Convocation Address for 28th APPPA Course on the Occasion of the Founders' Day of IIPA

Administrators and the mission of transforming India into a Developed Nation (2020)

I am indeed delighted to participate in the Convocation of the 28th Advanced Professional Program in Public Administration (APPPA) course by the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA). I take this opportunity to congratulate the participants for their achievement. I greet the director, faculty members and staff for their contribution in imparting the knowledge to the participants. I was thinking what message I can share with this gathering. I would like to discuss about the nation's vision of becoming a developed India by 2020 as rolled out by our Prime Minster in his Independence Day speech delivered at Red Fort on 15th August 2002. When our Prime Minister has declared the vision, I am sure that you would have discussed the road map for achieving this transformation in your course. What are our strengths? Where do we stand? What need to be done for the transformation of India from its developing country status to a developed nation status? What are the crucial roles to be played by the administrators? I would like to share my thoughts with you.

Core Competence

The nation's strengths predominantly reside in its natural and human resources. In natural resources, India is endowed with a vast coast-line with marine resources and also oil wealth. In minerals, apart from conventional material resources, it is well-known that India has the largest deposits of titanium, beryllium and tungsten. India ranks among the top few nations having a rich bio-diversity. Knowledge-based value addition for these natural resources would mean exporting value-added products rather than merely the raw materials. Use of IT for commercialisation and marketing can increase our outreach and speed enormously. Ancient knowledge is a unique resource of India for it has the treasure of a minimum of 5000 years of civilisation. It is essential to leverage this wealth for national well being as well as to seek global presence for the nation.

Human resources, particularly with large young population, are unique core strength of the nation. This resource can be transformed through various educational and training programmes. Skilled, unskilled and creative manpower can be transformed into wealth generators particularly in the service sectors, agro industries etc. Knowledge-intensive industries can be generated out of our existing industries by injecting demand for high-level software/hardware, which would bring tremendous value addition. It is said, "the precious asset for a company or a country is the skill, ingenuity and imagination of its people. With globalisation, this will become more important because everybody will have access to world class technology and the key distinguishing feature will be the ability of people in different countries to use their imagination to make the best use of the technology". Indeed development and innovative use of multiple technologies with mission projects and transparent management structure will give required thrust to India to transform into a 'developed nation'

Competitiveness

The world Economic Forum has defined competitiveness as "the ability of a national economy to achieve sustained high rates of economic growth". As per this definition ranking of different countries as of April 2002, according to the forum, are: USA[1], Singapore[2], Hong Kong[6], Australia[11], Taiwan[18], China[33] and India[41]. The world competitiveness is therefore decided by a triangular combination consisting of progressiveness of industry, technology push and status of governmental deregulation, all working in unison. Technology-led industrial growth can be sustained only through establishing an innovation system. It is through the process of innovation that knowledge is converted into wealth. Further, innovation is an important factor for the competitiveness of both service and manufacturing sectors and hence the urgent need to put in place an innovation system. Such a system would involve network of firms, knowledge-producing institutions, bridging institutions and customers/users in a value addition-creating production chain. With such a consortium, the innovation system would tap into the growing stock of global knowledge, assimilate and adapt it to local needs and finally create new knowledge and technology. India must evolve such systems to improve its competitiveness in a global marketplace. Competitiveness emerges from the strength of knowledge power, which is powered by technology that in turn is powered by capital. In the coming years, competitiveness would be derived from the ability to recognize and integrate all forms of knowledge leading to innovation in every area of human endeavour.

Empowerment

When the child is empowered by the parents, at various phases of growth, the child transforms into a responsible citizen. When the teacher is empowered with knowledge and experience, good young human beings with value systems take a shape. When individual or a team is empowered with technology, transformation to higher potential for achievement, is certain. When the leader of any institution empowers his or her people, leaders are born who can change the nation in multiple areas. The Indian history has witnessed this. When the political leaders of the nation empower the people through visionary policies, the prosperity of the nation is assured. Second vision for the nation is, transforming developing India into developed India. It should echo in the Parliament, industrial houses, academic institutions and R&D labs and reach people of all the parts of India.

Knowledge Powered PURA ( Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas )

More than two third of our billion population live in the rural parts of India. The vision of transformation to a 'developed' India can only be realized if we launch a mega mission for empowering the rural people. Rural development has to be made as a well balanced model both economically and environmentally. My visits to the rural parts of India have confirmed that the problem of rural India depends on the connectivity. The connectivity that I refer to would include four components. Physical connectivity by providing roads in rural areas, electronic connectivity by providing reliable communication network and knowledge connectivity by establishing more professional institutions and vocational training centers. Schools with best infrastructure and teachers who love teaching, primary health centres, silos for storage of products and markets for promoting products, cottage industries could be made economically viable if they have to be established for such a cluster of village complexes. All this connectivity need to be done in an integrated way so that economic connectivity will emerge leading to self sufficiency. Such Model of establishing a circular connectivity among the rural village complexes will accelerate rural development process by empowerment. I am sure that removal of poverty will call for Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas (PURA). The model envisaged is a habitat design that would improve the quality of life in rural places and make special suggestions to remove urban congestion also. Instead of village population coming to urban area, the reverse phenomenon has to take place. How is it possible? Knowledge powered village complexes have to be generated in good numbers in every State. That means, 20-30 villages linked through a circular road (10x6 kms) with highways bringing physical connectivity. This knowledge powered village complex will also have markets attracting urban business. IT enabled service industries can flourish in rural complexes as we can get land and building at very lower rates. The best technology and processes in the world with right skilled and motivated people will have to be deployed to realize such mega projects.

