THERE is a tendency to look at India as a country. In our everyday life, we see India as a national structure. But if you go back slightly, go back a hundred, two hundred years, you would find that India is energy, it is a force. If you go back a thousand years, two thousand years, you would find that force came from our rivers, Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati. We worshipped these rivers and the reason we worshipped these rivers was because that is where our energy came from, and everything we had was built on these rivers. Now we have gone way beyond that.

We have built structures that allow this energy to rise, to explode. And it is an honour for me to be here because as this energy moves from India and goes abroad, you are the cutting edge. You are the people on the front line, the people who are our ambassadors. You are the people who tell the world what this energy is about.

Over the last couple of years, you have done a tremendous job. The image of India has changed. I went to university in 1991, and I remember, nobody thought of India. I remember conversations where people would laugh and say, ‘Do you have elephants on the road?’ Nobody says that today. And a large part of that is because of you. So I would like to thank you and tell you that it’s big honour for me to be here addressing you.

It was a dark night some years ago when my team and I got on the Gorakhpur Lokmanya Tilak Express and travelled across India’s heartland. We wanted to understand how young Indians were building their future and I spent a large part of the thirty six hour journey moving across the train and talking to travellers – youngsters, weary families, and migrants moving from the dust of Gorakhpur to the glitter of Mumbai. It took us thirty six hours; it is called an Express!

I remember a young boy from Purvanchal, Girish, who painted the outside of skyscrapers. There were two carpenters, one of them travelling from his village to Mumbai for the very first time. Imagine the feeling of a young fellow, getting on the train coming out of his village, going to Mumbai. I spoke to a young Muslim boy setting out to start his life. He had no idea what work he was going to do. I asked him, ‘Boss, what happens if you reach Mumbai and there is nothing for you to do?’ ‘If I reach Mumbai and there is nothing for me to do, I’ll get on a train, I’ll go to Bangalore.’ That is the spirit of this country – forward moving, brave.

 

What struck me about that train was the optimism. These were poor people, weak people but not one of them was pessimistic. They were sitting there saying, ‘Brother, we will find a job’, and they were all struggling. And this optimism for me is just like India – it is bursting with dreams and fearless ideas. Brave ideas. And as it hurtled towards Mumbai, I sat there looking at this train and wondering how many of those dreams would actually be fulfilled.

By the time we reached Mumbai, we had made friends with Girish, the painter. And he told us, come and see where I live. And we thought that’s an interesting thing to do. We had come all the way from Gorakhpur and we thought let us see what this young migrant is doing. At four o’clock in the morning, we walk off in the galis of Bombay, monsoon season, feet going into puddles. And then he opens the door. It’s a little room, probably twice the size of the table; six people sleeping inside. They get up. All of them are migrants. All of them have done that little journey. All of them have that dream.

We chatted. Very smart fellow. Entrepreneur like all of you, except he had empty pockets. And he says, come to the chaiwala. We go to the chaiwala. There are five-six of us. And he buys us all tea. He insists on paying. That is the spirit of this country. Millions and millions of youngsters, struggling every day, with optimism. To me the story of Girish exemplifies the idea of empowerment. It exemplifies the Indian worker, the Indian entrepreneur and, as we talk here, a billion people are breaking the shackles. They are coming out, and they are claiming their place in the sun.

India is home to the largest pool of human capital the world has ever known and probably will ever know. And it is this movement of people, this tremendous movement of people and ideas that is going to define this country in the 21st century. It is this energy that is producing the best managers, it is driving the stock market, and it is the energy providing labour for our factories. It drives the consumption upon which your businesses are built.

 

Democracy and technology have triggered a non-reversible chain reaction in India. Nobody can stop it. We have to channel this reaction. We are now sitting on an unstoppable tide of human aspiration, a tide so great that it will move forward, regardless of what we do. But for this massive movement of people and ideas to be truly transformational, we need to nurture it, to make it harmonious. We need to make this happen smoothly, to use the energy generated by this movement of people and ideas, the force this movement is generating, and use it to empower everybody. Not one person, not almost everybody, but everybody.

