The King's Speech & I

Last week I saw a movie that I have been waiting to see for a long time: The King's Speech (http://www.kingsspeech.com). It is a dramatised version of a certain aspect of the life of King Geroge VI: his speech problem.

As the second son of King George V, Prince Albert was not supposed to ascend the throne. That privilege belonged to his elder brother, the Prince of Wales, Edward. On the death of King George V, Prince Edward ascended the throne as King Edward VIII. However, very soon, his love for an American divorcee, Mrs Wallis Simpson, and his desire to marry her resulted in his having to abdicate the throne. As the next in line, Prince Albert had to ascend to the throne and took on the title King George VI.

Prince Albert / King George VI was a most reluctant monarch. And his reluctance did not have to do entirely with him being forced to occupy a position that he thought rightfully belonged to his brother. King George VI's reluctance was also in great measure due to his stammering problem. How could the great British dominions--an empire so large that 'the sun never set'--have a King-Emperor who could not command and/or inspire his subject through his words? How do you proclaim the majesty of a stammering king? How do you maintain the magic of an institution who members do not measure up publicly.

The movie shows the fascinating relationship between Prince Albert--yet to be king--and his speech trainer Lionel Logue. And how they together triumph at the end.

Colin Firth, playing the role of Prince Albert, brings out the rage and frustration of a headstrong man handicapped with a situation that results in public humiliation for him. Just imagine: how would anyone of us feel if thrust in front of a huge crowd of adoring and expectant public, and find that our vocal chords desert us?

I could very well identify with the pain and frustration of the young prince. For, till well past my adulthood, I had a huge stammering problem. The situation was so bad that there was not a single sentence I could speak without stammering. 

Of course I was not born that way; I guess no child does. But I got affected pretty early on. My earliest memories of stammering go back to my Classes IIIrd and IVth. I would get caught up on particular words, and from then on I would freeze. And to stop my embarrassment, I would refuse to speak from then on. Seeing Prince Albert struggle with his vocal chords and the resultant distortions on his face, brought back a flood of memories of my younger days.

It was sometime in my +2 days (classes XIth and XIIth) that I decided to take things into my own hands. Of course we did not have speech therapists in those days; and even if they existed, I did not have any knowledge of their existence. So I decided to train myself in front of the mirror, and my process of recovery began. To say that it wasn't easy is to state the obvious. But it was also extremely frustrating and painful.

The movie shows how Prince Albert's frustrations would turn into violent temper and self-pity. I guess my emotions too weren't different. Today, in retrospect, I can trace, with some degree of certainty, the roots of my temperament: my short fuse and social aloofness. Not that I did not want to open up, I could not. And it has stayed that way.

Today, as a political leader, I speak in front of large audiences; I address public rallies. And at such times do I marvel at the recovery I made. 

As the movie ended and the credits scrolled, I said a silent prayer for all the young men and women affected with a speech handicap, and hoped that they too would recover some day!

  

To move forward, let's share stories

By Prodyut Bora & Hindol Sengupta

Published in the Hindustan Times, 14 August 2013

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Columns/To-move-forward-let-s-share-stories/Article1-1107587.aspx

If one were to forget for a moment the ridiculous debate on what price could one have a full meal in Delhi and Mumbai, and also cut through the fog of arguments and counter-arguments by statisticians and economists on the latest poverty figures put out by the Planning Commission, one could accept the larger point that the number of poor people has reduced in the last 10 years.

While we receive the news of poverty reduction, we are also presented with the evidence of general economic slowdown.

In such a scenario, what we need is a wide-ranging debate on how to help the economy to recover.

The media has reduced the entire debate to the personalities of two academic stalwarts — Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati — whose intellectual positions, we are asked to believe, have been defined by their political inclinations and professional rivalry based on, among others, only one among the duo having got the Nobel.

As Vinod Mehta wrote in Outlook, ‘Played across three continents, it has all the gravitas of a Katrina Kaif-Priyanka Chopra Bollywood tiff’.

