Some time ago, when India was Shining, many aam aurat, aam admi, khas admi, and khas aurat, all citizens of India, put their heads and hearts together. They were concerned about their country. They saw a picture of buffaloes wallowing in a pond, with little children waiting outside. The buffaloes were big leaders—political netas, ministers, senior bureaucrats, economists, and other experts. Citizens were counting on them to make things happen for the benefit of the people. But these so-called leaders of the nation were wallowing in their debates and ego clashes, unable to agree and move together on reforms that would improve health, education, and livelihoods for the children waiting outside.
Looking beneath the political headlines and behind the macro-economic numbers, this group of citizens saw another picture—a picture of fireflies arising. They saw many individuals, young and old, women and men, some with little education and some with foreign degrees, in villages and in towns, who were making remarkable change happen in their own lives and the lives of the community around them. These fireflies were leaders of change, little points of light, who with their own energy and passion were bringing light into the lives of others too.
Two contrasting pictures of different approaches to bring about change in India. Big leaders wallowing in a pond on a hot summer day: the ‘official’, top down approach. The other, the unofficial approach: millions of fireflies rising on a hot summer night creating light amidst darkness. India has many fireflies now—many points of light—showing a way for others to follow. But India’s challenges are so vast and time so short. We must turn points of light into large pools of light. Therefore we must ‘scale up’ the impact of change and with it the brightening of the India story.
The sputtering of India’s economic growth has rung alarm bells for economists and rating agencies. India must attract investments in infrastructure and industry. Though attracted by the potential of India’s market, investors are turned off by the difficulties of getting things done in the country. Projects are stuck in tardy processes of approval and snarled in inter-departmental wrangles. Consequently India remains towards the bottom of evaluations of countries for ease of doing business. Very poor coordination amongst agencies, poor implementation, and leaky delivery systems are also the root causes of the unsatisfactory state of India’s health, education, and other public services.
Three scenarios of the country’s progress are described in India’s 12th Five Year Plan. In one, called ‘Muddling Along’, growth in the Plan averages 6.5%. Persisting political log-jam could result in a second, more undesirable scenario with a ‘Falling Apart’ of the growth story, in which growth falls to 5%. In the third, the desirable scenario, with alignment amongst stakeholders, ‘The Flotilla Advances’ and growth accelerates to over 9%, averaging over 8% in the Plan period.
There is a widespread need in India to convert confusion into coordination, contention into collaboration, and intention into implementation. Easier said than done, many say. It is our ‘culture’ to be argumentative, they explain. And democracy makes it difficult to get people to work together, they add. Nevertheless, in a highly diverse as well as democratic country, such as India, consensus is required for all stakeholders to move together, forward and faster. This consensus cannot be commanded. We need another mechanism specifically designed to bring people with different perspectives together: to listen to each other, to distil the essence of their shared aspiration for their habitation or their organization, and adopt the critical principles they will adhere to in the work they must do together.
A model of a process for rapidly improving a nation’s capabilities to get things done systematically and democratically is available in the Total Quality Movement (TQM) in Japan. In less than two decades, Japan, which had a reputation for poor quality and low cost products, became the international benchmark of quality in many industries and several of its public services too. The essence of the TQM movement was the deployment, at several levels in many organizations—especially the ‘shop floor’ levels but higher levels also even to top management, of simple techniques for systems thinking, cooperative action, and continuous improvement.
Within the 12th Plan is the description of a similar transformative process to improve capabilities in the country to get things done. This process, described as the India Backbone Implementation Network (IBIN), can improve results in many sectors of the economy. The architecture of IBIN is along similar lines as the TQM movement of Japan. Experience of other countries, such as Korea and more recently Malaysia, who have systematically improved capabilities of coordination and implementation, has also been considered while developing IBIN to fit India’s conditions. The tools and techniques that will be deployed by the IBIN movement will be in some respects similar to TQM, but updated and customized for the objectives of IBIN with its emphasis on techniques and tools for collaboration, coordination, and implementation.
India’s next decade must be a decade of collaboration and implementation to improve the health and education of its large population, and to rapidly multiply opportunities for better jobs and livelihoods for India’s growing millions of young people. In diverse and democratic India, change for the people can be brought about with the energies of entrepreneurial people around the country. Therefore India’s strategy for change must multiply the fireflies—the points of light. Let their stories be told to inspire others. But this will not be enough. The strategy for change must also bring people together to collaborate, to combine their energies and resources, and scale up outcomes into large pools of light.