The first thing we need to do is to accelerate this movement. It is our duty to provide India with the physical infrastructure to enable this unprecedented movement of people and ideas. This infrastructure needs to connect India, it needs to connect Indian villages, it needs to connect Indian cities, and it needs to connect India to the rest of the world.

We have to provide the roads on which our dreams are paved. And these roads can’t have potholes. They can’t break down in six months. They have to be big roads, because they are going to carry many people, they are going to carry strong forces. We have to provide the ports from which our ideas will set sail.

We have to provide the electricity for our children that will light up their future. The government cannot build this infrastructure alone. We are incapable of doing it alone. We need your help. It has to be built jointly, and together we will find the models where capital is used efficiently and without delays. And it is critical that the business environment for the creation of this dynamic infrastructure is stable and predictable.

 

Secondly, people were not the only things moving in that train. Ideas moved with them. And in the 21st century, we need to make ideas move fast.

We need to aggressively build the knowledge infrastructure that will support this massive flow of ideas. Together we must ensure that our knowledge, education and skills define the global standard.

It is not good enough for us to say we want to be like them; they have to say we want to be like India. Certainly, we have the seeds of a world class education system, it’s there, but it is small, needs to be expanded. But that alone is not going to be enough.

Today we are mortgaging our future because large parts of our education and training are based on defunct ideas, ideas that are no longer relevant. The reality is that a lot of the youngsters on the Gorakhpur Lokmanya Tilak Express are not trained and so are quite difficult for you to employ. You understand this best because you spend enormous amounts of time and money, hard earned money, to train them.

Our problem is not joblessness; it is lack of training and skills. Why should a mother lose sleep at night worrying about whether her brilliant child will find a school to go to? Why is it that a degree from Harvard costs the same as the capitation fees of a medical college in Lucknow? Why are our students forced to study obsolete things?

 

I am a pilot. I learnt to fly in the United States. When I came back, I wanted to convert my license. So I went to the DGCA and I asked what I had to do. They gave me the curriculum, I opened the book. A large section in the book talks about how to drop mail from aeroplanes. How many of you are getting your mail dropped from aeroplanes in the sky? It has been a long time since I got that. But we are teaching it to our kids. A guy is flying an A-340, and you are telling him, listen, you need to know how to drop mail from planes. And it’s not only in pilot training, it’s everywhere. Look at our textbooks, open them. Most of the stuff is not really relevant to what they are going to do.

Who knows what they are going to do. You know what they are going to do. Why? Because you are going to give them the jobs. You are the guys who are going to employ them. Do you have a role in our education curricula? Do they ask you? Do they? Does someone come to you and say, ‘Hey listen, what do you think?’ Does it happen? I am asking. Does it happen systemically? Do you have structures in universities? Not individual relationships but structures in universities that allow you to impact what the IIT is teaching? Do you? It is a question. You don’t.

Those are the type of structures we have to build. Our universities structures are closed. They are silos. I meet these guys, they are brilliant guys, absolutely brilliant. But a university today is a network; it’s no longer a silo. The network has to be connected to the industry. It has to take inputs from industry and this is not happening.

 

Let me tell you a story. A friend of mine came from the United States and he wanted some engineering work done and asked me what was a good place to go. I said go to the IITs. That was five or six years ago. Ask professors there. He went to IIT. He speaks to a professor. Professor solves his problem. He comes out and says to me, you know this is very interesting. I went to the IIT. That guy is brilliant, he solved my problem for me. So I said, what’s wrong with that. He said, he just charged me a couple of thousand rupees. I said, so? He said, well that thing he solved for me is actually worth $30,000. This guy has no idea about what his value is, no idea about what he is worth. Why, because he is not connected to the market. He does not understand what the market is ready to pay him. He may, but institutionally he doesn’t. We have to change some of this.

For the young, the difference between aspiration and empowerment is basically a job. I go to the rural areas and the bottom line is a job. Everything else goes around it, education, but it is all done to support jobs. And that is where you guys come in. You are the people who are going to take the lead for the creation of jobs. What we have to do, what the government has to do, is to improve the playing field and create an impartial, professional and rules-based governance system.

I’ve spoken to you about what we need to do to nurture this movement of people. I would also like to tell you about what I feel threatens this movement of people. What is it that we should worry about. What are the things that can go wrong.

