The protestors who opened smoke canisters in the Lok Sabha on December 13—exactly 22 years after the terrorist attack on Parliament—were educated youth complaining about inadequate incomes and employment despite India’s GDP growth. They called themselves members of a fan club of Bhagat Singh who, along with Batukeshwar Dutt, had lobbed two low-intensity bombs into the Central Assembly in April 1929. Bhagat Singh, a national hero, was executed by the British in 1931.
What set Bhagat Singh apart from his compatriots was that he was a great reader, says Prof. Irfan Habib (whose books on Bhagat Singh include Making the Deaf Hear). The young Bhagat Singh read extensively. His mother would scold him because he would stuff his pant pockets with books and end up tearing them. Bhagat Singh was also a writer. A few months before his execution, when he was 23, he wrote his seminal essay, Why I am an Atheist, explaining his socialist leanings for which the British feared him.
What do young people, with smartphones in their hands and pockets, read today? I read about two books a month, and essays in many journals, on philosophy, economics, science, and political governance. I write my thoughts in commentaries like this one, and in longer essays and books. For whom do I write my publishers ask? They say young people aren’t interested in the subjects I write about and have no patience to read or listen to anything not entertaining. The new editor of a business paper, for whom I had been writing a monthly column for many years, asked me in 2008 to “dumb-down” my articles and make them “racier” to attract young readers. My column was discontinued because I could not bring myself to become an entertainer.
Writers need publishers of books and journals to carry their ideas to the public. Giving your customers what is popular is good business practice. Book publishing is also a business. In 1996, the management consulting company I was working with in the US, persuaded me to write my first book. One of the largest management book publishers in the US offered to publish it. He gave me two books as models. One was Ken Blanchard’s The One Minute Manager, first published in 1982, which had continued to sell in millions. The other was Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline published in 1990. CEOs and senior executives proudly displayed Senge’s book, with its iconic black cover, on their tables and bookshelves.
Senge’s book was described as the most sold, but least read, management book at the time. The publisher wanted me to write my book in the style of The One Minute Manager. In the 1990s, consultants were trained to pitch their ideas in ‘elevator speeches’ to fit into the short attention spans of top executives. They were told to imagine that all the time a CEO will give them is the minute or two it takes to ride up with him in an elevator from the ground floor to his office on the top floor. I wrote my book in a simple “how-to” style, though not like Blanchard. I ask Peter Senge to write the Foreword. Peter, a friend, agreed with my ideas, but declined to write the Foreword because he did not want to pander to executives who wanted complexity stripped out of reality and would not make time to read and learn, he said.
Not all senior executives or young Indians are tied to their smart-phones, reading short tweets, viewing one-minute videos, or showing off holiday pictures and selfies with stars. Many young and old Indians are reading. Some are looking for new theories of inclusive, and environmentally sustainable, development which the prevalent science of economics does not provide. Some are rediscovering Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was also a revolutionary like Bhagat Singh, albeit a non-violent one. Gandhi was also great reader, learner, and listener, and a prolific writer too. He called his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth.
When asked what he thought about Western civilization, Gandhi said: “That would be a good idea”. The genocide underway in Palestine by Israel supported by the US, is another reminder that humanity must look for new role models of civilizations and leaders, and for new ideas of progress outside Western dominated academia and media.
Delivering the 2010 Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures, (after the 2008 global financial crisis, when economists promised they would find a “new normal” strategy for economic growth), British economist Adair Turner pointed out that too much reality was being left out of economists’ models for them to explain the world. With a twist of Keynes’ statement that “practical men are usually the slave of some defunct economist”, he warned that the “great danger lies (now) with reasonably intellectual men and women employed in the policy-making departments of central banks and governments who tend to gravitate to simplified versions of the dominant beliefs of economists who are still very much alive.”
Money speaks. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Economics has been dominated by wealthy US run institutions: by US universities and think tanks, and the World Bank and IMF. Business theory is dominated by US business schools. Young managers minds are shaped by stories of US business leaders of the top Fortune companies: Jack Welch, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc. US ideas of capitalism and democracy have been forced onto many countries with the power of US arms and money, often with tragic consequences for their people. Many people, young and old, with aspirations to make the world better for everyone are looking for new ideas on how to make economic progress inclusive and sustainable, and governance more just. They would do well to read ideas of thought-leaders with Gandhian and ‘feminine’ views of life, communities, and systems, such as J.C. Kumarappa, Hazel Henderson, E.F. Schumacher, and Elinor Ostrom. And, with ancient philosophers, Eastern and Western, they should also read some 21st century ones: such as Michael Sandel, Byung Chul Han, and Thomas Fuchs.
One good book often leads to another. The New Year is around the corner. Time for resolutions. Reading good books enriches the mind and refreshes the human spirit. Can you get off your smart phone a few hours a day to make time for some good books?
(Published in The Tribune, 26th December 2023)
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/the-world-needs-new-ideas-of-progress-575340