# I demonstrated, and the Aam Aadmi Party will find to its cost, that corruption can be effectively removed only as a biproduct of ethically successful leadership, a leadership which is of a particular organization. The only role of national and state leadersh is to promote such organizational leadership and respond to their needs. Trying to remove corruption by frontal assault, surveillance and people's involvement will lead to work slowing down in the long run and to a cynical disillusionment with the fight against corruption itself. Ethical success will expose, far more effectively than prosecutorial enquiries, the wrong doings of the past, even as it routs corruption with little effort. With apologies to the Aam Admi Party, I must state that corruption is not the major issue facing the country. Corruption alone accounts for only a very small portion, say 10%, of the losses in the country. The other 90% is from non corrupt unethical actions, mainly from inaction when positive executive action is called for. Removing corruption while remaining unethical (this can be done) would bring only marginal gain to the country, in fact the country may lose as corruption provides at least some incentive to risk taking entrpreneural behavior. The crippling handicap the nation faces is the absence of ethics among our empowered decision makers. Ethics is something far bigger than the mere absence of corruption. Most persons in government are honest even while being unethical. Not honesty but ethics is that lacking vitamin which will transform our public institutions. The AAP appears to be unaware of ethics as distinct from honesty. They need practical managers like me to make real their dreams. Emotionally Kejriwal speaks my language and his words echo my feelings. I have already done the sort of things they want to do which they have not got around doing yet. I trust they will not take it amiss when I say none of them have any record of ethically reviving public organizations. They are yet to be tested in the task of organizational improvements. Lokpal is not necessary to fight corruption. Every organization head can do it on his own just as I did in all my organizations. Kejriwal must realize that the Lokpal will be manned by the same sort of persons who today occupy postions as organization heads, high court judges, and CBI etc. What makes him think of the Lokpal as a silver bullet and its members as being descended from another world of pure perfection, immune to the blandishments of wealth and power ? Why not accept the need for ethicals to directly head the country's organizations and ask the country's leaders to follow ethical directions like I did? There should be no diffidence in acknowledging the potential role of ethically armed individuals, a moral elite among the powerful. The task of improving organizations cannot be left to flash mobs. The organization head alone can do it; he can do it perfectly if he is ethical. The removal of corruption is a minor benefit in the ethical revival of an organization. An ethical organization head knows the needs of the people, not by taking their opinion on operational matters but because he imagines himself in the postion of the Aam Aadmi thereby understanding what he/she wants. A housewife wants regualr supply of clean water in her kitchen tap. There is no need to ask her. The benefit to the people should come , not by subsidizing current cost of goods and services, a strategy which is not sustainable in the long run, but by cutting real costs through ethical management; these costs will include that of corruption but the much greater saving will come from efficiency improvements. AAP must champion the ethicals and appeal to top civil servants to become, not honest, but ethical. Reducing the country's strategy to a two point agenda, of fighting corruption and giving direct cash reliefs to the people, is wishful thinking and an oversimplification which will misguide the common man who will feel let down later. But I compliment Kejriwal and AAP for naming and shaming individuals. Others talk about corruption as a phenomenon which mysteriously happens by itself without any human actor involved. AAP alone has shown the courage to name names. But to balance the equation, they should also name the good guys, the ethicals, and urge others to follow this example. Only pointing out wrongdoing will create negativity. If you dislike Vadra and Gadkari so much, there ought to be no coyness in naming and praising a specific ethical individual. Lumping an ethical person in the category of the merely honest is a calumny.
# Many decent persons will disagree, saying that corruption is a cancer like desease which must first be tackled after which the organizational improvements can begin. Corruption will destroy the nation otherwise. Let us put all our efforts to eradicate this evil. Your organizational revivals, Mr. Luke, can come later. Midway through my career, around 1990, I too was of the same view. But this view is wrong though today everyone from Rahul Gandhi to Narendra Modi says corruption is the great national danger etc etc. I am suspicious when those opposed to each other say the same thing; they cannot be sincere. Understanding the word as we do today, India would have been destroyed long ago if corruption was capable of destroying countries. Corruption destroys only the weak, the vulnerable, the innocent, the poor, the sick and all those who are marginalized and broken. It strengthens the elite who speak in the name of the country. Today, corruption is the single most powerful unifying force in the country. It has brought together the leaders from the Malayali, the Punjabi, the Assamese, the Bengali, the Gujarati, the Hindi wallahs, the cricketers and other sportsmen and women, business men and civil servants, MPs and MLAs, PSU managers, the Tamils, the Telugus, the Marathis, the Tribals, the privileged and lower classes and castes, and all other colors, shades, shapes and sizes which make up the Indian bandwidth. Corruption has great powers to camouflage itself - "What I have done is not corruption, what you have done is." A pure anti corruption drive can never succeed as too many well fed people would find themselves on a diet. Corruption feeds and supports not only the relativlely small number of the corrupt but also indirectly the very large number of honest unethicals. The withdrawal symptoms will be as excruciating as that faced by an alchholic hung out to dry. But there is one elixir they will accept in lieu. They will go for an ethical deal. "Ethics de do, corruption le lo", sung to the tune of the famous film song - "paise de do, joote le lo" - will become the defining mantra of our times. Corruption can be driven out only by an ethical administration. Only in front of an ethical will the corrupt cringe and cleanse themselves. As the management wizards say, "It is a win win for all ! ", though some of these "winners" will be the new losers, the new poor, mourning secretly for the good times of the past.
