get rockets to go and try to create some sort of life on Mars. If you take the same ideas of how they run the place here. They'll destroy Mars also.
This is all we have, It has given us life. It's nurturing us and we will nurture it and be an insistent being. It is also recognizing that I'm not superior to anyone else. The simple woman on the farm has as much wisdom as much courage. I would say both of the wisdom and courage that I have. And sort of respect and dignity to be given and not arrogance in oneself.
The systems being the second. The discipline here is ethical reasoning. So. Management schools, I find I have to keep reminding them to always ask what you do. Who will be good for. When you take any decision policy, your management. These things of the poorest person, you can and say, how would my decision today improve the life today or tomorrow of the poorest person that I can think about?
Ethical reasoning for systems being the second is systems acting, learning to cooperate rather than to compete in economics. The last century has been driven too much with these false notions that human beings are purely self-interested and rational. That some invisible hand by combining the competitive actions of lots of people creates goodness for everybody.
To be able to maintain a world, which is good for all of us together, for cooperation with others, I've got to learn to let go of my ego.
I would say candidly in the civil society sector there's as much ego amongst the leaders of organization as there is just probably less in government. It's more in the corporate sector and the symbols for the mirror.
He says media position, But you taught me and civil society organizations. Don't cooperate with each other very well. Therefore, whose brand is it? And who's going to get the benefit and recommendation for it and false competition in corporations. So let go of your ego and support the others around you.
The third, orientation is systems. which I guess we already understood is necessary. You can't be looking at only one part of a system and being the expert in how to improve it. The economy or any one thing like public health, you have to consider that many things affect what you're interested in. What you do affects everything else, learn to think of and see the whole system as a picture in your mind to see how it might be operating.
You need curiosity and a desire to keep understanding different things. This is what if, when you find something which looks strange to you. It seems wrong to you because you don't know anything about it. Whether you feel an expert in something is more important, but that's the trigger for learning. As soon as something feels strange or wrong, you say I've been given life.
I can explore something new and continue to so systems thinking the discipline is the desire to keep learning. To be curious and to have humidity again. But I don't know everything. There's still so much to learn. So three disciplines and three orientation systems: thinking, systems acting and systems being and what the world needs.
I'll end with this is everyone learning to listen deeply to people.
Echoing almost Dr. Kurien's words or the other way around. Because Gurudev Tagore was born long before. He wrote Gitanjali for which he got the Nobel prize over a hundred years ago. And he said in Gitanjali. Every head is held high. I no mine is with fear. Where the world is not being broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls. Through the internet and even otherwise, we have divided ourselves into fragments, amongst people. Who we like and people who don't like. People who are like us and people who are not like us. We don't listen to people who we don't like. Who we think are not like us. We must learn to listen deeply, especially to people not like us.
So my poem, It's called listening. And this is the point with which I opened my book, listening for wellbeing conversations with people, not like us, It says it is time to press the pause button. Put our smart phones on silent, shut out the tweets, trolls, and soundbites, stop the windmills in our minds. It's time we listen to the whispers in the trees and to the caring in our hearts. And most of all, to the voices of people, not like us,
Then we will learn and find solutions for living together on our shared earth.
Thank you.