Leaders everywhere are compelled to think outside the box and solve the problems that have accumulated like atherosclerosis in the administrative system. We call this the MMS moment (Manmohan Singh) to commemorate the architect of liberalisation.
But where do you begin? A leader can start by listening empathetically and then by delivering what is promised. Leaders everywhere must learn to listen with empathy. But who runs a listening skills course for leaders? Since youth have “finally” been listened to, older folks should be listened to as well.
The oldest of us is a nonagenarian. The other two were born about 10 years later. We enjoyed professional careers and retired from formal careers sometime in the last 20 years. Our current preoccupation is to be thankful for the lives we led, to feel immensely proud about being Indian, and to hope that our future generations will feel even prouder in the coming decades. In this rare joint writing, we draw attention to why some questions seem to linger forever, suspended in the gap between promise and delivery.
Our parents were highly preoccupied with placing food on the family table. They experienced the turmoil of colonialism, world war, famine, partition, and other convulsions. We grew up in an India characterised by a controlled economy, where everything was in short supply — grains, bread, milk, steel, transport, and communications. We led more plentiful lives compared to our parents. Our sons and daughters have lived even better lives than we did, spurred by better earnings, savings, travel, and technologies. If progress were linear, there would be no need for us to worry about the future. India must be on the right track.
But it also may not be so. Politics, governance, and geopolitics form a complex spaghetti and do not unfold in a linear manner. We belong to a singularly fortunate generation that has experienced the survival, indeed the successful growth of independent India. Many nations gave up democracy or transformed into autocracies. Ours has remained democratic, despite some inevitable weak spots and frailties. This is a remarkable achievement for a country as large as ours.
Leaders with a variety of political affiliations assume that their appointment to a post is a certificate of their being good listeners. From our own careers, we know this assumption does not hold. If anything, the more powerful the leader, the less likely he or she is to listen well. The public arena provides many examples. In the United States, for instance, leaders elected with less than a majority of the popular vote have often acted as though they command overwhelming public support.
If problems linger, protests and civil disturbances erupt. Our generation has experiences and memories of Gandhiji’s and JP’s methods, but the emerging generation has little memory of those. The emergence of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) reflects this shift in the political imagination of India’s youth. When leaders fail to listen with empathy, dissatisfaction deepens. Amplified by the reach and speed of social media, it can quickly evolve into organised protest and new forms of political expression.
The problem of exam leaks is not a recent issue: In the last 12 years, we have experienced 1.25 leaks per month. It is no consolation that they occurred earlier. Now, there is an Exam Reform Committee. What happened to the National Education Policy (2020), Malviya Mission Teacher Training Programme (2023), and K. Radhakrishnan Committee (2024) on accreditation? The remarkable instant reaction of 20 million people to a random Instagram message is indicative of a much larger problem than a dysfunctional examination system.
Associated with it are lingering issues related to other youth anxieties: Massive educational expansion accompanied by excessive privatisation and skyrocketing costs, deteriorating educational standards, the unavailability of jobs and over-qualification for low-level jobs. Youth’s aspirations have been raised, but delivery does not match aspirations. Luckily, issues of housing, food and women’s income are mitigated by a variety of government-run schemes.
Nothing is more dangerous than reasonably fed youth who find little meaning in their lives and prospects. In the last decade, matters have deteriorated or, at best, stayed static. If the CJP protests reveal anything, it is that the gap between promise and performance has become deeply personal, affecting the daily lives and prospects of millions.
The last decade has raised hopes in several areas. No earlier generation has been promised so much — dramatic improvement in educational standards, elimination of corruption in public life, credit into bank accounts by recovering illicit wealth from abroad, benefits of demonetisation, doubling of farmers’ income, reducing import dependence on crucial food-related items, including fertilisers through nano fertiliser, edible oils through large-scale plantations in the north-east, and augmenting supply of pulses. Though our GDP growth in the last decade or so is similar to the previous 20 years, we are now acclaimed as the fastest-growing economy. But this is not enough if the promises made with panache are not met for the growing aspirations of our youth and the general population.
The result is a burgeoning youth population that is neither fully employed nor meaningfully occupied, facing the cumulative burden of long-neglected shortcomings in governance and public administration. This is neither a BJP nor a Congress problem. It is the cumulative result of long-standing institutional weaknesses, compounded over decades and aggravated by a culture of over-promising. The gap between promise and delivery hurts badly. Should we reduce announcements and get down to execution?
The youth of India will not tolerate over-promise and under-delivery. India needs an MMS moment, out- of-the-box thinking and creative change.
We hope these reflections will find a hearing among those entrusted with shaping the nation’s future.
Ganguly is former chairman of Hindustan Unilever and, former Member, Rajya Sabha, Gopalakrishnan is former Director of Tata Sons and Mohan is former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India
Several protesters gathered in Dadar in support of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protest were detained by Mumbai Police on Thursday. (Express Photo By Ganesh Shirsekar) 
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