Proud to be an Indian
Beware world, Indian parents are no longer happy with planning for their kids to be CEOs of Fortune 500 organisations, they will settle for nothing less than leaders of nations. Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai et al, sorry you are no longer what we aspire to be, its Rishi Sunak!
"What should we be taking pride in as a nation which holds a sixth of the world’s population is the sheer intelligence of our people, the willingness to brave all odds and find a path to succeed"
What is about people with Indian looks and Indian faces that excites most of the country and make us adopt them even if their thoughts are not exactly aligned with ours? The latest of course is young Rishi Sunak, born and raised in the UK who has been adopted as “one of us” not just because he is a self-proclaimed devout Hindu, married to the daughter of Indian icons Sudha and Narayana Murthy but also because we believe that the Kohinoor Diamond has now secured safe passage back to India. And the latest WhatsApp on this theme that landed in my phone earlier today is somebody “sharing with you with #excitment that thirty people of Indian origin have been heads of state or government and eight of them are in office RIGHT NOW!”
Nothing wrong with that feeling of pride, you say? Yes of course when the leaders of Mauritius, Singapore, Portugal, Malaysia, Surinam, Guyana, Fiji, Ireland, Seychelles and Trinidad &Tobago are brought under that umbrella and the optimists believe that the next White House occupant will be the result of a simple North-South “Nikki vs Kamala” battle, all must be truly well with us. As another proliferating joke says, “Beware world, Indian parents are no longer happy with planning for their kids to be CEOs of Fortune 500 organisations, they will settle for nothing less than leaders of nations. Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai et al, sorry you are no longer what we aspire to be, its Rishi Sunak!
So where does this need for external validation of Indian greatness come from? There is a negative and a positive side to this. The cynic in me would argue that we are as a nation more than capable of feeling pride in our achievements in the country as indeed many people starting from our Prime Minister, industry leaders like the big As and the Birlas, Mahindras, Goenkas etc, scientific achievers like Dr Abdul Kalam and D Raghunath Mashelkar and civil society leaders like Baba Amte have so amply demonstrated and we don’t need a certificate of global worth from anybody.
At the same time, how many of us can avoid that surge of pride when one sees global success achieved by our own? In my own case, I have experienced that surge of pride when I attended my daughter’s graduations at Cambridge and Harvard and today walk into the world famous Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and see the Karuna Ganesh Lab and her picture on some of the billboards in the city. And I am sure each one of us have exulted in the past successes of Indira Nooyi and Rajat Gupta and the current successes of the dozen plus global CEOs who actually hail from India.
I think the note of caution is about the rush to embrace good leaders like Prime Minister Sunak into the Indian halo of greatness. As a country, we have a long way to go before people born, raised and educated in the country get opportunities to become political leaders in major countries of the West. Why don’t we start with ensuring that our own success stories get equal prominence and adulation. Look at Vandana Chavan, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sachin Pilot, if you want political heroes and new success stories like Bhavish Agarwal and Parul Ganju for entrepreneurial successes. And while we want “Dishy Rishi” to call India his own, let us not forget his worthy father-in-law Mr Murthy who has been an industry builder and leader for decades and retains the humility and approachability that truly embody Indian values.
When we were finishing our latest book on India’s pathways to 2030, we requested Mr Murthy to write the foreword and got a prompt response agreeing to do it but warning us that it might take a few weeks because of a hectic travel schedule. When our publisher panicked, I assured them that this was one gentleman who was famous for “under promising and over delivering.” Sure enough, we got the first draft of a brilliantly written foreword within 40 hours and two subsequent edits from an overseas airline lounge and the deed was done! Bravo Mr Murthy.
What should we be taking pride in as a nation which holds a sixth of the world’s population. The sheer intelligence of our people, the willingness to brave all odds and find a path to succeed with the spiritual roots that enable us to take both failure and success in our stride. In our work with top corporate leaders at 5F World and Kalzoom Advisors, students in over a 100 cities in Global Talent Track and the enablement of women entrepreneurs and city slum youth in our social work at GTT Foundation and Lighthouse Communities Foundation, the “never-say-die” of the Indian spirit always shines through. As we have written in our forthcoming book, there will be many opportunities we chase and many hurdles in our path, but it is the essential spirit of India that can take all Indians to success. In which theatre and in which act we want to deliver on that promise is an individual choice but make no mistake, this is one nation whose time has come.”