# Corruption is not a desease but the absence of ethics. To remove corruption, ethics must be bought in. Like nature, government functioning abhors a vacuum. Either there will be ethics or you will have unethical conduct. Corruption is only one of the unethical acts; there are many more, all of which deplete the common wealth. A public body which functions with zero corruption, but unethically, is capable of destroying public wealth as effectively as a corrupt one. Stop attacking corruption in governance, start praising ethics in governance.
# Attacking corruption and the corrupt yields good dividends as benefits are front loaded. The low hanging fruit are plucked and big heists are discussed publicly. There is a period of intense satisfaction among the watching public. But this is a dead end street to walk on and it does not go very far. After a time the corruption fighters will be merely repeating themselves. People want to remove corruption because they see it as the infirmity which is denying them efficient services. But even if corruption is removed for some time and then too the citizens find their level of services abysmally low, then the anti corruption rhetoric will invite mockery. One ethical in office can do more to remove corruption in his organization then a thousand anti corruption activists outside. The anti corruption activists will point out the corrupt acts but will not be able to convict anyone, not for lack of proof but because there is complicity and fatigue within the courts and the prosecutors. This activist cannot improve the working of the organization. The crusade aginst the corrupt will yield diminishing returns as the Indian elite, after first showing disgust and indigation, begins to see among the accused those who prop up the crooked system which supports the elite life styles. The AAP activists say they want to replace corruption with honesty. To ask highly intelligent and ambitious individuals within the public services to be merely honest is not likely to make the heart beat faster. It is dull, uninspiring and depressing. Lord, make me honest but not yet ! The message of honesty will meet the fate of a Salvation Army Band trying to gatecrash a Stones concert. Those who drink cognac are unlikely to switch to buttermilk because of its health giving properties. But give them an ethics laced drink that intoxicates beyond the farthest they have ever experienced yet leaves no hangover and recalls to them the enthusiasms and beliefs they had when young, give them this and they will switch rather than fight and become converts to ethics.
# Poor, shabby, virtuous Maid Honesty will have no suitors and is likely to die unwed. They are all seduced by the Sultry Sirens of Wealth and Power. She must change herself into a goddess. One who is beautiful, magical, brave, able to transform men into demi gods. If she puts on ethical robes , she will be all this and more. Then she becomes Ethica, the goddess of ethics, she who is given the power to cleanse this soiled world. Those who turned away from the plain Maid Honesty will accept, court, pursue and revere Ethica. As She appears, Greed, Sloth and Fear flee. She lives, not in heaven but in every human heart. But only an ethical releases her and makes her his guide. She is also called Truth and she has all the qualities which make men scorn delights and live laborious days. It is ethicals who establish Ethics over that organization which each ethical controls. Ethica cannot manifest herself without the ethical who is prepared to defend her by sacrificing himself. On her own she will be destroyed. Without her, he is blind and stumbles. With her he cannot fail.
# What I mean is that employees will accept ethics if it is practiced by the organization head. They will agree to a command to be honest at the threat of punishment. But this punishment will remain only a threat as even those authorised to administer it will be corrupted. They will disguise corruption and give it different names and say that this particular act is not corruption etc. etc. Ethics meets their deeper need for creativity whereas mere honesty is sterile and dull. Asking highly motivated and ambitious civil servants to become honest will produce a yawn. But ask them to be ethical and their blood will be stirred and they will produce superhuman deeds. Removal of corruption will be a minor accounting entry. There is no point in getting so worked up about corruption while ignoring the need for ethics within the government. It is like trying to scratch out the sores without treating the desease. Highlighting a symptom while turning away from the larger malaise and its solution is not being intelligent. Mere honesty is not ethics. Merely fighting corruption is not ethics. It is only the first step. The next step is to acknowledge ethics and support ethicals. Corruption will slink away.
# Attacking corruption of the ruling dispensation is an operational necessity for the AAP and they must contnue doing this. But once in power they should nurture and promote ethicals to run the big economic service providers. This is how their promises to people will be fulfilled. The ethicals will not listen to their leaders. They should be prepared for this and not see it as arrogance of power.
# But I say this and say it with complete conviction - Kejriwal and the AAP represent the only hope for the country. Fragile and not perfect but still the only one. They have a finger on the pulse of the people. They shine with a white hot flame of love for the country . The average Indian will trust them far more than they trust any politician. But they must not over emphasise what they did during those 49 days. Most of us can run 10 seconds at a faster speed than the average speed of the world marathon record championship run. AAP should do what they claim over a reasonable period and then assert success. They should study my methods. That which is very difficult should not be called easy.