Lack of infrastructure is clearly one. Lack of knowledge infrastructure is another. But for me, the biggest danger is excluding of people. Excluding the poor, excluding the middle class, excluding the tribals, the dalits and let me tell you why.

Whenever we have not embraced the excluded – the poor, women, the minorities, the dalits, the tribals – we have fallen backwards.

President Kennedy famously said that a rising tide raises all boats. I oversee a women’s self-help group movement in my constituency in Uttar Pradesh. Chatting to them once, I told them that the President of the United States had said, a rising tide raises all boats. The woman looked at me and said, ‘Rahul bhai, but we don’t have a boat.’ A rising tide doesn’t raise people who don’t have a boat. We have to help build the boat for them.

It is not good enough to raise the tide, we have to give them the basic infrastructure to rise with the tide.

 

What is the basic infrastructure? The basic infrastructure, as designed by the UPA, is the rights-based paradigm. Give everybody the basic minimum on a number of key fronts. Give them the basic minimum on the job front. Give them the basic minimum on the education front. Give them the basic minimum on information, which is what Nandan [Nilekani] is doing. That is what we are trying to do with a rights-based approach.

The rights-based approach is important because it allows people to move. It builds this movement. One of the biggest problems poor people face is of identification. If you go to a village, they know each other, everybody in the village knows each other. Someone’s brother, someone’s sister. When the villager leaves the village, he looses all that information and nobody else has it. So a lot of the ideas that we have are designed to support this movement and make it smoother and more comfortable for people who are going to move.

And as I said earlier, this movement is what is driving everything. It is what is driving your businesses.

 

Let me go back to the women for a bit. They told me they have no boats. But the work our women do, the work millions of Indian women undertake every day, not poor ones, not rich ones, every single one of them. The work they do right now as we sit here in this nice, air-conditioned hall: they are building not only our boats, they are the waves. And I for one will not speak of growth without speaking of them. Our economic vision must be about more than money. It must be about compassion. We must envision a future for India that leaves no man and no woman outside in the shadows.

Embracing the excluded is essential to the wealth of the nation. If we do not embrace them, we will all suffer. It’s very simple. In a democracy, the poor have a veto. And we have to carry the poor and the weak with us. India will only move forward with inclusive growth that embraces everyone and is open and attainable for those inside this room and those very, very far outside.

Now there is a strong connection between harmony and growth. I spoke about this energy and this movement and there are two ways this movement can go. It can go harmoniously or it can go disruptively and the idea of the Congress party is that it should go harmoniously. Everybody should move together, happily.

There is a strong connection between harmony and growth. India has grown faster under the UPA because we have greatly lowered tensions between communities, made growth more inclusive, and fostered an environment of tolerance and harmony. Anger, hatred and prejudice do not contribute to growth.

Do not underestimate the benefits of harmony. When you play the politics of alienating communities you stop the flow of movement of people and ideas – and when that happens we all suffer. Businesses suffer, the seeds of disharmony are sown and the dreams of our people are severely disrupted. Once begun, this damage takes a very long time to reverse. It is very dangerous to leave people behind.

 

Inclusive growth is a win-win for everybody. We in the Congress party have been systematically working on creating modern political infrastructure that provides people with voice. By lifting people out of poverty, by using our rights approach, we are evening out a lot of these flows.

As we move forward to meet these challenges, we must remember that we have a tendency in India to think about solving all our problems incrementally. This is a mistake. There are some problems which require exponential solutions. Whenever India has done well it has done so, not by incremental steps but by radically transforming its structures. Look at our successes – from the Green Revolution to the White Revolution to the IT and Telecom Revolutions. All those successes were the result of exponential thinking.

We’re a brave, young country. Let’s break out of the mode of incremental improvements and get into the mode of generational shifts. Let’s stop wondering how many colleges we can build and start discussing what we can do so that the very idea of a college, the very idea of a university, is transformed. This might sound idealistic to you but I’m speaking very seriously from India’s experience. Look, if we went about the telecom revolution in the 1980s by distributing telephones one by one and going slowly house by house, Sam Pitroda wouldn’t be sitting here with us, he would still be somewhere in Kalahandi distributing telephones. He wouldn’t have that wonderful white hair, he’d be bald.