This begs two questions: First, have we really understood the positions of Sen and Bhagwati, and second, are the solutions to the problems of the Indian economy to be found only in these two polar positions?

Let us take the first. Arvind Panagariya, an economist and professor at Columbia University, has argued in The Economic Times: ‘Two extreme characterisations of the positions of the two sides have emerged.

The first has it that the differences between them are minimal with each side expressing the same ideas in a different language.

The second depicts Bhagwati as advocating solely growth and Sen solely social spending. Both characterisations are plain wrong’. Panagariya has delineated the points of convergence and departure in both positions, and has created immense scope for a nuanced debate. However, without attempting to explore any other possibility, we have simplified it into a growth vs development debate and given readers a binary menu to choose from.

In the second point, our opinion is against middle-of-the-road solution seeking. Take the mid-day meal and the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS).

For every horror story from Bihar or Bloomberg report about a company commissioned to supply food under the ICDS in UP serving rations unfit for consumption, there is Tamil Nadu, where successive chief ministers have competed to increase the number of eggs in mid-day meals; and Madhya Pradesh, which ranks at the top of the best performing states in kitchen construction and procurement in the last six years.

On a recent visit to Ajmer in Rajasthan it was understood that enrolment had gone up from 30 to 293 students in the last two years due to community involvement in preparing and serving hot meals mostly to banjara or gypsy children as a part of the mid-day meal scheme.

It is time we rise above petty point-scoring and create a common pool of ideas shared between states where the success of one can be replicated by the other without bias. Why should Delhi shy away from learning about the wonder that Ahmedabad has done at its river front?

And why should Mumbai shirk Delhi’s example of running a metro?

In any case, economy is too important a topic to be left solely to economists. In a country as large and diverse as India, relying on just data can often be numbing.

In our culture, lessons are best learnt when stories are told. We need to rekindle a culture where the best stories and examples are held forth. We need modern parables, writers who will revive ancient wisdom in a spanking new context. We need laws, the application of laws and stories that explain the magic of that dharma to us.

Today demography is on our side. A young India has seen a country very different from what the older generations experienced. We had a great opportunity to present them a future characterised by hope and positive restlessness. But in the clamour for scoring television screaming points, aren’t we losing out an opportunity to get history on our side?

Prodyut Bora is national executive member, BJP and Hindol Sengupta is the author of The Liberals

The views expressed by the authors are personal

Welcome to Yale

My friend Sanjay Sarma (https://twitter.com/nick_sarma) had been insisting for a long time that I start writing my blog again. I had been resisting it for as long as I could on one pretext or the other. My reasons were many. After a long day of political work, wherein one meets tens of people and is required to change mental track multiple times, there is little inclination and energy left to put pen to paper. Secondly, I am a lazy writer: having written something I hate to re-read it and/or make corrections. Wherein with a newspaper or magazine article one is safe in the knowledge that what one has written would go through the fine combs of an editor's gaze, how does one ensure that one's blog is free of bloomers and typos? Thirdly, one is communicating all the time: SMSes, phone calls, emails, Facebook, Twitter, what have you! So without dipping into what may be referred to as 'intensely private', what material is one left with that could be of sufficient public interest?

Sanjay's answer was: write about your experience at Yale.

This year I had been selected a Yale World Fellow (http://worldfellows.yale.edu/), one of a group of 16 people from around the world found fit to attend what Yale calls 'its signature leadership development programme'. This is the 11th year of the programme and over the years it has indeed picked an eclectic group of people. For instance, click here to see the honorees from India. The programme picks mid-career professionals, mostly in their mid-30s to the early 40s, that have shown both performance and potential. Looking at members of this cohort and earlier ones, I feel humbled to be in such august company.

Anyway, more out of respect for Sanjay's insistence that any creative impulse, I start my blog again. Only God knows how long I would keep at it!

So what of Yale?