# # Today, the the achievements of the Gujarat model are being doubted by perceptive observers. No one is calling into doubt the GSFC revival and the other organizational turnarounds which I brought about. My model is not being repudiated or even doubted. It is being ignored by the owners precisely because they cannot be doubted, ignored because acknowledging them would be embarrassing.
# In the public mind my successes glow brighter today than when I was controlling these companies. Recently a Gujarat journalist wrote to me, unprompted, that even though I was not cooperative to his fraternity when I was working, they now recognize my success in saving GSFC and have a high regard for me. This is written a decade after I left Guajrat. Everyone other than the owners admire my successes, albeit privately.
# I repeat, the politician can do nothing to revive an organization except by posting an ethical as its head and then let him/her get on with the job. So my advice to my coutrymen and women is to dump the politician and revere the ethical. Many are asking for a strong man to run the country. Only those opposed to ethicals want a strong man. They put a low value on their personal freedom and so are prepared to give it up. The strong man cannot solve the country's problems and exploit its opportunities because he , by his very nature, sees the ethical as his enemy and will do his best to suppress him. Under him , the country will fail because only ethicals, thousands of them spread over the country, each acting independently, can revive organizations and institution from which the common man takes his services. So please do not put your faith in a strong man. QED. But because the strong man can benefit others who are strong, they can create huge pandals where his praises are sung and thereby convince the people that he has indeed achieved wonders. The weak are dumb so their groans in the night are not heard.
# There is one thing the politiican can do and does. He can rob Peter to pay Paul. Take from one group and give to another. The Right takes from the poor and gives to the rich. How? By evicting the poor from their lands and giving to the businessmen for factories, giving pollution permissions liberally, building highways for the wealthy and to allow quick material movements to the new factories, keeping industrial wages low by suppressing unions, bringing down income tax for the highest brackets and collecting revenue by sales tax levied on all, making legal justice long and expensive so that only the rich can avail of the services of the high priced lawyers, paying low prices for the produce of the farmers and not marketing them efficiently and many other similar arrangements. The Socialist /Left takes from the rich and gives to the poor. How? By mass employment programs without creating viable assets, by forcing excess employment in government offices, by land ceiling laws, by reservation in government jobs etc. But it is clear that most governments today favor the rich becase the rich buy off the decision makers . But in both, the Right and the Left keep a good commission for themselves and also destroy a lot of wealth in the process. None of them create any wealth. This can be done only by the efficient functioning of economic organizations.
# If the Indian revival is nothing but the revival of its institutions, and institutions can be revived only by ethicals, then the Indian revival can happen only by reform within the government. This reform/ revival can be brought out only by ethicals occupying strategic positions in government organizations. It cannot happen by street action as the activists will tire after some time in the face of an unyielding government , a government which claims electoral public support. It can never happen by policy guidelines from a distant bureaucracy. Policy guidelines are a triumph of mind dancing over matter, of hope over experience, insubstantial stuff which vaporises at the first encounter with reality. The Indian revival will happen within the government yes, but by ethicals acting independently within it, shining not in the dignified policy discussion chambers but in the heat and dust of the Indian plains, under the open skies. India will be lit up by these independent lights and never by a central switch. The ethicals will carry the banner of Indian resurgence. The ethical will differ from today's standard civil servant as does a fine race horse from a pack mule. So it is vitally important for our society to nurture ethicals and give them a free hand once their identity is confirmed. I see no signs of this ever happening and that is why I am pessimistic of our country's future.
# Today all the political parties are wooing the voters with sincerity, empathy and fervor. We feel your pain, just give us one chance and that which we have never been able to do, we will do it if you elect us. This is election time so a certain amount of unrealistic promises is not out of place. No politician will tell you how they are going to do it. Their manner suggests that implementation is just a matter of detail and 'once a decision is taken by us top leaders, then the work will be done'. They never admit that their failure to implement decisions is entirely because of the intolerance they dispaly towards ethical functioning within the government. Without ethicals within the government, the true goals of development can never be formulated let alone implemented and realized. But the politician is definitely not promising you ethicals, this is totally ruled out. If you ask the political leaders, they will dismiss any sugggestion that they will ever tolerate ethicals under them, ethicals who act independently. So they promise you true development but fail to tell you they do will not tolerate ethicals under them. They do not intend to give you true development because the only way you will get it is through is from ethicals and the ethical is one person they will not accept. "We promise you everything except ethicals', in other words they promise you nothing. So their assurances cannot be fulfilled and it is a lousy confidence trick they play on the Indian voter, they are buying your vote with cheques which will bounce. Reductio ad absurdum, their promises are logically impossible to fulfill. So the voter should make only one demand of the political leader - "Give us ethicals and you too must respect ethicals." That is the only demand the voter should make, all the rest will fall into place. That is the only demand the politician will never accept.