I have no interest in going bald, even though it seems quite likely at this stage – so let’s get into the business of smart interventions. Your voice and skill sets have to go into policy in a systemic way. Sam Pitroda, Krishnamurthy, Sreedharan, Nandan Nilekani, they all combined their skills with government to empower people and transform India.

 

What India is thirsting for now is a visionary partnership. A partnership that will incentivize you to provide economic gains for the poor and the millions of aspiring middle class. It is only once this partnership is forged that we will generate the momentum to transform this country. The Congress party is the only political institution capable of forging this partnership. It is the only party which is inclusive by design and whose core value is promoting harmony.

We are committed to creating a n open political architecture that is accessible to every Indian. Today, we need to forge a new business compact, a new framework a new framework that responds to the 21st century.

On our part, we will ensure a fair, rule-based and stable environment for entrepreneurs, large and small. An environment where businesses need not compete in the corridors of Raisina Hill, but compete instead on the streets and galis of our towns and villages. An environment where businesses will thrive by innovating better products and services. The compact should bring the excluded into the economic mainstream.

In such an environment, I invite business to help us unleash entrepreneurship and jobs at scale. In this compact business would commit to play by the rules, protect the environment and respect the rights of people. We are readying ourselves by developing a new political architecture, which will incorporate in a systemic way all voices, including the voice of business.

 

I’ve come here because I believe in you. I believe that this country cannot move forward without you. I have come here because I want to forge a partnership with you, a long-term partnership to take this country forward. Let us work together to build this brave, empowered new India.

Adi [Godrej] ji said in his speech, that I am somebody who spends a lot of time with poor people. But I want to make one thing very clear. India cannot go forward without partnership, without working together. The poor are one component of our country. Business is another component. The middle class is the third component. We have to work with all these components.

It’s not good enough to say, listen, the poor are important. It is not good enough to say business is important. It is not good enough to say middle class is important, or the powerful are important. This country is only going to move forward if we stitch together a coalition where we are all working together and you are critical to that. Absolutely critical. It cannot be done without you.

So that is my message. Thank you for coming here and listening to me. If you have any questions, I would happily answer them.

 

Ajay Shriram: How can we further improve centre-state relationships based on our Constitution and the federal structure? The states have their own rules and regulations; the Centre its own. Often economic development and progress gets hampered because of lack of cohesion or lack of uniform thinking of how to carry a particular project or vision forward. Do you think there is something we can do to actually increase the harmony?

RG: The key to understanding what’s happening in India today is the 73rd and 74th amendments, which basically created a third tier of government, a structure below the MLA and the MP. What is taking place in India is a devolution of power to this third tier and a lot of the tension you see is actually the tension, the challenge that is coming from the panchayat.

 

Let me give you some approximate numbers. I am an MP. I get Rs 5 crore a year. I have 700 pradhans who work with me; each one of those pradhans is working with a couple of crores. That’s the difference in power. I have power to make policy. He has tremendous power at the local level. And what he is saying – the pradhan – is that the system is too closed. It’s not good enough. There are three million of us and we have no voice in this big system. That’s the pressure that is driving MNREGA, that’s driving RTI, that’s changing our development paradigm and making it more granular.

There is a challenge being thrown to MPs and MLAs by the pradhan. But our political parties are not designed for pradhans, they are designed for MPs and MLAs – that’s the problem. It is not a centre-state problem. It is actually a devolution of power problem. And until we actually start to build structures that bring these voices in we will continue to have this type of policy, this type of conflict. What’s actually happening, if you look at the ground level, is that the pradhan is the builder. He is the one who does the job in the village. When we fight elections we go to the pradhan for support. But the pradhan doesn’t actually have any power in the political party. That’s the problem and, to put it bluntly, it is the pradhan who is going to solve it. He is not going to worry about whether there is an MP or an MLA in front of him. He is the last mile. So what we have to do, the architecture we have to build, is one which brings in the pradhan. And that, frankly, other than the Left parties and some of the Dravidian parties, [is an architecture that] none of the other parties have.