I landed at the Newark Liberty International Airport after a 15 hour flight on Saturday morning and was picked-up by a limo sent by the university. I don't know if they do it for all students, but it was nice to be waited upon and not having to look for a taxi in a foreign location. Although Newark is part of the larger New York Metropolitan Area, it is actually in the state of New Jersey. Newark to Yale, New Haven, is almost a 2-hour drive. New Haven is in the state of Connecticut.

The drive from Newark to Yale, New Haven

As I flipped open the introductory docket that Yale had sent with the chauffeur and poured over the maps, one question came to my mind: if a New York Metropolitan Area can have multiple airports servicing it, why can't our Delhi/NCR too have more than one airport? Why do planes have to hover for so long over the Delhi airport waiting to come down, when we could have easily decongested the airspace by building more airports in places like Greater Noida, Sonepat and Meerut? What is logic of having a rule like 'no new airports within 500 kms of an existing one'?

Anyway, the 15-hour flight and my further mental flight of fancy took their toll, and I easily slipped into slumber for the rest of the journey. When I woke up, I was in front of my residence for the next 4 months.

Welcome to Yale!

Politics as Thriller

A very popular piece I salvaged from my previous blog:

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Although some would argue that the epics, Mahabharat and Ramayan, could be read as masterpieces of political play, I hadn’t, till very recently, read any modern political thriller. 

Last December my Party colleague Shri Anupam Trivedi presented me a book called Imperium by Robert Harris. “Read it, you would like it,” he said. I had never heard of Robert Harris before, and with the increasing pressure of the developing Lok Sabha campaign pinning me down, I put away the book for perusing at a later date. 

Now, almost a year later, trying to finish my reading backlog, I picked up the Imperium and over the course of a week finished reading it. And I was, to put it simply, hooked. 

Imperium is a fictionalised story of the life and political career of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC), as narrated by his slave and secretary Tito. The Roman civilization, much like the Greek civilization, has thrown up a galaxy of titans and noteworthy characters. Cicero is one of them, but what makes his life remarkable is how he had risen from very ordinary circumstances to become a most vociferous defender of the Roman Republic. In between scaling the ranks of political offices, he also cemented his reputation as the finest lawyer and orator in Rome. 

Let me not write a review when so many worthies have already done the job. In particular, I would point you to 2 excellent pieces in The Guardian and The New York Times. My only take on the book is that politics hasn’t changed one bit in the past 2000 years. Imperium ends with Cicero’s election to the post of the Consul, the highest office in the land. Now the good news is that Robert Harris has come out with the second part of his Cicero trilogy: Lustrum. Here are the reviews by The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. 

Imperium has been a great education for this young politician. I hope Lustrum is as educative.

A Vision for Guwahati

I wrote a long article in English on a vision for Assam's largest city. Asomiya Pratidin has been kind enough to translate and publish it in a serialised format over 3 weeks. Here's the English original.

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The recently-released State of the World Population Report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), reveal several interesting statistics. It took until 1800 for the world population to reach 1 billion. But thereafter it was a fast climb: 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion on 1959, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987 and 6 billion in 1999. Currently, we are have just crossed the 7 billion mark. Future projections show continued increase, but with a steady decline in the growth rate.

All along human history, people have been migrating from rural to urban areas, making cities bigger and bigger agglomerations of habitation and centres of economic activity. Rome was said to be the first million-plus city, but today's megapolises would make the Rome of yore look like an outgrown neighbourhood. The Tokyo-Yokohoma urban agglomeration, for instance, holds an estimated 36.69 million people (bigger than the total population of Assam). The National Capital Region (NCR) of India—comprising Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida, Ghaziabad and Bahadurgarh—contains about 22.63 million people.

The other piece of significant news is that for the first time in human history more people are living in towns and cities than in villages.

India is Urbanising

As the country is urbanising, so is Assam, but not at the same rate. The Provisional Census Report, 2011, states that of India's 1.21 billion population, 377 million people (31.16%) live in “urban areas”. Included in this list of urban areas are 4041 recognised towns with their own urban local bodies (ULBs), as well as 3894 “census towns”. The census towns are basically out-grown villages with a population of at least 5000 people in the preceding census, with at least 75% of male main working population engaged in non-agricultural activities, and a population density of at least 400 persons per sq km.