# # I look at the situations which trouble us today and I know how easily I could, if I were heading that organization, overcome the challenges and convert that them into great victories. I could revive and turaround Air India into consistent profits within two years if posted as CMD - I would begin by ignoring all oral requests/directions from the Minister and other politicians/ civil servants. With ethics as our guide, there is nothing that can defeat us. Things are not complicated at all. They are difficult but it is the sort of difficulty which an ethical approach will relish. With human will and ingenuity, these difficulties will melt away. We are tackling these challenges the wrong way by trying to find out policy solutions to a large number of field failures. The situations in the field are so diverse that no policy, except very broad general ones, will work. What are needed are ethicals to be given charge of field organizations. They wil set these right one by one. Not new policies buit ethicals are the need of the hour.
# There is only one real challenge before the country, the rest arise out of our failure to meet this. And that is to convince the Indian people, and particularly its elite, to be guided by ethics professionally or if this is not possible, then at least to support the ethicals working among them. It is easy to identify an ethical by the three distinguishing characteristics listed out here.
#I am not stating or even implying that the man in the street is actually asking for ethicals. They are not. They probably do not even know what an ethical is, never having experienced one. They dream of ethicals but have probably concluded that these are mythical beings, one of the gods above. They do not realize that there is an ethical present within the heart of every person and this being will emerge when we put our faith in ethics. That is the role our leadership is called upon to play. So there is no shortage of potential ethicals, every Indian is a potential ethical. But only the influential and powerful should attempt to become ethical because they alone have the capability to leverage ethics into practical good and the armor to guard against the sort of attacks that will be launched. The common man , the poor and the vulnerable do not have this cushion, they fall upon the thorns of life and bleed, they should not take this risk. They will become ethical when they work under the protective canopy of an ethical in his chair.
# A brief description of ethics is now given. We are concerned only with organizational ethics. Here ethics is a quality that is displayed in the organizational, in the professional field. We are not concerned with the purely personal kind. If it is there it should manifest itself in his professional efforts. The public is only concerned with that. Ethics is the quality which urges us to the consistent pursuit of the true objectives of the organization for which we work, in other words, wherein the organization becomes true to itself. It is most clearly seen in the person who has some legitimate authority over the organization, preferably as its head. When the organizational head pursues the true, defining goals of the organization, that for which it was set up, then he practices ethics. Ethics tells him to suppress whatever is in conflict with these and to promote that which strengthens these goals. Ethics urges him to see this as his professional mission. For him, personal success is in the achievement of these goals. Ethics treats a career success which is in conflict with these fundamental goals as a failure. An ethically directed organization head would like career successes and is disappointed when it does not come his way even when his actions have vastly benefited the organization. But his disappointment does not change his fundamental loyalty to organizational goals. The ethical is always successful, he can never fail. His alignment to ethics ensures that. He is successful because he is successful in bringing out the full capabilities of his team. ( Please read The Principles of Ethical Management icon). Every action is judged by whether it furthers or weakens the basic organizational goals. Every action is ethically directed. Ethics is defined not as traditional morality but as a discilplne of true alignment with the organizational goals of growth and prosperity for all stakeholders, where none is unjustly treated. Injustice is not tolerated in ethics. The wealth the ethical creates for the organization is not taken from someone else, it is created by creativity of the organization's members. This organizational ethics is the most powerful natural ally of the public interest, the two are naturally harnessed. Think of it this way. Ethics is the direction finder, the ethical the coach driver, the stakeholders pulling forward with team spirited motive power - these together drive the carriage with its precious cargo, The Public Interest. Those who wish to hijack the Public Interest will quite naturally target the coach driver, the ethical. That is why the ethical comes under attack and that is why the common people should defend him and save him from ambush.
# The politician and other centres of power will always see, correctly, the ethical civil servant as their main foe. This is because of an incompatibility in their fundamental natures and not because of a lack of diplomacy on the ethical's part. To the politician, the real purpose of coming to power is to exercise it arbitrarily. Only this way can he reward his supporters and keep his opponents in check. He does not take much pleasure in the consistent pursuit of the true objectives of government which makes him, in his eyes, powerless. As the ethical pursues the true goals of human empowerment and growth, and the politician can function only through the civil servant, he substantially narrows down the politician's arbitrary exercise of power. The politicain and the ethical will always be opposed to each other. India has today too many politicians and too few ethicals. True development will come about when this situation is reversed. The situation will be reversed when influential sections of society place a high value on ethicals and demand more of them.
# The arrogance and aggression of the Indian political leaders is there because the other centres of power particularly the civil service, have ceded primacy to the politician. This was the natural consequence of them having abandoned ethics in their professional work. No politician was able to tell me what to do or prevent me from doing what I wanted to. If there were more ethicals like me, the politicians would have been better behaved. Blaming the politicians is wrong. The fault is of the elite.
