Home - Page - Rakesh Sharma - Indipepal

I am greatly amused by the way we have managed to convince ourselves that we are well on the way to becoming a global superpower. Of course one has been hearing this refrain from various foreign media sources and visiting Heads of State - the latest addition to the list being Hillary Clinton, as she swings through our country.

What does it take to become a super power: billions of dollars in reserve, double digit GDP growth? A strong Navy, an impressive missile defense system, backed up by a credible second strike capability? A military- industrial combine that has the potential to cater to our ever growing defense needs and also adequate spare capacity to capture the arms export market? Or, perhaps, a workable health and social security system that will scale up in the years to come, despite a doubling of population?

It takes a lot to keep from being discouraged because it takes all of the above and some more to become a world power. Thing is, world powers are recognized as such only if their 'state of being' is of a certain standard and, it is here that we falter. Take a look at how our Nation goes about its own business before we take a call on whether we have the right stuff to lead the world - after all that is what is expected of any reigning super power. The list is just suggestive of the malaise - a pointer - and by no means, is it exhaustive.

An embarrassingly large number of our elected representatives at both, the state and national levels, have a past that they would rather not divulge. They are, (I really like this evocative expression) history sheeters; featured often while in their prime, on Page 3 of local news papers - in columns usually titled 'City Scape', 'Crime Beat' etc.. They have reached where they have thanks to a Judiciary that has become tainted - so much so that the Chief Justice of our country has a job on his hands in trying to get the 'honourable' people under him to declare their assets. And they (the history sheeters) are flourishing in Parliament/Assemblies because we do not have a value based political party that honourable people can aspire to join. Even if there had been such a party, it cannot hope to remain politically viable.

Our executive arm - the bureaucrats - are the new 'untouchables'. They cannot be touched when things go wrong because lack of accountability has been built into our systems, thanks to the marriage vows exchanged between politicians and bureaucrats: till elections do us part! In this context, the bureaucrats are much married, indeed - politicians may come and go, but they stay married, forever, to the political class. Consider just two examples here: could anything have been of greater national importance than the 26/11 dossiers handed over to Pakistan? Well, media dispatches inform us that Kasab's DNA report was identical to that of Abu Ismail, the dead terrorist. The Home Minister dismisses it off as a minor clerical error. Then again, Shiv Shankar Menon admits that the joint statement released at the end of the India-Pakistan PMs meeting on the sidelines of the NAM Conference at Egypt could have been better drafted! So, this is what goes on at the highest levels of our political-bureaucratic framework. Has any action been taken against those who starred in these diplomatic gaffes? No. Public memory is short but, the people of India are convinced that Pakistan merely waits for India to trip up and India obliges, every time, thanks to ineptitude.

In my previous posts I have commented upon the below par performance of our Defence R&D sector. We continue to bleed in this area, pouring hundreds of crores down the same drain that has swallowed thousands earlier. Reason? A lack of accountability. We tend to paint the harbinger of bad news into a corner, instead of fixing our systems so that it never happens again. Far from capturing the global arms market, our military industrial combine is as yet unable to satisfy our internal demands in terms of either quantity or quality. It's a long list - Marut HF-24, Vijayanta, Arjun, LCA etc...

Before we aspire to being a world leader, we need to get real and smell the coffee: acquaint ourselves with the standards as they exist around the world and then carry out a realistic assessment of our own expertise in those chosen areas. Only after this is done, can we begin to see the gap that exists between us and the developed world in this respect and get down to fixing the quality deficits that devalue our efforts at innovation. Most importantly, we need to develop the attitude possessed by practioners of excellence the world over. Others have reached where they are by listening to feedback and raising standards to meet expectations, not by shooting the messenger that brings bad news!