Transparency in Government administration and management

One of the difficult problems for anyone who deals with the Government agencies, as a citizen or as a businessman, is its sheer complexity. There is now an increasing awareness in the Central and State Governments to bring in functional agencies that could lead to a one-stop shop to all the needs of the citizen. Persons in this one-stop shop themselves may have to do several coordination within the complex systems. Modern IT tools help to speed up such coordination. Eventually it can reach real-time capability as is done for railway booking. Actions by some of the State/Central Govt departments have resulted in the launch of Internet portals of Central and State governments. Portals of this nature are being executed in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and many more. In these States, electronic network systems are being used to provide market related information, land records and food stocks. But these actions are at an initial introductory phases only. In one State, a florist even participates in the flower auction at Netherlands, using real-time communication. It is well-known that the Railways and the Airlines are already using computerized reservation system effectively; but such an operational system is yet to emerge even as a beginning in many other areas of government - public interfaces, in banking, tax or electricity bill payment etc.

With this background, for India, transforming into a transparent society, it is essential that government functions which have interfaces or interactions with public especially where the state and central functionaries have to serve or support or even correct the citizens, such functions have to be done through the tools of information technology and communication. This means, software have to be written to codify the rules, procedures and other related government functions and public access should be through IT with necessary access control to govern in a transparent manner. Since India has the core competence in information technology and communication, the possibility of success to bringing in transparency in administration and management through e-commerce and e-business leading to e-governance, is definitely possible. Actions have to be initiated in a mission mode. Appropriate legal instruments to empower government for such mode of interactions should also be done simultaneously. Transparence governance without introducing delay in decision making would be your responsibility in this transformation. As the decision making layers get reduced, as the processing time/waiting time get reduced, corruption will automatically get eliminated. You can effectively use your planning strategies to establish electronic connectivity in both rural and urban areas which will then fuel our march towards the developed India.

Majesty of Human Rights and Administrators

Every citizen in the country has a right to live with dignity; every citizen has a right to aspire for distinction. Availability of a large number of opportunities to resort to just and fair means in order to attain that dignity and distinction, is what democracy is all about. That is what our Constitution is all about. And that is what makes life wholesome and worth living in a true and vibrant democracy. At this point, I would like to remind all of us that at social levels it is necessary to work for Unity of Minds. The increasing intolerance for views of others and increasing contempt about ways of lives of others or their religions or the expressions of these differences through lawless violence against people cannot be justified in any context. All of us have to work hard and do everything to make our behaviours civilised to protect the rights of every individual. That is the very foundation of the democratic values, which I believe is our civilisational heritage and is the very soul of our nation. Administrators should safeguard human rights and be the guardians of civilised life. Wherever life exists in our planet, no life can be allowed to be devalued by anybody. The system cannot be a mute witness to this inhuman act.

If administration succeeds, nation succeeds. The main live components of any government are its Administrators. It is said "If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters". It is indeed a beautiful thought not only for government machinery and officials particularly administrators. What are the leadership qualities needed for quality managers and administrators in the present challenging environment?

Creative Leadership

For building the developed India, what are needed? We have natural resources and we have human power. There are 700 million people below 35 years in the population of a billion people. The nation needs young leaders who can command the change for transformation of India into a developed nation embedded with knowledge society from now to twenty years. The leaders are the creators of new organizations of excellence. Quality leaders are like magnets that will attract the best of persons to build the team for the organization and give inspiring leadership even during failures of missions as they are not afraid of risks. I have seen and worked with creators of vision and missions.

One of the very important ingredients for success of the vision of transforming India into a developed nation by 2020 is the evolution of creative leaders. I am giving a connectivity between developed India, economic prosperity, technology, production, productivity, employee role and management quality, all of which linked to the creative leader. Who is that creative leader? What are the qualities of a creative leader? The creative leadership is exercising the task to change the traditional role from commander to coach, manager to mentor, from director to delegator and from one who demands respect to one who facilitate self respect. The higher the proportion of creative leaders in a nation, the higher the potential of success of visions like "developed India."

We, a nation of billion people should think as a nation of billion people. Indians are natural born leaders in critical situations and challenging environments for the reason they live in a society of multi religious, multi ethnical and multi cultural people. I consider no other nation like India, has got the civilisational heritage to live near peaceful life. Indian minds were capable of absorbing the best of cultures from many sources. We have also evolved the great qualities of leadership to manage the nation of billion people with democratic systems and with various dimensions in every aspect of life. Now we should not allow any religion or any individual fanaticism to endanger our nation. Because, nation is very important compared to any individual or party or religion.

Concluding Remarks : Missions for our People

With the vision and characteristics of creative leader defined, what can be the tasks of various spectrum of people. The student community can take the task during holidays to remove the illiteracy of certain number of people in their area where their schools or houses are situated. Only a burning candle can light another. Teachers and parents can assist them in this task. As the students spend 25,000 hours in school campus upto ten plus two the teachers necessarily must become role models and inculcate value systems in the learning. The Government and R&D labs can provide technological up gradation to small-scale industries so that production can be increased and they become competitive. The large-scale industries have to increase their productivity and quality so that the market share can be increased for economic growth and GDP. They can aim to become multinational companies and global leaders. The farming community needs to increase their productivity with the help of available new scientific methods particularly for dry land cultivation. The Information Technology and knowledge workers have got a tremendous responsibility to contribute in the areas of tele-medicine, tele-education and e-governance for rural areas apart from their business role. PURA (Providing Urban Amenities to Rural Area) has to be a business proposition economically viable and managed by entrepreneurs and small scale industrialists with government participation, as it involves education, health, power generation, transport and management. In this vision period, the whole Government agency has to build a name for itself, by fast decision making and transparent administration. Administrators need to take technology as their partners and establish transparent governance. Media has to become a partner and positive critic in national development. This type of motivated environment will be indeed a great foundation for our vision of transforming India into a 'developed nation'.

My best wishes to you.