# # The crucial battles in India, the one which will decide the country's future, are the ones not being fought. The battlelines today are clearly drawn. Congress vs BJP vs Aam Aadmi vs Tinamool vs CPM etc. These are battles for who will rule India, not how it will be ruled. No matter who wins, India will still have compromised, doubtful leaders who will give the country more of the same, old wine in a new bottle, same product with a different label. The choice before India is rule by ethicals against rule by unethicals. This is the battle that should be fought but is not being fought. Each party is pointing to the other's wrongdoings, no party is offering ethical rule. The true battle is not being fought because there are no ethicals to fight it. The true battle will be fought within the fortifications of Indian institutions between the ethicals in position there and those unethicals who would like to control and subvert these organizations. I do not see this struggle happening in our great public institutions. Unless Indians understand the necessity of this battle and are prepared to take sides in favor of ethicals, the Indian revival will remain a distant dream. This electoral battle is a fake battle. The true battle is between the ethicals and the unethicals. There are no signs of this ever happening. These true decisive battles will have nothing to do with elections but will be fought in the period between elections, not between parties but between ethicals and unethicals, not at the polling booth but in those daily struggles within institutions. Failure to recognize this is the blindness we in India suffer from.
# Flyovers, ATMs, skyscrapers, space missions etc are compatible with unethical rule. They are not a certificate of good rule. They can come up by denying what is due to the weaker sections of the people. On the other hand, skyscrapers, flyovers, ATMs, space missions are also compatible with ethical rule. But in ethical rule , they will be more horizontally spread in terms of ownership and use, there will be no corruption in their construction, they will be done at half the cost and time and will not be on a scale to over awe the common man. The higher the buildings, the lower the spirits of the man in the street.
# Corruption can be removed only as a biproduct of ethical leadership and not by a direct frontal attack. I proved this in all my organizations.
#Corruption accounts only for about 10% of what is bled from our country. The rest is from non corrupt unethical behaviour, mainly delays and unwillingness to act. If we were able to completely remove corruption from our government offices by a credible fear of punishment, ( this can be done), the gains to the country would be minimal perhaps even negative as corruption today provides at least some incentive to act. The number of corrupt individuals in government is not more than 5%. The rest are unethical.
# It is not honest people we want but ethicals. The honest can be, and mostly are, unethical. There is a great difference between the two. Not honesty but ethics is what the country is thirsting for. The ethical is honest but that is the least of his strengths.
# The honest can be and usually are devious, unimaginative, uninspiring, risk averse, timid, dull, uncreative, promise breakers, allowing undue monetary benefit in return for an implicit promise of a non monetary benefit later on such as posting and promotion. They are tacit allies of the corrupt. To ask officers to become merely honest and follow the rules, as the Aam Aadmi Party is doing, is a very bad bargain for society. Society needs ethicals like me in positions of any authority, no matter how limited this authority is. The honest man is law abiding, pious, religious and respectful to his superiors. He is a 'good' person as that word is understood in society. But he is no good where exceptional efforts are required. Do not look to him for getting an organization out of the mess it has got into. Put your money on the ethical. Yet these honest persons can do a lot of good if they work under an ethical.
# Corruption is not the major issue facing the country. The major issue facing the country is the inefficient working of its institution providing services to the people. The people assume that this is because of corruption. It is not. The real reason for the poor working of its institutions is the absence of ethicals among those who head such organizations. Nobody is pointing this out because it is very satisfying to attack others and also because becoming ethical is ruled out by most of our opinion makers.
# Long before the Aam Aadmi came centre stage, I was working and fighting for the common man, for those who could not pay me and those who I did not know. And in October, 2006, after the magnificent GSFC turnaround, the finest corporate revival in independent India, PSU or private sector - share price increasing from Rs. 17 to Rs 251 in three years - and following a confrontation with the Chief Minister of Gujarat, with two years service remaining, I resigned from the IAS and returned to my village, unemployed. After that I did come back and successfully worked as CMD/CEO in three other companies. So I have been there and back, and have fought the good fight in the vanguard of the struggle for a better India. I did what others talk of doing. I stood up to the powerful and successfully grew the wealth of the commons. I did not have to leave my service to work for the common people. I was working for them thoughout my professional service, I was fighting for them while working for them, I was fighting for them by working for them, I had to fight off the attacks of those who did not want me to work for them. There is risk and hostility but you can work for the common people while sitting in that chair of power and previlege in the government. It is not necessary to leave that chair. In fact you can work for the people only by sitting and working in that chair. That chair was not a gift to me from any politician. I left the chair because my great victories were over and I could best answer the arrogance of political power by walking away from the field of our conflicts and show that for me the chair was now nothing more than a piece of furniture. I had proved I was better than anyone of them, had more courage, more cussed doggedness, more ability to walk alone and willingness fight for those whom no one fights for, than anyone else. That is all that finally matters. I proved what was neccessary. Holding on to the chair after that would have shown that I feared freedom.
# India needs a thousand like me. All parties and political leaders will shrink in size. The state will step back from centralized control and each individual will grow to his/her full potential.
# None of India's leaders understand what the country hungers for. The people wish to see practical ethics being demonstrated in the running of our institutions, something that I did. The people will then see that ethics and real life success are two names for the same thing.