Of these 4041 statutory towns, 468 have a population of more than 1 lakh and are categorised as Class I Towns. The point to note is that 264.9 million persons, constituting 70% of the total urban population, live in these Class I Towns. Or to put it in a national perspective, 22% of India live in medium and big towns/cities.

Historically, Assam has been one of the least urbanised state of India. Just after independence, while the urbanisation rate in India stood at 17.29%, it was a lowly 4.29% in Assam. In fact the population of Guwahati itself was only about 43 thousand. While currently there are at least 7 urban agglomerations (statutory towns + census towns + outgrowth areas)—Guwahati, Silchar, Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Nagaon, Tinsukia and Tezpur—that have a population of more than a lakh each, the growth of most of these towns barring Guwahati has been sluggish. The experience of Guwahati on the other hand has been anything but, specially after the capital of Assam shifted from Shillong in 1972.

For the next two decades, as the Government of Assam consolidated its administration in Guwahati-Dispur and a sprinkling of industries began to sprout on the outskirts of the city, it became a magnet for all kinds of migrants from both within and outside the state. Very few Indian cities have had the kind of population growth, at least in percentage terms if not in absolute value, that Guwahati saw between 1971-91. While the rate of decadal doubling has tapered off, Guwahati's population gains still remain impressive.

This has undoubtedly led to some major pressures on the city's infrastructure. A corrupt State Government combined with an ineffective civic administration have ensured that disruption in civic services are more routine than being remotely accidental.

The result is a general hand-wringing both in the media and in private conversation, with the regular questions being: in which direction is Guwahati heading? How big should it become? Should it become an industrial town, or should all industries be kept away? What about infrastructure growth?

Unfortunately the nature of TV-led public debates being what they are, one can hardly expect any answers to emerge. So today we take a break from the regular paradigm of problem-solving, and instead of looking 'inside' for an answer look to the world 'outside' for the insights it has to offer. And central to that inquiry is the question about the role of the city?

Role of the City

Most people view a city as an agglomeration of humans, habitats and economic activities, put together either by design or the the natural processes of history. But cities can also be huge centres of economic value creation and hubs for work, leisure, entertainment, culture, education and intellectual activity. Therefore some people see cities as the primary building blocks of the 21^st century society. Invested with immense intellectual capital, armed with huge economic might, cities, they say, would shape politics and set the global agenda of tomorrow.

A McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report provides the statistics to go with the sentiment. The report found that today only 600 cities, home to about 20% of the global population, generate about 60% of world's GDP. The promising news is that 70% of these 600 cities are located in emerging economies like India, China, Brazil and South Africa.

They also found another interesting fact: given the way some of the smaller cities are growing, they would replace many of the incumbent in the current 600 list. 'Over the next 15 years, the makeup of the group of top 600 cities will change as the centre of gravity of the urban world moves south and, even more decisively, east. One of every three developed market cities will no longer make the top 600, and one out of every 20 cities in emerging markets is likely to see its rank drop out of the top 600. By 2025, we expect 136 new cities to enter the top 600, all of them from the developing world and overwhelmingly (100 new cities) from China. These include cities such as Haerbin, Shantou, and Guiyang. But China is not the only economy to contribute to the shifting urban landscape. India will contribute 13 newcomers including Hyderabad and Surat.'

Apart from providing better habitats, all these cities are home to world-class research facilities, academic institutions, cultural centres, transportation hubs, and manufacturing/production zones that operate synergistically to create great products and services. In short, cities are nurturing spaces for the advancement of humanity. So where do we locate a vision for Guwahati in this narrative?

I often wonder if anybody has envisioned Guwahati not just as a city, but as a living space that embodies the spirit of the Assamese people? I wonder if anybody has thought of Guwahati as a nurturing cocoon, an intellectual platform to bring on board the best and the brightest of our talent and set them to create the finest we have to offer to the world?