 

So what you are actually seeing is a structure where the grassroots are completely disconnected. They are not connected to the political system and that’s where the dysfunctionality is coming from. The pradhans have the power to change this and they will do it. The really interesting question in Indian politics is: Can we do something to our political parties, so that we can absorb these people? And believe me the moment you absorb them, a very simple thing will happen. Higher level policy will be dealt with by the MPs and MLAs; lower level policy will be dealt with by the pradhan. A lot of problems that are coming in our system today are because I, as MP, am dealing with low level stuff; that all our ministers are doing stuff that is actually not their job. It’s the job of a local representative out there. So until we actually open this political system out, this dysfunction will continue. I don’t know if you like it. That appears to be a complicated answer but is actually the answer.

 

Dhruv Sawhney: My question is about one of the major problems in India today, which is water and waste water. We really do not have a conception of just how bad the situation is – Punjab waters [laced] with uranium and West Bengal with arsenic. We need another mindset change. We need an exponential realization of this problem. This is a classic example of where civil society, business and government have to work together. It’s something that’s not thought of. Everyone thinks water is a free resource, and that’s what we need to change.

RG: This is a very important question. But it’s not only about water. It’s about every single thing. I raised the issue about university curriculum. We have not built systems that actually integrate voice. Tell me something: Is there a systematic way for the voice of business to come into government? Not just, I am a friend of Montek [Ahluwalia] or I know Montek, but a systematic structural way for you to say, ‘Listen, this is what we think. This is what should happen.’ Is there such a system? No. The CII is not in politics. You have your own system and, of course, that’s a very effective system. I am asking: In the political machine, in the government machine, does such a system exist? And not only for business, but the poor guy, the local representative. There is no conversation taking place. There is no structural conversation.

 

I sit on some of the committees in Parliament. The committees call whoever they want, totally based on what they feel like. Why isn’t there a systematic way? Listen, if we are talking, if we are trying draft this Bill, then these are all the people who have to come into the room. Institutionalized. And what I work at, what I struggle with, is moving away from this paradigm of it’s about one man or it’s about another man, to structures that actually bring in voice.

What you are asking about essentially is the lack of ability to deliver your voice in the system, institutionally, which is very different. Fifty years ago our system was small; you could do it without institutional structures. Now our system is too big. The job of a MP is completely transformed. Even if I compare my job eight years ago to now, it is a completely different job. Because the structure has changed and the system is not responding to the structure.

The political parties are not responding to the structure. I have been working in the Youth Congress for three years. Let me tell you what we have done. And it’s not appreciated because it’s not very well understood. And maybe I have not gone out and explained it in detail. Do you know what happens? How elections in the United States are fought? When President Obama fought an election, everybody came in. All members come in and vote. It’s called a primary. That is an expression of people’s will. People come in and say: ‘You know, I want Sunil [Mital] to lead this or I want Montek to lead this.’

 

The legislative engine in India is basically five thousand people. Five thousand people determine everything, right? How many people choose these five thousand people? In my party how many people do you think choose? There are four thousand MLAs. There are 600-700 MPs. And these people drive this country. In my party, in the BJP, in the BSP, if you combine these parties together, how many people do you think choose these legislators? In the whole country, including, I have calculated this, the BJP, the Congress, pushing it hard, maybe 200-300 people. Now how can you talk about Centre-state relations if two hundred people are defining those Vidhan Sabhas and Lok Sabhas. That is the problem.

A lot of the dysfunctionality that has come is because the system is clogged. And for a lot of the problems that actually you shouldn’t be dealing with, which should be on the periphery, you have to go all the way up the value chain. And they block you all the way up. That’s the problem. If you open up the value chain, most of your problems will be solved there. This is imposing huge costs. And we call it corruption.

No one talks about this. People talk about Rahul Gandhi. People talk about, you know, individuals. No one talks about, ‘Listen, lets open this thing out.’ And once you open this thing out, large numbers of your problems will be fixed far far away by lower level people. That’s what I am working on in the Congress Party.

 

How can we bring in the voice of the people? How can we systematically set up structures so that you can talk to us? That’s not happening. You are a wonderful institution, right? Where is your counterpart, inside the government? Where is your counterpart that brings people into the committee? It doesn’t exist. So you think you are empowered, but you are actually disempowered. And that’s all the way down. That’s the poorest guy in the village. He is also disempowered.