Let us not hand over the rudder of our life to anyone else. Man does not live by bread alone. We need business men for our nation but we do not need a nation of businessmen. We want Gujarat for our nation but we do not want all the other states to become Gujarat clones. Gujaratis are India's most intrepid travellers for they want to see something which is not Gujarat. Man is not a mere economic animal. He needs a good economy to meet his material needs but he also seeks art, poetry, and music. He requires physical activity and games. He needs the company of others and a knowledge of the world we live in. Above all he seeks personal freedom and resists being told what to do by another individual. He wants to feel good about the world around him, he wants a just and fair world, a world which calls out for his best and not his worst. The ethically led society allows fulfillment all of man's deepest aspirations. We hear everywhere that Indians want a change. Let me suggest the change you should insist on. You should vote for the change model I demonstrated in my life, in the organizational revivals I brought about. If ethics is adopted by the chief of the organization you work for or take your services from, the change you want will come to you, your life will change. Do not believe those who talk to you from high platforms and are protected by stone faced guards. Do not trust anyone you do not see at close hand no matter how good they look from a distance or on screens. Those who insist on winning your trust from a distance are trying to enslave you, to mislead you without having put in the hands on effort to improve the organization whose services you use. They are trying to buy your support without having earned it by directly working for you. Only those you are in touch with can change your lives - your employer, your childrens' teacher and principal, the nearby policeman, your doctor and those who meet your myriad needs, all of which have a component not wholly devoid of a moral element. Judge them by what they have done for you materially. If they pas this test, then respect and honor them. If you do this you cannot be blindly led. No Prime Minister or Chief Minister can change your lives. If the Prime Minister or Chief Minister are good, they will give you ethical service persons to meet your needs. That is their only function. You would be better off putting your faith on those ethicals who you come across and experience frequently at close hand. Persons like me. Not me personally but those like me who do not let go of their mission no matter how difficult it appears. These pathfinders will stay with you till the difficult and dangerous bit is over. Then they will leave.
# None of India's political parties will take you where your heart wants to go. The Aam Admi Party could do it if they stop talking about honesty and pursue ethics instead, after understanding the difference between the two. They are our best and finest, these young women and men. But they are fated to suffer defeat and disillusionment. None of them has ever led any ethical revival of any complex commercial organization. I suspect that if they ever come to power, they will be as hostile to my kind of ethical management as the traditional parties. Many Indians are passionate and idealistic but lose the spark quickly. The tradition of cold idealism or practical ethics is absent in our thinking. The idealism is only among a few of those who do not have power. There is no cold long burning idealism among those in positions of authority.
# # India's revival can happen only by the revival of its institutions, in fact these terms are identical. Institutions can revive only with ethicals heading it. The only job of the political leaders is to place ethicals as the organization heads. The politicians will do this if there is a strong public opinion in favor of this. Thus a strong public demand for ethicals is the only concrete expression of the people's desire to progress. Such a desire will inevitably lead to its fulfillment. So the over riding task of India's elite is to convince its leaders and its people to demand and honor ethicals. Nothing else will work. To assume , as they have been doing all along, that India can progress without ethical leadership is sophistry and cleverness. This will not do. Every country progresses to the extent its elite is ethically influenced. If this elite, as in India, turns its face resolutely against ethics in favor of opportunism and has within it not even a tiny proportion of ethically directed individuals, then there can be no real progess, only self aggrandizement.
# What is written till now is a wishlist, wishful thinking if you wish, my hope for the country. What I see is quite a different scene, that foretells something else entirely.
# Am I hopeful of real development in India? The chances of this happening are effectivley nil. Real development can happen only through the efforts of widely dispersed ethicals in the fileld. The Indian politician, with the support of the elite and the common man, will prevent the ethical from operating. Our country will continue along the same path we are walking now. All governments will claim development which they will substantiate by pointing to big infrastructure projects and some big business investments. Many Indian billionaires will figure in the Forbes list. The poor will get big doles from well publicised schemes. This will not be true development but only a fraction of what ethical development could produce. The huge difference between these two models represents India's unused potential, our failure, a failure that we have chosen and not one which has happened in spite of our efforts. Why am I so pessimistic? A country which wants to excel in cricket will be ecstatic over a Tendulkar century. My achievements were of the same class and if Indians valued true development these would have drawn unrestrained public applause. Nothing like this happened. I say this because there has not been the slightest interest shown by my fellow countrymen and women in my ethical message, both as demonstrated in my actions on the public stage with so many economic revivals, the Sardar Sarovar and the GSFC being big, and also in what is written here. The sort of ethics I practiced and now propound is a profoundly energising program for the country's development but it has drawn a big yawn. Indians are not truly revolutionary, they are lulled by messages of convenience. I do not mean revolutionary in the sense of overthrowing what is good but of drastically strengthening whatever good is possible. As said earlier, we lack the cold, sustained idealism which is the essential ingredient for that. Indians' passions for a public cause are quickly roused, quickly extinguished. Even here they prefer denunciation to genuine admiration. I am different from others in that I expressed my idealism entirely through my actions in my professional exertions and never through articualte speech. I preach only what I have already practiced. First practice, then theory. The response to my message has been zero. The fact that I revived sickening PSUs in BJP ruled Gujarat on the one hand and in CPM ruled Kerala on the other, and did so in a manner dramatically superior to anything comparable, has not caught the interest of any of Indian thinkers. These are those who are so sincerely and didactically engaged in studying 'the problem of Indian economic development'. I wrote to some of them. They did not reply. This lack of interest shows some deeper allergy to ethical conduct in one's profession. No Indian takes practical ethics seriously. They know it can upset those long established relations of adjustment and compromises which, while remaining honest, makes possible the business of daily life without questioning. For them ethics is better treated as pure thought unfit to be contaminated with wordly action. Ethical conduct is for seminar discussions. Wordly action and ethics are kept separate in watertight compartments, both have play unrestrained by the other . So this is how it is and this is how it is going to be. The wastage and injustice that are built in is what sustains this particular engine model of development. The relatively previleged and well off are riding on the sweating and emaciated backs of around 600 million Indians. This is the subsidy the poor pay to the rich. The poor are content to pay this tax in perpetuity as they reject that which could free them from it, which is rational, ethical leadership of a dispersed, democratic, institutional kind. No one from the selfish elite is urging them to do so either. This is a stable equilibrium. It will continue for the foreseable future. All over the world too, the strong are becoming callous and feel little responsibility for the weak and the vulnerable. Everything is under control, folks, nothing to worry about. Enjoy the ride. This is the message the strong and the devious give to others.
