Lee Iacocca on Leadership

Lee Iacocca is 82 years old. The fire in his belly is undiminished, however. I have only read an excerpt from his book “Where Have All the Leaders Gone?” But that excerpt resonates with me. He talks about the failure of leadership in America. He lists what he calls the “Nine C’s of Leadership” and indicts George W Bush on each of those counts. The C’s are: Curiosity, Creative, Communicate, Character, Courage, Conviction, Charisma, Competent and Common Sense.

Iacocca says it like he sees it. His rant — and that first chapter is a rant in the finest tradition — is sincere and direct. As he puts it, he is outraged and that every American should be outraged by what is happening in the US. I respect that sort of honest outrage. It forces people out of their complacency.

The US is facing a crisis of leadership. But it is not alone. When I try to measure the Indian leadership on Iacocca’s Nine C scales, I find them failing almost as miserably as GWB. But where is India’s Iacocca to hold Indian leaders’ feet to the fire?

Here’s an excerpt from the book, for the record:
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Jago Party

So there’s a new political party in the making — the Jago Party. A very hopeful sign. We need more and more people to enter the political arena. The consequence of good people not engaging in politics, as the wise counsel, is that you get ruled by your inferiors. The more choices one has in terms of political parties, the more likely it will be that a reasonable outcome may obtain.
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Boycott till the cows come home

A recently released movie called “Jodaa Akbar” appears to have started a movement to boycott the movie. I don’t know what the problem is with the movie and frankly I don’t care. Boycott whatever does or does not strike your fancy, I say. I just pray that they don’t press the government to ban the movie. If the movie is inaccurate, then the response should be to counter it with the accurate version, or to write and speak about it in the press, radio and television. By all means, refuse to go see the movie or read the book or see the cartoons or whatever. Boycott whatever you don’t want to support but for the sake of sanity, please don’t go the route of banning.

The Indian government is only too eager to ban stuff — with votes in mind, of course. It was the first to ban the Satanic Verses and thus provoked the mullahs in Iran to call for the murder of Salman Rushdie. Banning books and other information related goods is shameful, insulting and cowardly.

It is insulting because it means that the people are idiots and do not have the maturity to decide for themselves what to see or read. When a ban is imposed because of fear that some people may go on a violent rampage, then it is cowardly. If the attempt is to conceal the truth by banning something, it is shameful and on self-respecting people should stand for such a government.

Why is India poor?

Don’t read Tavleen Singh’s column “Educating the Education Minister” in the Indian Express today if you wish to continue being puzzled by the question why India is poor.

Basic decency and propriety prevents me from suggesting what should be done to the Indian minister she writes about. Shame on you, Dr Manmohan Singh. Please, in the name of everything decent and human, resign.

Of Lavatories and Laptops

Over four years ago I had written a post titled “Choosing between WCs and PCs” — it is one of my favorite posts and features my friend CJ. Put that on your reading list. I am reminded of that post by an Economist article of last week titled “Limits of Leapfrogging.” The article concludes with this:
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How we Subsidize the Rich

Yesterday’s Indian Express carried a piece by me on the perverse oil subsidy that the government of India provides. I begin that piece with my favorite Douglass North quote: “Economic history is overwhelmingly a story of economies that failed to produce a set of economic rules of the game (with enforcement) that induce sustained economic growth.” I used that quote in the other piece published in Mint today.

The reason I like that quote it because it goes to the very heart of the problem of India’s economic development. Indians as a collective are no less than other collectives around the world; India is endowed with natural and human resources; yet India is desperately poor. Why? Because we have failed to develop a set of rational rules to play by. Refusing to acknowledge that failing will ensure our continued poverty.

Anyway, here’s the text of that India Express piece.
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Profits are Corporations’ Social Responsibility

The business of business is profit. That’s the whole point in doing business. If a business is following the rules and legally making a profit, it is discharging its social responsibilities. I wrote an opinion piece on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in today’s Mint arguing that corporations are not responsible for solving social problems.

Here’s the text of the article.
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Naming of Things

Some years ago I came across a single-panel cartoon which showed a statue of a figure on horseback. It was clearly the statue of Shivaji Maharaj, the great Maratha hero. Standing in front was a little kid with an adult. The kid was asking, “But what was the statue called before it was renamed Shivaji Maharaj?”

In Mumbai, the trend is that everything gets renamed after Shivaji. And in the broader context of India, everything gets named after Nehru and his clan. Naming things is easy in India. “Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal, Indira, Rajiv, and Sanjay” are the choices for the first bit, as in “Jawaharlal Nehru University,” or “Indira Gandhi International.” It won’t be too long before we have “Sonia, Priyanka, Rahul, Spotty” added to the list. (Spotty is just a place holder as I am not sure what the name of the Gandhi family dog actually is.)
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Monkey See, Monkey Do: Plastic Bag version

Back in September 2005, the government of Maharashtra had decided to ban plastic bags. The problem they were trying to address was of trash clogging up the storm drains in Mumbai resulting in the flooding of the city during the monsoons. Yes, the city does get flooded but banning the plastic bags was not the right response. A little bit of reasoning would have revealed that the proper thing to do is to charge user fees for the plastic bags — that would let the market solve the problem and enforcement would be much easier than enforcing a ban.
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Wasting Public Money

“Will the Indian mind ever get decolonised?” is the question that R Vaidyanathan asks at the end of his column titled “The colonial conquest of India by Cambridge varsity” in DNA today. (Hat tip: Raja Shekhar Malapati.) It is about the government of India giving Cambridge University Rs 26,00,00,000 (US$ 6,500,000) to support the ‘Jawaharlal Nehru Professorship of Indian Business and Enterprise.’ That professorship is to mark the centenary of Nehru’s arrival at Cambridge.
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