What Ails India

Summary

Delivered as the 26th Convocation Address at IIT Madras on 8 August 1989 and reprinted by the Forum of Free Enterprise in January 1990, Russi Mody’s speech opens with a frank disclaimer that his remarks will be practical and down-to-earth rather than academic. He addresses the graduating engineers as privileged citizens who will bear special responsibility for the nation’s future, and urges them to define success not merely in terms of wealth or position but in service to those less fortunate.

The heart of the speech is a diagnostic tour of India’s chief ailments. Mody names the erosion of national integration — the replacement of Indian identity by regional and communal loyalties — as the foremost problem since independence. He then turns to population growth, invoking Malthus to argue that India’s annual addition of 17 million people (equivalent to the entire population of Australia) devours every increment of wealth the country creates, and calls for urgent incentive and disincentive schemes. Corruption is identified as the second major ailment, with Mody stressing that social stigma has disappeared and that both the giver and receiver of bribes share equal guilt. Ecology and industrial pollution are flagged as threats to future generations, and the speech diagnoses a pervasive crisis of character and efficiency — a missing work culture — as the root of India’s institutional failures across railways, posts, hospitals and airlines.

Mody closes on a cautiously optimistic note, crediting liberalisation under the then Prime Minister (Rajiv Gandhi is implied but not named) — lowering of taxes and reduction of controls — for a respectable industrial growth rate and food-surplus status. He argues that political and economic freedom are indivisible and challenges the graduates to carry that message. A final section on management defines credibility as the manager’s supreme quality, illustrates with the Duke of Devonshire anecdote, and ends with the Persian proverb about dying with the world in tears.

Key points

• True success in life is defined not by wealth or position but by being reasonably well off, maintaining a good family, and pursuing activities that benefit those less fortunate.

• The erosion of national integration — citizens identifying first as Bengalis, Biharis, Maharashtrians, etc. rather than as Indians — is described as the foremost problem since independence.

• Population growth (17 million added per year, equal to Australia’s total population) devours all economic gains and demands urgent government, industry and voluntary-agency action including incentive and disincentive schemes.

• Corruption is described as the second most important national problem; the loss of social stigma for corrupt behaviour is identified as a deeper danger than corruption itself.

• Ecology and industrial pollution are cited as rapidly degrading the country for future generations, and must be moved from discussion into action.

• India suffers a pervasive crisis of character and efficiency — a missing work culture — despite individual Indians demonstrating world-class capability whenever they operate outside India.

• Liberalisation (tax cuts and reduction of controls) has produced a respectable growth rate; economic and political freedom are argued to be indivisible and mutually dependent.

• For managers, credibility — built on consistent truthfulness — is the supreme quality; an ounce of practice is worth a tonne of theory.