#706
Personal Update: Lalitha and I,are off to San Fransico, this week on a 20 day trip. Radha's baby shower- சீமந்தம் on Sunday, 30th November at San Jose. (My Birthday too).
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India does not lack talent, money, ambition, or ideas. What India lacks is permission to be excellent—and, more importantly, visible proof that excellence will be rewarded. Every time Businessmen or someone shouts “Work harder! 70-hour weeks! Be like Japan! Be like China!”, the average citizen looks at the pothole outside their home, the flickering tubelight, the bribe-seeking constable, and quietly laughs. This laughter is not laziness, but the response of someone asked to run a marathon with chains on their feet and then blamed for not breaking the world record.
Calls for hard work from billionaires and ministers are not wrong, but they are decades too late. The countries India envies delivered roads, electricity, schools, and rule of law first—then asked for sweat. India tries to extract sweat while still handing out broken oxygen cylinders and calling it “positive thinking”.
The deeper disease is not just infrastructure, but the open, proud, politically profitable contempt for merit. When a Chief Minister humiliates officers for using the only language in which India’s laws and higher judiciary function, it is not about defending culture—it is about defending the right to remain mediocre without shame. “Colonial mindset” becomes code for anything precise, data-driven, or globally benchmarked; excellence is treated as treason.
This anti-excellence reflex is now wrapped in patriotism. Free electricity and bus rides are announced, while universities slip in global rankings and start-ups move their headquarters abroad. Young Indians are not against hard work; they are against unpaid overtime for a system that punishes competence and rewards flattery.
History shows that real change in India has only come from a vacuum at the top—a literal death or a political near-death experience. Examples include:
- 1991: Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination led to P.V. Narasimha Rao’s unexpected rise, enabling rapid reforms.
- 1977: Indira Gandhi’s Emergency hubris produced an electoral tsunami, briefly allowing reforms. Then the cookie crumbled.
- 2014–16: A rank outsider’s victory froze the establishment long enough for GST, IBC, and Aadhaar-DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer) to be implemented. 2018 back to usual ways. (பழைய குருடி, கதவை திறடி)
Each rupture required a vacuum at the top—when the usual heirs and courtiers are uncertain, a narrow window opens for reform before the old guard regroups.
Globally, socialism wrapped in freebies is winning elections, as the young are exhausted by a capitalism that lets a few own half the planet while their own rents double. They vote for politicians promising to punish the successful, (Hard work is critical, Not Harvard) but punishing success never built a single school, hospital, or metro line—it only ensures fewer successful people to punish tomorrow.
India’s only realistic hope is morbid: either an unforeseen void at the top, or an electoral massacre so brutal that several layers of the old guard are wiped out. Only then can a new leadership bring in “English-speaking, Harvard-type” experts and dismantle the apology-for-mediocrity industry.
Until that funeral or massacre arrives, India will keep getting refined versions of the same sermon: “Run faster!” while the elite tighten the chains and call it motivation. The marathon will begin the day the chains fall off—and in India, the chains only fall off when nobody is left powerful enough to hold them.
Lessons from China: Credibility Over Motivation:- China succeeded where India fails because it never asked for faith—it delivered tangible, visible proof that sacrifice today leads to a better life tomorrow.
China’s transformation:
- 1980–1995: Villages saw mud roads replaced by asphalt, firewood replaced by electricity and colour TV, and wages increased tenfold.
- 1995–2010: Shanghai’s Pudong transformed from cabbage fields to a skyline rivaling Manhattan. Migrants returned home driving Buicks and carrying iPhones for their nieces.
- The government did not say “trust us”; it pointed to new airports, subways, and rising bank balances.
As a result, when Beijing asked for extra effort, people volunteered—because the deal had already delivered decades of kept promises.
That is why Chinese citizens / Colleagues, I met in Shanghai looked puzzled when Indians and Westerners argued in meetings be at Chongqing or New Delhi when they are present.
They were not brainwashed. They were simply playing a game whose rules had been fair for 40 years. We are playing a game that has been rigged against excellence for 75 years.
India’s psychology is the opposite:
- 1950–2022: Every five-year plan promised poverty removal and world-class cities; every decade delivered new slogans and excuses. (NATO---->No Action; Talk Only).
- The Delhi Metro and a few airports arrived, but outside those corridors, roads remain broken, police stations still humiliate, and municipal taps still give muddy water.
- Generations have heard promises—“Socialist Pattern of Society by 1969, Garibi Hatao by 1980, India Shining by 2004, Achhe Din by 2019”—but seen little change.
Chinese citizens are motivated because the rules have been fair for 40 years. Indians are cynical because the game has been rigged against excellence for 75 years. Cynicism is not a character flaw, but compound interest on decades of broken promises.
Until an Indian leader can show a slum-dweller a photograph album like the Chinese worker’s—“This was your gutter in 2024, this is your 3-BHK in 2030, this is your daughter in IIT in 2035”—calls for 70-hour weeks will sound like the slave-driver cracking the whip.
China created credibility, not just duty. Credibility is the only currency that can buy genuine, voluntary, manic national effort. India keeps printing motivational speeches instead of results. That is why, in India, words are cheap and action is surreal.
The shock and awe will not come from another package or speech. It will only come when a sudden vacuum—biological or electoral—lets a desperate, unscripted leader do a 1991 again: dismantle the apology-for-mediocrity industry, bring in the hated experts, and deliver visible, undeniable results in 24 months.
Until that funeral or electoral massacre arrives, the chains will keep tightening and be called motivation. The marathon begins the day the chains fall off—and in India, the chains only fall off when nobody is left powerful enough to hold them.
Do I see it in my life time? I don't think so? Sad reality. "Pessimistic; but as Walter Cronkite would end his program " And tha's the way it is"
Karthik
930am. 24/11/2025. Beefy is 70 today. Boy what an Entertainer. Saw him in Flesh and Blood, Madras 1982.