These are some of the things that we have to think about in the country. And when I talk about the partnership, that’s what I am talking about. Not what my individual view on something is; it’s irrelevant. There are a billion people in this country. It’s not important what Rahul Gandhi thinks; it’s important what the billion people think. And that mechanism isn’t there. It’s not working.

So, then we go into this model where you have the one guy who will come and fix everything. He is going to come on a horse, that’s the model, that’s the Indian model. He is going to come on the horse, the Sun is in the background. There are a billion people waiting. He is coming and everything is going to be fine. No. It’s not going to work like that.

I like to tell the truth, and I like to say what I see. Give me all the power you want, give anyone individual all the power you want, give him everything. He cannot solve the problems of a billion people. Cannot be done. Give a billion people the power to solve their problems, it will be done immediately. And we have got to move this debate. It can’t be about one person. It’s got to be about what are the structures we are building. What are the machines we are putting into place. How we are bringing voice into the system. And none of that debate takes place. And frankly, I get frustrated. I read the newspapers and say boy! You know it’s always about a person. It’s never about voice of people.

 

It’s never about voice of business. It’s never about the voice of the telecom industry. Systematically, not individually. And listen, if you are expecting Manmohan Singh ji or someone else to solve everything here, you are going to keep expecting it. It’s as simple as that. But if you want to solve it, you have to move from the person. I am irrelevant. I am one out of the billion Indians. So is Montek. So are some of the others here. Our power is only going to come when we channel that thing. You know that river of Indian people. When we channel that thing, when we give that thing voice, then you see the businesses you build. You see what happens. You will be sitting on monsters of the size that cannot be imagined. We talk about competing with the Americans, the Chinese. You open up the voice of the Indian people and you see what happens. You see what comes out.

You cannot imagine. Because I go to these villages and see these people sitting there. Nothing is working. There is no road, there is no this, nothing. And they are just sitting there. I’ll tell you one of my favourite stories. I went into this jhuggi jhopri on one of my tours in Maharashtra. I sit down. And a woman is sitting there. Young, 25. Two little kids. So I said ‘What’s going on? What are you doing?’ ‘I am a manual labourer.’ ‘Ok. Where is your husband?’ ‘He is working outside.’ I start talking to the kids. I said, ‘What do you want to be?’ He said, ‘I want to join the IAS.’ I said, ‘That’s interesting.’ To another fellow sitting there, I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ "I want to be a businessman.’ Fine. Then I look at the mother said, Listen, it’s not happening. You know this. You got a nice dream. But it’s not working.’ I said, ‘Look, you are living in a jhopri. Your husband is working there. You are doing manual labour.’ I wanted to provoke her and see. She says, ‘Look, I work 8 to 10 hours, and he works 8-10 hours and these two also work; one will join the IAS and the other will be in business.’ Now she had no reason to say that. To me this is irrational. I am on her side; I want her to succeed. But I am saying this is irrational. But she doesn’t believe that. She’s absolutely convinced that India is going to give her the opportunity.

 

That’s what you are sitting on. You unleash that, your businesses will go like this [gestures upwards], instantly. What is holding you back, frankly, is that the political system is clogged and it’s not responding to you. Why is it that pretty much everything, the smallest decision, has got to be taken by the senior-most guy? Why? I am sitting there and I am an MP, and I am doing a job of a pradhan. Somebody says, ‘Bhaiya, we need a road!’ It’s not my job. But the system is so closed that the pradhan actually doesn’t have the ability to do the job. So what you have to do, [if you want the road] is head to Lucknow. That’s your problem. It’s an advantage. If we want to speak openly there are advantages that arise out of it. But you are not seeing the massive disadvantage that arises out of it. It’s much bigger because you are forced to deal all the way up the value chain. And as you go up the value chain, it gets more and more complicated. So that’s how I see it.

