We are still on track for our tryst with a global destiny and attain it we must! It is the strong values we espouse from our traditions and culture that should get us there!
A year ago, sitting in my daughter’s house in Manhattan, USA, the topic inevitably veered towards where I would like to spend my 60th birthday in July 2017. I had brought in my 40s with a riotous evening on the rooftop of the building in Mumbai, where APTECH had its corporate office. I ushered in my 50s at home in Pune with close friends from all over the country, who had been assembled by my Zensar team to make the evening special. The logical sequence would probably have been to party with friends over decades of corporate existence in India and abroad! My daughter offered an option less predictable-to spend a week in a corner of the world where the likelihood of running into anybody I had met or worked with was remote-in the idyllic islands of Hawaii!
Spending this week near the volcanic craters of Big Island and the beautiful beaches of the other islands with just the “family four”- wife, daughter and son-in-law-all committed to make this a special week in spite of their extraordinarily busy lives has been a great opportunity to celebrate, to enjoy some down time in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. It also helped me reflect on my own journey as well as that of our country and the world in the last six decades. It would probably be a good idea to paint the big picture first.
No better way to reflect the dilemmas the world is facing than to quote from two outstanding articles in the New York Times, which I read on a long Jin Air flight from Seoul to Honolulu. Howard French, Columbia University Professor and a China expert quotes former President Chiang Kai-shek’s noting in his personal diary “Avenge Humiliation”, where he suggests that only when all the lands controlled by ancient dynasties were won back would the “descendants of the Yellow Emperor” be freed from shame. French argues that while much of China’s territorial claims today may not have much historical basis, President Xi Jinping seems as much prisoner to the 20th century logic of his predecessor and perhaps even more so. Which is what makes China prowl the South China Sea and do sabre rattling with India and many others.
Interestingly, the author points out that China may be actually just emulating a 19th century US policy of trying to control the Western Hemisphere by asserting its right to take exclusive control of security in the region, which was called the Monroe doctrine. With the frequent flip-flops made by President Trump on foreign affairs and the USA coming out a period of indecision on the role they wish to play in global affairs, it may be still a matter of speculation if Trump’s recent overtures to France is a sign that the US does have a vision beyond “America First”. As Gary Cohn Director of the National Economic Council and McMaster the National Security Advisor have stated in their op-ed piece, America First is rooted in the confidence that US values are worth defending and promoting. The US will reach out globally and attempt to bring allies and partners together and with a strong economy and a President who has a penchant for shrugging away potential scandals with nonchalance, it will be interesting to see who will blink first in any potential China-Russia-USA confrontation in future.
India under the strong leadership of Prime Minister Modi clearly has its opportunity to find a place in the global sun and it can and will find this place if we are able to douse our home fires
India under the strong leadership of Prime Minister Modi clearly has its opportunity to find a place in the global sun and it can and will find this place if we are able to douse our home fires in spots like Kashmir and Darjeeling and get the country’s economic and security agenda on a steady track. The world is watching and it would be good to be able to pick up an Economist or New York Times and read about solid achievements rather than paper tiger economic accusations and the worries about the rise of Hindu nationalism. We are still on track for our tryst with a global destiny and attain it we must! It is the strong values we espouse from our traditions and culture that should get us there!
Finally, on a personal note, a dear friend asked me in Pune what I felt happiest about when I looked back on 60 years of building my career from early days in a Jharkhand village to NIIT in Delhi, APTECH in Mumbai, Zensar in Pune and now with global, national local and hyper-local entities in digital consulting, skills and social ventures. I mentioned to her a rather old-fashioned sense of satisfaction at having made thousands of good friends all over the world and not being able to think of a single person anywhere who would harbour any ill will!
However, the greatest sense of satisfaction lies in the fact that I have been able to practice the values instilled in me from childhood- to do good, see the divine in everybody and enable every person whose life has touched mine to be the best they can be! A big shout out for all you friends out there who enabled me to achieve a modicum of success and make me feel this way!
by Ganesh Natarajan
