We cannot run away from politics or eliminate it as an option, says Nandan Nilekani Earlier this year, around the time New Year resolutions have yet to lose their shine, I met with a group of young people who work in the neighbourhoods of Bangalore. These 20-somethings mentor teenagers in low-income households across the city. They help them with information and advice on education and the skills that will get them employment. I talked to them that afternoon of my vision for a better Bangalore for the kind of city they needed and that met their aspirations. UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi in 2010. A young girl in the front row stood up. I work and study part-time, she said, I want to complete college and find a better job than the one I have now. But I cant get the things that are owed to me. If I try to sit in the ladies seat in the bus, for example, the conductor harasses me. How can I achieve what I want to if I have to fight for every service I need? The young people in front of me were not asking for much. They were asking that we take away the weights that hold them down. What they want is simple: The freedom and the opportunity to build better lives for themselves; to have a life not defined by their past and the life of their parents. This becomes even more important and urgent today in a country bursting with ambition. This is a young country that is dreaming big. For the first time in our history, we are witnessing aspirations that cut across our income classes: A child in a slum is as likely as a child in a well-off neighbourhood to dream of becoming a doctor or an engineer. This is a great advance we have made, that people feel they can dream of being anyone they like regardless of their circumstances. But we must make sure they have ways to fulfil these dreams. I know, personally, how much that matters. In 1979, I had just graduated from IIt-Bombay. I was 24 years old, and I had just about enough money in my pocket to find a room and fill my stomach for a few weeks. But I also had something of far more value than a wad of money--my IIT degree. Thanks to that degree, I found a job where I met N.R. Narayana Murthy, and seven of us founded the small company that became Infosys. Fortune didnt come early or easy. We barely scraped by on our small salaries. I was told by my family and friends that I would fail. But these choices--to struggle, to strive towards a success you believe in, and to sacrifice in order to meet your aspirations--are what every person should have the chance to make. Many more people should have the chances that I had. Opportunity shouldnt be the rare, precious resource that it is today. We need the policies that can guarantee equal opportunity, that give everyone a fair chance for success. Considering the urgency of our aspirations, the fastest way to bring about this change is through politics. As an entrepreneur, I helped create several lakhs of jobs; with the Aadhaar programme, I helped bring a digital identity to 55 crore Indians. My experience has led me to believe that politics is the biggest lever that we have for lasting change, and for change that is truly large scale. We cannot run away from politics, cannot eliminate it as an option. We owe it to ourselves, to our country to participate in it, in order to build the solutions we need. Thats why Ive decided to enter public life, and thats why I think many more of us should get involved. There is a chance today in our politics to implement a vision that is truly constructive. People see politics as a tough boxing ring, a battle, a war. But to build to last and to create solutions that endure, politics cannot be about short-term bloodthirstiness. Rather, effective politics, as the great sociologist Max Weber pointed out, needs both good ideas and sustained, unrelenting effort against hard problems. Your goals have to focus on the long game. Today, the problems politicians need to urgently tackle--in job creation, infrastructure and the health of our cities--do not lend easily to simple, ideological answers. To solve these problems, we will have to work together, irrespective of party tags, and build a coalition of government, the private sector and civil society. Together, we can envision lasting answers, answers that seem so impossible alone. This is what we achieved with the Aadhaar programme. I agreed to do the programme because it offered the chance to not just create a universal digital identity for the entire country, but also to build an inclusive, powerful anti-corruption platform. We have issued Aadhaar numbers to 55 crore people in the four years since enrolment began; essentially, we have been enrolling four people every second in the past four years. We were able to do this because we brought together different ministries, state governments, public departments and banks as well as the private sector to enrol and roll out the Aadhaar numbers. People worked across political allegiances and beliefs. And without that, we wouldnt have achieved what we have managed to, considering the challenges and complexities of this country. If I stand for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, I intend to do it on a Congress ticket. I believe that lasting change is only possible in this country with a party with a truly inclusive agenda. In India today, the Congress is the party with a track record in this. Its a party that already gave me the platform to achieve results; in my five years in government, they backed me in the Aadhaar initiative and supported my ideas to reform the system. I believe that the Congress today has acknowledged the need to reinvent itself. I want to be part of that change and contribute to it. I think the time now is ideal for this change. We have the opportunity to build towards a truly constructive vision. Its not as if we, as a civilisation, lack the capacity to build things that endure. We are surrounded by reminders of the people that came before us. From the drainage system of the Indus Valley civilisation and the forts and palaces of the kingdoms that came before us to the man-made lakes all over Bangalore; these still stand, still endure. In the life of this young nation, we have already created lasting democratic processes with our Constitution and electoral systems. It is time again for us now to think of solutions that endure-for answers that work consistently and for everyone for creating jobs, the health of our cities, and our infrastructure. We have the chance today to guarantee ourselves and our children a better country. We must build a lasting contract, one that allows us to look into the eyes of our children and say that we did the best for their future when we had the chance. My 35 years of experience in the government and the private sector has taught me that to do this, to do things at speed, at scale, to truly transform. We need the leaders who will energise and bring people together, who will fight on, against all odds, and who will, as Max Weber said, fight with both passion and perspective. That is my goal: To bring both my passion and my perspective to the public space. And I am doing this now, because I believe we are at a critical moment for our growth and our future. We need better answers today.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 13:47:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015