India @ 75

Prof. Prahalad presenting his autograph on his book - The New Age of Innovation

YI-Young Indians Initiative of CII is really catching up well towards vision India@75. I had a chance to have an encounter with one of the greatest management thinker of today Prof. C K Prahalad on 20^th august at Chola Sheraton.

Spiritually starving America gave a launching pad to many spiritual gurus of India, and most of whom became known to India after they shot into popularity in US, with a limousines and white skinned devotees. This makes me wonder, had India not been a poor country or Africa not been economically and politically starving country, had the world been peaceful and a prosperous place for the mankind to live in, what these famed management guru or economists would have written about?

But, jokes apart CK Prahalad is one of the finest thinker in the world and it will be wrong to confine his domain only to corporate sectors, his involvement with young Indians initiative goes a long way in building a consensus and establishing a model to create a growth trajectory to reach what India wants to be @75. Some of his radical analysis also puts us in discomfort and we wake up to reality. Some of the discussion points I found interesting are.

1. Even though there were more than 500 rajas and different communities in India Mahatma Gandhi could unite this diversity through a common vision of Purna Swaraj, to put it in simple term-don’t buy foreign goods and it was aiming at economically weakening the British government. So similarly can we have a vision like purna swaraj that can bind the entire country? It could be like education to all kids or merit based education or children being born with right weight at the time of birth.

2. Can we have a vision that India@75 will see 50 Olympic medals or 10 new Nobel Prize winners?

3. While there are many NGO’s and CSR activities undertaken by corporate sector we cannot still transform India of 100 crore population without achieving a scale. Like the way we witnessed cell phone revolution in the country, can there be an equivalent revolution in housing or education sector?

4. Study has shown that a corrupt country can never become a rich country nor can they develop their human resources. Without developing appropriate human resources you cannot become rich.

Unfortunately India’s reputation in terms of corruption level is very high. Prof Prahalad humorously commented that even though culturally it will be really difficult to match the quality of Sweden and make it totally a corrupt free nation, still if we can match USA which ranks about 8 it would be a remarkable achievement and India’s GDP can increase by 20 trillion dollars.

Such transformation requires imagination, passion, courage, humanity, humility, intellect and luck.

While mentioning that all of us have a role in making our society corrupt free at individual, corporate and government levels. CKP lauded Infosys which is rated to be the best governed company in the world. Apparently when they were not getting suitable land for their campus in Bangalore, they threatened to move to another state following which they were given swamp land. What Infosys built in this land is today a most frequently visited destination in India.

5. While most of us have individual aspiration but we look for national initiatives Prof Prahalad reversed the order saying that the aspiration should be national and initiatives should being with the individuals.

The Confederation of Indian Industry is building a comprehensive vision for India@75, the vision has been developed by Prof C K Prahalad, Paul Ruth McCracken – distinguished university professor, Ross school of Business, University of Michigan.

During the presentation Prof. Prahalad mentioned that we should not dwell on past successes and our focus and approach should be on the future and what we could accomplish in the next 15 years. He stated that India should actively shape the emerging world order, for which we must acquire, enough economic strength, technological vitality and moral leadership and when these three dimensions are applied in equal measure it will help us to march ahead in attaining the destiny. Just economic strength and technological maturity is not enough. We know that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had economic and technological muscle. They failed moralist is an integral part of leadership. We should emphasize all three dimensions in equal measure in India’s march to her destiny.

Identifying the six big opportunities for India@75

• Turning its population into a distinct advantage
• Making the country as a home for at least 30 of the Fortune 100 firms
• Be connected with rest of the world and account for 10% of global trade
• Become a source of global innovations
• Focus on the flowering of arts, science and literature
• Become the world’s benchmark on how to cope with diversity

He said that these six big opportunities when accomplished would change the influence of India around the world. Prof. Prahalad also mentioned that India has the potential to realize this vision and in order to understand how to get there; he suggested three core principles which are simple but yet powerful methodologies for revitalizing India.

Aspirations - Resources: Aspiration must always exceed present resources, requiring a big strength

Fold the Future in: Progression towards the vision must be a process of discovery, of folding in the future

Focus on Next practices: There must be innovation and development of Next practices

While speaking on the development context he mentioned that in order to accomplish this India has to change rapidly and embrace the innovations within the broad socio political constraint which are as follows:

1. Shift from abject poverty to income inequality – Inequalities can create social tensions; therefore the first constraint that development must take into account is the need to moderate inequalities.

2. Shift from income levels to life style measurement: the universality of aspirations

3. Changing the price-performance envelope – The challenge is to build world class products and services at a new price performance level that has never been tried before by established MNC’. India has a very large number of examples - $30 cataract surgery, $2500 car

4. Shift from low tech solution to universal access to high technology solutions-We must start with the view that India should not replicate the development process of the West or China. India must leapfrog. Simply stated: avoid land lines, go wireless; avoid paper ballots, go electronic; avoid bank branches, go mobile and digital. We already have experienced the ability of technology to make progress inclusive.

5. Provisioning of products and jobs for ecological vitality – Ecological vitality is already being compromised – be it deforestation, pollution of waterways and rivers and cities. Innovations are required to provide this economic growth and at the same time avoid harming the environment beyond repair.

6. Focus on governance – An Analysis of data from 175 countries around the world comparing per capita income, human development index and corruption index confirms that there is a very high degree of correlation between income, corruption and human development. Simply stated :

(a) No country that does not develop its people is rich

(b) No country that is corrupt is rich

This is a cause of concern since India is at the low end of all these three measures; in per capita income, 117 among 177 countries, 128 in human development among 177 countries and ranks 72 among 180 nations in corruption. A country cannot afford to pay this price.

Concluding his session Prof. Prahalad stated that the bottom-up approach adopted by CII will help in developing a comprehensive vision for India@75, and the CII mission will draw up an action plan with a focus on state level visions and the important constituent for driving and setting up the agenda will be young Indians.