# That is what they think. Unethical progress can show a great deal of impressive achievements - ATMs, flyovers, new industrial plants, high rise apartments, gated communities, space missions, shopping malls and other phyisical manifestations of progress which may impress a visitor. But unethical progress is by its very nature exploitative - the average wage of an industrial worker in Gujarat is Rs. 6000. pm and all those shiny structures which over awe the common man are done at 30% extra cost and 50% extra time as compared to what an ethical would have done it in. Those who are necessarily shortchanged in such progress will hit back by throwing spanners in the works and the locomotive of development will slow down to a crawl. Anything unfair cannot move fast. So unethical development has built in speed breakers within it. India can progress only ethically. Ethical progress has no intrinsic road blocks in its way. The only enemies are those who attack the ethical like I was attacked. It is society's duty to incapacitate them. It is not the job of the ethical. He is too busy creating wealth for the society and nothing for himself.
# The Indian people - the elite, the middle class and the commons, will never support the ethical against the politician, even when the ethical has revived big economic institutions and the poltician has tried to hinder him. If , as is being said day in and day out, the Indian people wanted development, then they would have stood by me and trumpeted my name. This did not happen and I stood alone when attacked by politicians after, but never before, my successes. The politician has the ability to arbitrarily benefit or harm persons, the ethical cannot do this. The Indian people respect this capability of the politician, or for that matter any person of power, far more than the labors of the ethical. The politician, being unethical, allows people under him also to be unethical thereby increasing their choices; the ethical does not give this latitude, only that which is right can be done. This latitude can be encashed and that is why the politician will always be looked upto. It is a convenient belief that only the politician is bad and the people are noble and good. This is not true. The politician is a composite of the people he represents but he also corrupts them. This rose tinted view of the people is not borne out by facts, it is a romantic lie. If one cannot trust the leader, then one cannot trust the people he leads. I am sorry to break this illusion. We live in an imperfect world but one which can be improved day to day by ethical effort. The solution is to replace the unethical leader with the ethical and the people will become good. The People do not represent one fixed quality. Their natural tendency is to turn unethical just as a field left untended will be over run with weeds. Only if the field is handed over to the ethical farmer will it yield good crop or fragrant and beautiful flowers. But if the farmer is not rewarded for turning a weed infested land to a fragrant, fruitful and lovely garden then the likelihood is of ugly weeds filled gardens in the future. My advice to the reader is to think carefully before trying to do what I did. You will create great wealth for the commons and nothing for yourself; face hostility and not be rewarded by the company owner or even society. The people will thank you only privately, publicly they will give credit to the politician. Your success will for ever point a finger of reproach to those modest and risk averse but highly intelligent persons who 'manage things' in our country. These persons are the most important in our set up. They have no capability to properly manage a single institution yet they are the enablers, the pivots around whom events move. Most of our key bureaucrats and quite a few political operatives belong to this group. Their services are highly sought but they are parasites, having the manners and morals of courtiers. Ethical success makes most persons feel uncomfortable. The Indian people prefer to be fooled by the politician than be rescued by the ethical. So look after yourself and keep your hands clean, attempt only what is safe and conventional, nothing more. Step beyond these limits only for your own material advancement. Selfishness is acceptable provided it is not criminal. A moral person too is acceptable provided the morality is defined as personal purity and not a proactive effort to actually improve the objective world. India will remain as it has always been, a land of cruel paradoxes. Let it be. It will continue to function far below its potential.
