Inspiring writings of Prasad Seshadri of Eduspot Inc.

One Sh. Prasad Seshadri has found this blog and I’ll surely get to know more about him. He is an IIT Delhi graduate and CEO of Eduspot. More about him and his company on the link.

But what is interesting to me are his writings. He is inspired. I’ve very lightly (very! lightly) edited and consolidated. Some of this can easily go into the brochures of Sone Ki Chidya movement/SBP. In many ways he represents the spirit of the title of this blog: “India, I dare you to be rich”)

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Indians have to learn to move to issues beyond Roti, Kapada aur Makan issues to become really creative. Creativity flourishes best when bread and butter issues can be taken for granted. Unfortunately, for the 67 years of India’s existence we have been stuck with resolving these fundamental issues. We need leadership who can deliver on these as if on autopilot and leave our minds free for the finer things in life.

A HABIT OF BETRAYING OUR OWN NATION

Our lack of ability to govern ourselves is a legacy of the 900+ years of rule by outsiders.  Ability to govern one’s own country successfully requires a great deal of restraint and integrity. Most of our historical problems were created due to our willingness to betray our fellow countrymen and our country for personal gain

We need strong laws that will seek to harness and encourage the talents of our own people. Our taxpayer money is currently being used to defeat our own people. If this is not eliminated, we will not progress to the next level of progress as a country.

GREAT AMBITION IS NEEDED

It is amusing that in statements after the 2012 summer Olympics India has expressed a desire to achieve at least 5 medals at the next Olympics. This statement reflects the malaise in our thinking and attitude. For goodness sake, we are a 1.2 billion population and a country like Jamaica with half the population of  Mumbai achieves twice the number of medals with barely an effort !

Is there something terribly wrong here?  You bet there is. We are a people lacking in ambition and we achieve performance to match that ambition.

ABUNDANT TALENT

Outside of alumni of American Universities, only IIT Alumni are in the top 10 institutions from which start-up founders come from. This proves that next to Americans, Indians are the most innovative ethnic group. Not even the Chinese or Koreans figure in this list though USA has many immigrants from these ethnic groups. This shows that if India had provided a welcoming environment for innovation much of the innovation would have happened in India and benefitted India. If your students are capable of doing that in USA, there is no reason why they cannot do it in India.

SINGLE MINDED FOCUS

We are often defeated at the starting line because we want answers to all our questions up front and if those answers are not forthcoming , we tend to choose the safest and most mediocre goals in life.  We do not embrace uncertainty as a part and parcel of life as it should be lived. If one starts to become the best in the world at anything, we can rest assured that NO ONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS HOW TO ACHIEVE IT. 

People who decide to, just decide on where they want to go, even though they have absolutely no idea of how to get there. They are willing to make everything in life subservient to their goal – marriage, purchase of property, parental approval, peer pressure, even employment become secondary to their goal. Like Arjuna, they see one and only one thing – their goal. Having done that they let life show the way to their goal.

The best among us must start with superlative goals rather than seek safe but mediocre choices

DECENTRALISATION

India suffers a great deal in poor governance because of centralization of power. The main reason there is centralization of power at every point is of course, corruption. In countries which are well governed – especially the Protestant countries like Scandinavia, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada – there is ample delegation of power. People are invested with certain powers as well as responsibility at the point of customer service so that customer satisfaction is not compromised at the point of service. Asian countries such as Singapore and the Pacific Asian countries have done well to emulate this and inject efficiency and customer satisfaction into their governance as well. India needs to embrace decentralization of powers as the most important step towards achieving good governance, There is likely to be a lot more sympathy towards the customer needs close to the point of delivery of service to the customer than if decisions are to come from far and remote central authorities.

NEED TO ABANDON SOCIALISM

China in the 1960′s was dominated by the personality of Mao Tse Tung who had to fend off competition for the right to rule China from Chiang Kai Shek earlier in 1949 to establish Communism as a dominant force in China.

Chiang Kai Shek favored Capitalism and was driven away to Formosa which later on became Taiwan. Taiwan embraced Capitalism while China embraced Communism.

As a result of this competition with Chiang Kai Shek, Mao Tse Tung developed a deep seated aversion of anything that even remotely smelled of Capitalism. However, China’s choice of Communism caused inefficiencies that are inherent to centralized planning and big government causing a drop in the growth of the economy and industrial output. When thinkers in China pointed to the prosperity of Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore – Mao Tse Tung’s reaction was a massive purge of intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution. Mao Tse Tung refused to accept the fact that Communism was inefficient and his hatred of Capitalism was so deep seated that he forced college educated Chinese and Professors to go and live among peasants and get “reeducated”. Many who were seen as threats to the Communist way of thinking were sent to concentration camps and many were eliminated.

One person in the Chinese government who was unconvinced about all this was Deng Xiao Peng who made the statement “It does not matter if a cat is black or white (referring to ideology) but what matters is that it catches mice ( Performance)”. This was interpreted by Mao as a veiled criticism of his policies and he was also jailed. 

Fortunately towards the end of the Cultural Revolution in the mid 70′s, Mao died . By that time there were enough people in Chinese leadership who were convinced that if China has to become great power, they have incorporate features of Capitalism in their governance. This change of direction brought amazing changes in China and the rest is history. The leader of an enormous nation of over a billion people thought nothing of being able to absorb ideas from leaders of tiny nations like Singapore – Lee Kwan Yew and putting them to work to the benefit of China.

India is at an exactly similar position. As a people we have identified the weakness of our political system and we have all voiced a wish for a change. The new leadership should be willing to learn from more successful from more successful societies and be willing freely borrow ideas and implement them successfully in India. What we have seen over the past 60 years is a total insularity to ideas of good governance from more mature societies.

USA – for example , is a country we can learn a lot from. They also wrested independence from the British and also went through periods of bad governance similar to what we have. India could do well to liberally borrow from their institutions and incorporate all the checks and balances that prevent politicians from treating tax payer money as their personal property.

ENTREPRENUERSHIP SERVES THE CONSUMER

An independent entrepreneur HAS NOTHING TO LOSE IN DEVELOPING AND PROMOTING DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION. He enjoys independence of decision making and speed of operation.

The goal of an independent entrepreneur is geared ENTIRELY TO END USER BENEFIT. There are no vested interests that constrain him within his own organization.

The independent entrepreneur has no capacity for corruption. MERIT – IS HIS ONLY MARKETABLE ASSET.

The societies that promote, welcome and absorb disruptive innovation harness the following benefits:  End user satisfaction improves as a result of a competition to achieve better and better end user benefits. The focus of people’s effort shifts from corruption to trying to win by merit.

It tends to destroy the crony relationship that exists between politicians and big corporations.

DEVELOP SOFTWARE, NOT OURSOURCING

Our movie making skills show that software is what we excel at because movies are also software. But our movies have a limited international market. We have been generating revenues by providing outsourcing services in computer software but this is an under deployment of our software talents. If you add the market caps of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Groupon – all software companies – their combined market caps are several 100 times that of our outsourcing business because software PRDUCTS have a far universal market than outsourcing. So if we leverage our software skills to develop software PRODUCTS we can be a 100 times wealthier than what we are today. From a basket case nation it is today we can become a PROSPEROUS nation of CONQUERORS OF MARKETS.

ASSERTION OF IDENTITY THROUGH COMPETITION

The need of the hour is to change India from being a country of cowardly, corrupt and divisive people to a proud and united race of people. In peace time aggression is translated into winning MARKETS FOR THEIIR COUNTRY.