How to rid India of the chalta hai mindset

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I am a great fan of Pavan K. Varma. In a recent interview about his book Being Indian: The Truth about why the 21st Century will be India8217;s, he says that we Indians are a bun-dle of contradictions. 8220;We are focused and will work towards a goal despite formidable obstacles. So we are resilient, ingenuous, ever hopeful.8221; If you have trouble believing this, just look at the epic proportions to which we take the saga of standard 10, 12 and college admissions. Rich or modest in income, the drama is the same. It8217;s a discourse that all of us are a part of, that says 8216;just do it, never say can8217;t8212;at this time of life, chalta hai is not an option.8217; And guess what? Very few of our children rebel against it. Otherwise the coaching class and entrance test industry would be out of business. In fact, Varma agrees that we are resilient like the cockroach, which is the only creature like-ly to survive a nuclear holocaust! Is this the picture of a peo-ple who are chalta hai?

In the course of my consumer insight work, I see a humongous number of aspirers and strivers, and very few people resigned to their fate, even amongst the lower mid-dle income. They borrow and struggle to earn and repay, for their own houses, their two-wheelers and TV sets8212;motor-cycle not moped, colour not black and white8212;their chil-dren8217;s English-medium, private education, and still, most don8217;t give up on their social responsibilities. After liberali-sation, our businesses, small and large alike, have struggled and got lean, mean and fit, and fought competition with innovation, aggression and subversion. There has been no chalta hai here. When governments don8217;t perform, there is no chalta hai. They turn up to vote and teach the powers that be a lesson. Nahin chalega is the message behind all the anti-incumbency voting.

But of course we are a chalta hai-oriented lot. We accept our dug-up roads, mounds of uncleared garbage, eternal traf- fic jams, and abysmal services from our public utilities to whom we pay good money. Even the richest neighbour-hoods with the most clout and educa-tion do. The poor will borrow to go to a rural private practitioner for their child8217;s illness but not demand better treatment from a government clinic. Ditto for schools. Is this chalta hai? Or is it 8216;chalana hai8217; jugaad? But we are chalta hai in the way we throw garbage, in the way we spit in public spaces. But again, is it chalta hai or is it malfunctioning public utilities? Would more dustbins and spittoons help us be less chalta hai about shared spaces? I think yes.

The only way to make us make our public services and public servants work better is to either privatise them think pre-liberalisation airlines and the tele-phone services where all from the managing director to the linesman said chalta hai? Or to promote active citizenry.

Only citizen groups can put processes on the ground. Leave the politician out of this, he will come on board when he has votes at stake.

Because there is no magic like customer pull. If voters8212;in the group where the voting volumes lie8212;demanded better public amenities and services, then the supply side would change. And when there is no hope, then sab chalta hai, as in chalana he padega. When we see better, and there is hope, then patience and tol-erance levels decline. That8217;s what the consumer goods experience has been.

Creating active citizenry has been a problem so far. That8217;s because there are many pieces of the effort that have to link together, and most efforts that are being made but not working too well are because only one link in the chain is being changed. Creating active citizenry needs very sophisticated and ubiquitous communication that ener-gises and awakens people with the absolutely right message.

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Not badly thought-out sloganeer-ing or sanctimonious appeals to our higher instincts, with-out recognising that most of us are still defeated by the sheer logistics of living. It needs a media with a sense of mission, which sees that carrying the messages into people8217;s homes and brains, is its business. It needs ex-bureaucrats to help everyone understand how to prick the system where it can feel the discomfort and how to actually craft win-win solu-tions.

It needs citizen groups and forums to actually put processes and actions and interfaces on the ground. Let8217;s leave the politician out of this8212;he will come on board when he has votes at stake. I think the weakest link we have is the attitude of media owners today, and I think the strongest force for change will come when people are told what their true power and entitlement is, in that interim period between elections.

I do believe that there is a lot that is right with our 8216;kaise bhi chalana hai8217; attitude, because that8217;s what gives us the dis-ruptive innovation capability that the world now recognis-es. But we need to say 8216;nahin chalega8217; to our elected represen-tatives and the vast government machinery that controls all our public services, and thinks chalta hai.

Pavan Varma says: 8220;A Japanese or a German will seek solutions within certain parameters8212;Indians will go fur-ther, outside conventional methods. This I call jugaad or cre-ative improvisation.That8217;s why we are survivors. As they say in Kannada 8216;solpa adjust maadi8217; please adjust a bit.

The author is an independent market strategy consultant