My gut feel is that we don't see Guwahati this way. In my conversations with ordinary people, I come across a builder's Guwahati which is a real estate goldmine that is open to be exploited till there is nothing more left to be gleaned; I come across a squatter's Guwahati which dangles the prospect of unlimited housing minus the security; I come across a cynic's Guwahati where the world can be damned as long as sewage water does not enter the drawing room. But I don't encounter the visionary's Guwahati that attempts to be a showcase of our goodness and talent.

Envisioning Guwahati

The North-East has been a frontier in more sense than one. Hemmed in on all sides by fiercely belligerent neighbours, this landlocked area of wild hills and delirious rivers, joined to the mainland by a narrow sliver of land, sadly forms only the periphery of the Indian mindspace.

A couple of years back there was much noise about India's 'Look East Policy', and how the North-East could play the role of a gateway to South-East Asia. In fact Rajiv Sikri, the then secretary-east in the external affairs ministry, went as far as announcing in Guwahati that the policy “envisages the North-East region not as the periphery of India, but as the centre of a thriving and integrated economic space linking two dynamic regions with a network of highways, railways, pipelines, transmission lines criss-crossing the region.” His hope, as was quoted in newspaper articles, was that it would be possible some day to drive from Calcutta via Dhaka, or from Guwahati, to Yangon and Bangkok in three or four days, and that trains and buses would carry “millions of tourists, pilgrims, workers and businessmen in both directions?” It was a brilliant vision then, and it rightly caught the imagination of the informed public.

However that initial ardour seemed to have cooled, and we find the North-East where it was seven years back. Nowadays nobody talks of the Look East Policy any more, but I think we should not let that initial vision fade away. If Assam and the North-East are to remain on India's map and also uppermost on its mind, I think it has to be on the basis of pure economics. The battle today is for relevance. The stewardship of an upwardly mobile India in an increasingly globalising world would be vested in its economically-powerful states, not in its laggards.

Therefore let me propose a big, hairy, audacious, goal (BHAG) for Guwahati: In the next 1 decade, we would be a megacity of 10 million people, with a GDP of Rs 100 thousand crores.

Is this achievable? Today Assam's 31 million people, with the current set of infrastructure and economic opportunities, produce a GDP of a little below Rs 93 thousand crores. Tomorrow, can we create the right economic opportunities in Guwahati whereby the per-capita productivity of the city's workforce go up by three time? Possible!

Operationalising the Vision

The BHAG described above cannot be achieved organically. Rather each piece of the jigsaw has to be incubated separately and simultaneously. I am aware that regional strategies are formulated after detailed studies of market potential, resource availability, competency profiling, etc, but I am no means to undertake these. Yet, let me articulate some random thoughts as the starting point for future explorations.

Think of a Guwahati whose municipal boundaries extend up to Khetri in the east, Rani and Chaygaon in the West, and Baihata Chariali in the north. Each of these areas would be a planned mini-city with offices, homes, parks, educational institutions, shopping malls, and built around a production/service cluster.

Let's say we build a education cluster in North Guwahati, near the site of the present Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Now imagine a high street where you have a Indian Institute of Management (IIM), a Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), a National Law School (NLS), a National Institute of Design (NID), a National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), and, given the right impetus, there is no reason why there would not be academic synergy. Want cutting-edge industrial design? IIT and NID could collaborate on it. Want a solid cyber-law regime? Get IIIT and NLS to work together. Want to upgrade the quality of local manufacturing? Bring together quality experts from IIT and IIM.

Let's think of a health cluster near Rani. Set up a All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and give 25 acres each to the top private healthcare players in the country: Apollo, Max, Fortis, etc. There is enough of a patient population in the North-East to warrant these big players to come. There are enough Assamese doctors working around the world to come and staff these facilities.

Let's visualise an automated multi-modal transportation and supply-chain cluster between Amingaon and Azara, where goods are stored in appropriate warehousing facilities and easily transferred between road, rail, boats and air crafts for forwarding to other destinations.