 

You know my people say, ‘Listen don’t go into the India-China cliché, don’t go into it.’ I am not going to listen to them. I want to go into it for a reason. See, there are two types of systems. There is a centralized system and there is a decentralized system. China is a centralized system. They call it the Dragon. You can see it, it’s very clear – it’s big, it’s powerful, builds big structures that are visible and people call us an elephant. They call us elephant and them dragon, right? We are not an elephant; we are a beehive. It’s funny, but think about it. I’ll tell you why we are a beehive. Which one is more powerful? An elephant or beehive? No, between an elephant and the beehive, which is powerful? No, the answer is they can’t be compared. Power applies itself in a completely different way. We have to understand what we are. We have to understand where our power comes from.

I went to one of these talks and the Chinese prime minister’s secretary came up to me and asked: ‘Mr. Gandhi, why is it that everyone worries about China and nobody worries about India?’ So I said, ‘Well, why don’t you tell me? She says, ‘You know Mr. Gandhi because China is more powerful than India.’ I said, ‘That’s interesting; show me your hand; you see this is how China applies power.’ When I apply power like this, he [the Indian] feels it, he understands it and he says, ‘Hey you are holding my hand. You are pressing me down.’ Now this is how India applies power. Now she looked at me, she actually saw it, realized it.

We are actually much more powerful than we think. We just don’t apply power in a centralized way. There are people doing yoga in New York, dancing around. That’s Indian power. You go to a nightclub somewhere in Spain and there is Amitabh Bachchan on the screen, dancing around. That’s Indian power. That’s the power of the beehive – nobody sees it. Sits there, works quietly. Little bit of noise in the beehive. That buzzing sound, you hear it all the time. This is the complexity we are having to deal with. What do we do with this? Montek says it drives him nuts.

 

It drives me nuts. I look at the newspapers. Why are we talking about these things – this is not important? Opening up the political system is important. Voice is important. Why are we talking about Aishwarya Rai’s wedding? You know this is noise. This is the noise of a decentralized system. And this thing that stresses you out, this noise, that stresses you out. It stresses me out, it stresses Mr. Bajaj out. It stresses all of us out. And actually it drives the foreigners crazy because they are not used to it. They have no idea where they have come.

Some of these MIT guys came to see me the other day. They said, ‘Mr. Gandhi, what is this place? Why are Indians always complaining?’ Indians are always complaining because they are dealing with complexity. That’s what we do, what we are specialize in. There is no complexity in China.

I’ll tell you a story. A friend of mine came from China, an Italian. He was in shock, just stunned. So I asked him what happened. He said, ‘You know I was in a bus in China. The bus hit a man. The driver picked up the man and put him on the side of the road and we carried on.’ No complexity there. Simple.

 

India is complex and the answers we come up with, the answers Sam comes up with, the answers Jindal comes up with, these are robust answers. They are not simple answers. And the West looks at us and says give us simple answers. Our environment is not simple. We cannot give you simple answers.

But that’s what’s happening. And this is something that I see as our strength. This is why I am saying the beehive is a good analogy. What is happening is that all of you are the masters of complexity. You understand complexity and you are entering a century of complexity. Simple answers in a connected world will not work. This buzzing sound that you don’t like, these newspaper stories that drive me nuts, this is your training. It is teaching you to deal with complexity and this is what is going to give you the competitive advantage that nobody has ever had before.

When you go out into the world after you have dealt with this complexity, and you are dealing with your counterparts in the United States, your counterparts in France and Germany, you are people who are trained in complexity, dealing with the people who are trained in simplicity. I’ll tell you who will win. You will win.

A lot of the time we are worked up and we ask, why is this thing not working. There are a lot of things that we need to fix. Structural things. Highways. Things are slow and we need to speed it up. It’s not good to say, ‘You know its complex, so let us not do it.’ No. You have to push them. Look, you have to do the things Sam did. You have to do the things Nandan [Nilekani] did. And you have to push. But don’t forget that all this complexity is actually stressful, gives us the highest heart attack rates, gives us diabetes. This is very good training for a connected world; no better training than this. And if you can thrive here, and can build here like all of you have done, if you can do it here, I am not worried, you can do it on the moon.

So that is the strength of India. It is a completely different system than the American system or the Chinese system or the Japanese system. It’s a decentralized system and its power is soft, unheard, unseen. But it is there. So these are some of the things I wanted to tell you. It’s been quite interesting for me and frankly I should do this much more often.