# When we talk of a country's revival, it absolutely means an ethical revival. This does not mean that each and every member of the power elite is an ethical. It only means that most of these elite respect the very few ethicals who can be counted and who stand out. Out of the Indian population of over a 1000 million, we could be talking of a power elite of around 50,000. The ethicals would be found only among them, simply because a person without power and influence cannot be an ethical, no matter how good, pure and God fearing he/she is. Ethical is defined as one who uses his/her power ethically in his/her professional/public field so one without some autonomous power over others, such as what you have while heading a government department or a major private organization of some size, cannot be an ethical. So from the power elite, 1000 ethicals, one in 50 would be the largest number one could hope for but that number would be more than enough to saturate the country. I would say even 12 would be enough to make a measurable impact. Each ethical would transform thousands under him/her to act ethically. But the first ethical among these 12 to come forward must be recognized and honored. If the first one is not honored, as happened with me, then it stops with him. Nobody else would then come forward to walk the ethical path looking to the hostility and the absence of recognition the first one faced.
# Why, if he brings such untold benefits to the common wealth, is the ethical opposed so tenaciously? Today, most of the wealth and comforts of the ruling elite are dependent on some form of tacit acqueiscence with wrongdoing. They know it. A simple fable will explain this hostility. Take, for example, the humble neem twig. It is cheap and keeps our teeth clean and healthy far more effectively than the more expensive toothpastes. If a substantial number of persons used them, large scale employment would be created for the rural poor. The pollution from used tubes and brushes would cease. But the toothpaste industry would find its margins under pressure, the shops and trade selling paste and brushes would see business come down and dentists would find fewer customers. If a city mayor, to popularise its use, were to require all pavements, including those in posh areas, to be made available to the rural twig sellers every day between 6am to 8am, he would face furious opposition from the usual suspects. That, in a nutshell, explains, to the dummies, the opposition to the ethical. The ethical is the neem twig. He does the job much better and cheaper than the existing arrangements and also in the process makes redundant the wasteful and parasitic layers which add to the cost without adding any value.
# So a country must earn the ethicals it wants to have. It must grow them. This is the principal task of national development. The demand for ethicals is the only true expression of the nation's desire to progress. For the ethical, the success of his mission, which is the transformation and revival of the organization of which he is put in charge, takes priority over his professional career growth. The number of such persons will be small in any society. Society can increase this number by recognizing and honoring such persons. India is a country with a strong allergy against ethicals. Those countries where this allergy is weaker are the countries where Indians would like to migrate in search of a better life, countries in the West. No matter what our seers may say about our great spiritual riches, poor Indians vote with their feet if free migration is allowed. The only reason for this is that these countries are more tolerant towards ethicals than India. I do not say these countries are ethical, only that they are more tolerant towards its ethicals. That is why the quality of life is better there.
# Let me make it clear beyond any misunderstanding. Only progress led on ethical lines is real progress, without this the so called development we have is composed of varying proportions of inefficiency, wastage, unfairness, exploitation, injustice and loot and a plain, could'nt care less sort of bureaucracy. This breeds absence of accountability, built in corruption and shameless peddling of falsehoods presented in officialese which no one can decipher. Most of the Indian people enjoy no benefits from such a development and feel the government has let them down. But it enriches many and also displays many visible signs of progress such as highways, ATMs, vastly expanded air travel, metros etc. When you spend Rs. 10,000 cr. something has to come up. These could have been done much better with an ethical approach. I proved this with my successes which were easily achieved. These so called successes, which all governments proudly display, do not validate our efforts. The present development pattern is a failure because the people of the country think it so, there is no other standard, their judgement must be accepted. It fails because it assumes that development can happen without a small core of ethicals at the top to give a broad ethical direction to our efforts . This is an impossibility as development means development of the weak which cannot be done without an ethical commitment on part of the government agent because, without ethics, one is likely to favor the strong or do only that which is safe and convenient which amounts to the same thing. The present pattern of development represents a failure. Only those benefiting from this, a very large and powerful vested interest, would call it even a partial success. Partial success can be granted when sincere efforts are made. In the absence of ethics, the effort itself is insincere. It is like a student cheating and failing and then fudging the marks to claim success.
# Let me put it in a simplified way which every school girl/boy can understand, beyond challenge. We assume that the nation's capacity at full utiliztion is 100 units of useful production. With ethical leadership the actual output could be as high as 60 units or above. With unethical leadeship, the national output would be 20 units. This is the position India is in today. So by abandoning ethics in the public sphere and choosing unethical conduct, we are voluntarily choosing not to develop. All debate which does not address this crucial issue is missing the point. We do not need pure expertise at the top, there is no such thing, we need an expertise that is born out of ethics. My entire success was ethics engendered. The same process can work in others.
# A belief in practical ethics by a decisive section within the ruling elite will send a life giving effluence to all our ventures. With society believing in ethics, we will never fail in the practical affairs of the world. Failure will turn to success, defeat to victory.
# As I said, let it be. I have left all that behind me, it is all over and I now live content in a Kerala village. Here I deal in real things - the earth, water, plants and those working for me, sweat on my back and the sun overhead. The quality of my life, physical, mental and emotional is definitely better now than what it was when I was bringing about those great turnaounds far from home. I feel anxious for my country but my part is over and now am now only a sympathetic observer with no desire to climb back onto the stage. I did whatever I could. Over those long years in the field I never let down those who trusted me, I made more promises to them than anyone else and I redeemed them all. But I do not think I converted even one person to my ethical convictions. Indians prefer to feel good than to do good.