Welcome to Waiting for Us podcast!
My reason to start this podcast is to bring people together who would like to see India succeed. People in India are smart and enterprising. If by magic or human intervention, we could allow every Indian the same opportunity to succeed, India will become a leader in the world in every aspect of humanity.
Today, when you discuss politics in India, you typically get three reactions:
First, India is doing great. We are only a seventy-year-old democracy and we need more time to bring change and prosperity.
That is not correct. When you look at the facts, India ranks at the bottom of every statistic and measure in the world.
Second, people will say India has a huge population and that keeps us from becoming the best.
That is also not correct. There are a number of densely populated democratic countries from Singapore, Japan, South Korea doing fairly well in terms of per capita GDP and various other measures.
Third, you will hear that we all know the solutions but who is going to make those changes.
I am not sure if we all agree with the same solutions. We all have an idea of how to bring a change. At the same time, it is also true that very few of us are willing to act to bring the change we ourselves believe in.
As part of this podcast, I would like to layout the solutions I am proposing. It is my hope that based on these ideas we can find a group of people, first who agree to the proposed solutions and second are willing to come together. It is also important to explain “willing to come together means”. To me coming together means that at the minimum the group agrees with the problem and the proposed solutions. After that a few of the people may be willing to join an official organization, some may be willing to help financially and some may own the responsibility to take the steps to implement the ideas.
The key ideas proposed in Waiting for Us are 2-fold. One, the Role of Government is to act as a referee and limit its role in the day to day lives of its citizens. Second India must allow private enterprises to manage all business – thereby allowing millions of its citizens to innovate and succeed in their lives.
Let me start with the second one first. If you look at all financial success India has achieved in the last 30 years, it is mostly due to the privatization of certain industries including software development, telecommunications, automobiles, air transportation, banking, and healthcare. Such privatization allowed entrepreneurs to develop technologies domestically, which in turn created jobs and wealth for a small percentage of the population. That then enabled wealth to further trickle down to more people. Imagine, what will happen if every industry including all transportation, power generation, and distribution, education, defense, recycling and garbage collection, oil and gas, ports, tourism and many others industries controlled by the government are allowed to be run by the private enterprise and expand those services to masses. It will not only create millions of new jobs, but also explode the economic activity, and will improve things in every aspect of life.
Now let me talk about the role of the government. As I said before, the role of government is to act as a referee to the private enterprise. That means it should not run banks, airlines, power generation, and anything which can be done by experts in that field through the market economy. Even today, the sectors which have been opened to the market economy are severely hurt by the government by competing against them. How can an airline compete against Indian Airlines, when Indian Airlines can run a sale of its airfares knowing fully well that it will continue to get funding even if it is losing millions offering the unprofitable airfares? Similarly, how a telecommunications company can run against a government-funded telecom company, which does not have to play with the same market rules.
The government should only run things that are essential to building a strong democratic society such as, law and order, natural resources such as land, air and water, education, defense, tax collection, and infrastructure. Even in those sectors, the government should outsource whenever feasible to the private sector.
At the highest level, the government’s role should only be to define and implement laws, defend natural resources that belong to all of its citizens, and provide means such as currency, infrastructure, and other mechanisms for the market economy to succeed.
If you believe in those two principles, then let’s organize. There is tremendous power in organizing behind a principle. In India, with the basic vision of honesty, VP Singh challenged and replaced a 400 MP Congress government. Most recently with the same hope, Arvind Kejriwal took over the government in Delhi over both Congress and BJP.
If you agree then, checkout http://www.waitingforus.in and send a message as to how you can help!
Waiting For Us 