You get tags in India. See it’s the complexity-simplicity thing. He only cares about poor people. He only cares about rich people. He only cares about middle class people. He is somebody who who looks at Dalits. He is somebody who looks at tribals. But the reality is these definitions, these tags, they are just pieces of paper – just tags.

 

I have one aim. One aim in my life. It’s an accident of fate, I happen to come from a chain of people. DNA. It’s the DNA. I have been put in this situation. I have been told, boss here you are, ok? Now I will tell you one thing. We have to move this country from that old idea. The idea that we love – of the guy on the horse. He is going to come charging through and everything in India is going to be fixed. It’s not, I said it before. You know I go to Jhansi. I see Jhansi ki Rani. She is a hero, we consider her a hero, but forget that she was not the only hero. She was just a representative of those heroes. You don’t see the millions of other heroes who actually made the charge. You just see that one hero.

What I want do in my life is very simple. I want to give, not give, I want to help Indian people – get their voice. Doesn’t matter if it is Montek or Sunil. Doesn’t matter if it is the poorest guy sitting in a village in Amethi. I don’t care. The power of this country is one billion plus voices. And until we start listening to them, and until we start pushing them into the system, we are not going to generate our true power.

 

That’s why I don’t like this politics of ‘keep-these-people out’ – let’s keep the Biharis out of Mumbai. Just beat them up when they come. Just thrash them. How dare the Biharis come into Mumbai? Absolutely not! Or huge communities, 200 million people – Muslims. You say they don’t exist. So we want to keep them out of the system. It is not sustainable. It is a complete waste of our energy. We have to take everybody together. That is our power. In fact, not only do we have to take everybody who is ours together, we have to take them all. Our idea is so big that it can carry not only India, it can carry everybody else. And what is the idea? It’s a different idea than the idea that prevails in the United States. The idea of India, which was told to us by Gandhi ji, repeated again and again for those who want to hear it. It’s written in the Gita. Buddha spoke about it. The idea is compassion. What is compassion? It’s just listening, nothing else. It’s just listening to what the person is saying. Not put a label on him, that he is a rich man, he is a poor man, he is a fool, he is intelligent. No, just listen. Just go out and listen. If we just start doing that and listening to every single person in this country, this thing will build itself so fast you won’t know what’s happened.

I am proud to be an Indian. I love this complexity. It drives me crazy. You know, I got press guys asking me, ‘When you are getting married?’ Somebody else saying, ‘Boss when are you going to be PM?’ Somebody saying ‘No you are not going to be PM.’ Somebody saying, ‘Maybe you will be PM.’ There is a good possibility it’s like an American polling chart. You know there is 47.3% possibility that he might be PM. These are all irrelevant questions, it’s all smoke. The only relevant question in this country is how can we give our people voice. That’s it.

I’d like to end by saying just one thing. You are the cutting edge in the 21st century. The world has turned. They used to look at us and say, ‘Boss, Hindu rate of growth 3%. India is stuck in this forever.’ Now the Hindu rate of growth is the European rate of growth. That’s not a good thing; that is a bad thing. We need to work with everybody. When I say voice, I don’t mean just Indian voice. And this is something that we have stopped doing the way we used to. I mean everybody’s voice. I mean going to your enemy, your worst enemy, and listening to him and saying, ‘What is it that you are saying? Maybe I am misunderstanding you. Say it again so I can hear it properly.’ And this is what we have to get in the habit of doing. Too often we just turn around and say, ‘No, I know it. We know it.’ This is not our culture. Our ideas flow out of this country when we listen.

 

Go to Japan. A gentlemen sitting here in Bihar three thousand years ago fundamentally changed their life because he listened. That’s all he did. So when you are doing your work –and you guys are hard-nosed businessmen – I am not a hard-nosed politician, but I am getting there. I don’t want to be one. I think it’s sad to be a hard-nosed politician. But you are hard-nosed businessmen. Listen to people. Listen to your opponents. Make them your friends and embrace the complexity of this country.

 

* Edited extract of Rahul Gandhi’s speech and interaction at the CII Annual General Meeting and National Conference, New Delhi, 4 April 2013.