Let's imagine a biotechnology, drug-discovery and drug-manufacturing cluster near Sonapur. Partner with the Government of India's Department of Science & Technology (DST) to create a first-of-its-kind Indian Institute of Biotechnology, work with the North Eastern Development Finance (NeDFI) to create a Biotech Venture Fund, and create a techno-park for biotech start-ups.

In a knowledge-driven world where markets are global, consumers demand the best of quality, and today's performance no longer guarantees tomorrow's success, we would be constantly evaluated on our ability to remain the best at whatever we do.

High-density Guwahati, Low-density Assam

Why is it important to build a high-density Guwahati and a low density rest-of-Assam? A report in the Indian Express last year stated that 'the total area under rice cultivation in Assam has been shrinking over the past decade. From 26.46 lakh hectares in 2000-2001, it dwindled to 24.84 lakh hectares in 2008-09'. The report quoted the then Agriculture Minister Pramila Rani Brahma as saying “Establishment of industrial estates and other institutions have cut into paddy fields. Assam does not have enough fallow land, and thus every time something new comes up, it has to be at the cost of agricultural land.” At the rate at which building activity is on in both villages and towns of Assam, there is no doubt that our agricultural land will only deplete.

I carried out another calculation. The Karbi Anglong and Dima Hasao districts being hill areas have the lowest population, but the largest areas. I took the population of Assam minus the population of these two hill-districts, and divided it by the area of Assam minus the area of these two districts, to arrive at the population density in the plain-districts of Assam. I found the average population density of our plain-districts to be 474 persons per sq km, much higher than the national average of 382!

The area covered by the Brahmaputra river as a proportion of the total area of the state is disproportionate, when compared to other states and their river systems. Now if I were to continue my earlier exercise and calculate the population density of Assam after subtracting the area covered by the Brahmaputra, the figure would rise even higher. In short, Assam is a very crowded place indeed!

As we visualise a future for Guwahati, we need to ask ourselves whether we want a Assam that can meet its own food requirements. If yes, we necessarily need to build a high-density Guwahati and a low-density rest-of-the-state. The other thing in favour of a high-density urban zone is that the cost of providing municipal amenities becomes all that much lower.

Reality Check

It is quite possible that I could be criticised for articulating a vision that borders on fantasy, describing a utopia that has no linkage with the present reality. But my counterpoint is: didn't all rags-to-riches billionaires dream outrageous things when they did not have a penny in their pocket? Doesn't all creation presupposes a 'nothing'?

This is not to gloss over the present state of affairs in Guwahati or to suggest that its current municipal troubles are not significant, but I strongly believe that given adequate political will they are easily surmountable. We all know the facts: only 25% people in Guwahati get piped drinking water and that too for a few hours each day, even a small shower leads to artificial flooding in most parts of the city, garbage routinely piles up on the streets, sewage is dumped untreated in the Brahmaputra, there are few parks or public spaces, and air pollution is endemic.

But the Indian experience has been that given adequate political will even the unthinkable becomes possible. Hyderabad used to be just another state capital till the mid 90s. Then N Chandra Babu took over as the Chief Minister and we all know how Hyderabad changed. Surat used to be the dirtiest city in India. Then a came along a Municipal Commissioner called SR Rao and the city transformed into one of the cleanest city in India in just 18 months! Residents in Badlapur, in Maharashtra's Thane district, used to get irregular water supply. Today all residents get water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

Such stories of transformation are many. I am not suggesting that we would become a Hong Kong or Singapore in the next 5-10 years, but I would definitely argue that given the right leadership we could get there. The question is: are we prepared to demand the best? Are we prepared to throw out the crooks and embezzlers amongst the political class, and bring in committed and capable people to run our public institutions. A functioning democracy presupposed an enlightened electorate, and this is something the citizens of Guwahati need to think about.

In the next two installments of this column, I'll articulate some ideas to cope with the present municipal challenges, as well as outline the governance mechanisms required to run the 21^st century Guwahati.